He was standing before one of the _Lyra's_ translucent windows staring out upon the steamy Mercurian landscape, his arms folded on his chest. When I touched him he swayed and when I looked into his eyes I perceived that the pupils were set in a fixed stare, and covered with a dull, grayish film. Murphy was standing beside him. The Irishman had evidently come in for orders and stiffened to immobility with a pipe in his mouth and a slightly provoked look on his face, as though my stupidity still riled him. A nightmare unreality lengthened the minutes which followed into unevenly-spaced eternities filled with a steadily mounting dread. In the more crowded parts of the ship frozen men clustered in little queues. Every member of the atomotor crew stood frozen at his post. The starboard watch looked like statues carved in bronze and in the chain locker room were three crewmen whose muscular contortions conveyed an illusion of motion as they tugged at windlasses which had ceased to turn. My palms were wet and I was trembling in every limb when I completed my inspection of the ship. It was especially bad going back in the jacket-lift to the commander's cabin. In the dark fore-hold I had glimpsed obscure, rigid shadows which had unnerved me more than all the frozen, brittle men illumed by cold light in the crew spaces fore and aft. When I stepped from the jacket-lift a voice said: "They only _seem_ brittle, Rawley. Actually they are still soft and flabby, like all the inhabitants of the third planet." It was a telepathic voice, but I didn't know that. I thought it was a human voice speaking close to my ear. Appalled, I swung about. The frog was peering around a bend in the passageway, its stalked eyes pointing toward the lift. I fought a desire to scream as it leapt agilely toward me. It seemed to be grinning up at me. Its wet, yellowish lips were split in a grimace which gave it the appearance of being convulsed with mirth. "Why are you trembling, Rawley?" it said. "Surely you expected to find intelligent life on at least _one_ of the planets." "You mean you are--" "Intelligent, yes. So intelligent that you seem very primitive to us. It is a hindrance, in a way. Too wide a gulf." "Then _you_ did this," I choked. "You--you froze every man on this ship." "Froze? Oh, I see what you mean. It is unfortunate that I am compelled to use your mental concepts to think with. You are giving my thoughts a verbal twist peculiar to yourself. You see, Rawley, I can correlate your fugitive reactions to a given phenomenon with everything experienced by you from the day of your birth. By simply tuning in on your thoughts I can get your--your slant. Not merely your thought images, Rawley, but all the little twists and turns of your familiar speech. Fortunately you have telepathic powers, too. Somewhat rudimentary, but adequate." The frog's eyes quivered. "Don't glare at me, Rawley. I have no intention of harming you." "You harmed _her_," I groaned.