His flesh crawled with horror. Not for himself, but for Cathy. He fumbled in his pockets. A pocket knife. A key chain. String. His face was completely gray. He ripped an upholstered seat. There were coiled springs under the foamite. He pulled away a piece of decorative molding. He knew it wouldn't work, but there wasn't anything else to do. His hands moved awkwardly, with the handcuffs limiting their movements. Time passed. He had something finished. It was a bit of wood with a coil spring from the chair, with his key chain wrapped around it and his pocket knife set in it so that the blade would seem to make a contact. But it would achieve nothing whatever. Cathy stared at him. Her eyes were desperate, but she believed. She'd seen three equally improbable devices perform wonders. While Lon made something that looked like the nightmare of an ultimatist sculptor, she watched in terrified hope. * * * * * He had it in his hand when the door opened again and the skipper came back into the saloon. He said prosaically, "Shall I call in the scientist guys to listen, or the persuader guys to work on her?" "Neither. I've made another gadget," Lon said from a dry throat. "It will kill you. It'll kill everybody on the ship--from here. You're going to put us back down on the planet below." The skipper did not look at the gadget, but at Lon's face. Then he called. The four men of the crew and the two uneasy scientists came in. "We got to persuade," the skipper said sardonically. "He just told me he's made a new gadget that'll kill us all." He moved unhurriedly toward Lon. Lon knew that his bluff was no good. If the thing had actually been a weapon, he'd have been confident and assured. He didn't feel that way, but he raised the thing menacingly as the skipper approached. The skipper took it away, laughing. "We'll tie him in a chair an' get to work on her. When he's ready to talk, we'll stop." He looked at the object in his hands. It was ridiculous to look at. It was as absurd as the device that extracted power from matter stresses, and the machine that converted one kind of vegetation into another, and the apparatus--partly barn roof--that had short-circuited the ionosphere of Cetis Gamma Two to the planet's solid surface. It looked very foolish indeed. The skipper was amused. "Look out, you fellas," he said humorously. "It's gonna kill you!" He crooked his finger and the knifeblade made a contact. He swept it in mock menace about the saloon. The four crew-members and the two scientists went stiff. He gaped at them, then turned the device to stare at it incredulously. He came within its range. He stiffened. Off-balance, he fell on the device, breaking its gimcrack fastenings and the contact which transmitted nothing that Lon Simpson could imagine coming out of it. The others fell, one by one, with peculiarly solid impacts. Their flesh was incredibly hard. It was as solid, in fact, as so much mahogany.