Lil poked her shock of black hair around Ma Kirk's knee. Her big eyes glowed in the feeble light. She said, "You men! He's no man, Ma. He's just a little boy who has to stay behind and shoo the beetles out of the fields." The young ones giggled, well out of reach. Lil's thin body was strung tight, quivering to move. "Besides," she demanded, "what have the Officers and the Engineers ever done to you that you should want to kill them--all but the Captain's yellow daughter?" Kirk's big heavy chest swelled. "Ma," he said, "you make that brat shut up or I'll whale her, anyhow." Ma Kirk looked at him. "Your Pa's still big enough to whale you, young man! Now you stop it, both of you." "All right," said Kirk sullenly. He squatted down, holding his hands over the heat. His back twitched with the cold, but it was nice to have his belly warm, even if it was empty. "Wish Pa'd hurry up. I'm hungry. Hope they killed meat." Ma Kirk sighed. "Seems like meat gets scarcer all the time, like the heat-stones." "Maybe," said Kirk heavily, "it all goes to the same place." Lil snorted. "And where's that, Smarty?" His anger forced out the forbidden words. "Where everybody says, stupid! Into the Ship." There was suddenly a lot of silence in the room. The word "Ship" hung there, awesome and accusing. Ma Kirk's eyes flicked to the curtain over the door and back to her son. "Don't you say things like that, Wes! You don't know." "It's what everybody says. Why else would they guard the Ship the way they do? We can't even get near the outside of it." Lil tossed her head. "Well neither do they." "Not when we can see 'em, no. Of course not. But how do we know they haven't got ways of getting into the Ship that don't show from the plain? Jakk says a lot goes on that we don't know about." He got up, forcing his belief at them with his big square hands. "There must be something in the Ship that they don't want us to have. Something valuable, something they want to keep for themselves. What else could it be but heat-stones and maybe dried meat?" "We don't know, Wes! The Ship is--well, we shouldn't talk about it. And the Officers wouldn't do that. If they wanted us killed off they'd let the Piruts in on us, or the shags, and let 'em finish us quick. Freezing and starving would take too long. There'd be too many of us if we found out, or got mad." Kirk snorted. "You women know so much. If they let the shags or the Piruts in on us, how could they stop 'em before they killed everybody, including the Officers? As for slow death--well, they think we're dumb. They've kept us away from the Ship ever since the _Crash_, and nobody knows how long ago that was. They think they can go on doing it. They think we'd never suspect." "Yah!" said Lil sharply. "You just like to talk. Why should the Officers want us killed off anyhow?" Kirk looked at the thin fuzzy baby curled tight in the skins.