Joe Kingsbury Thayendanegea, who was a stocky Mohawk from upper New York State, paced the caging space of the room, hands behind his back, and swore. If he had had a tail, he would have lashed it. He was the pilot and engineer, the only other Terrestrial on Mercury. When you dived this far down into the sun’s monstrous gravitational well, you couldn’t take a big crew along.

“So what else can you think of?” he challenged. “Shall we draw straws and barbecue the loser?”

Antella, the owl-faced Martian mineralogist, made a harsh cawing in his gray-feathered throat. “Best it be me,” he advised. “Then no one is technically guilty of cannibalism.”

“Not much meat on that skinny little frame of yours, amigo,” said Navarro. “And a human body would have so many other uses after one was finished with the organic parts. Make the vertebrae into chessmen—the ribs into Venetian blinds for bay windows—yes, and the skulls would make distinctive mousetraps.”

Kingsbury shook heavy shoulders and thrust his beaky face forward. “What are we yattering about?” he demanded. “We’ve got a week’s slim rations left aboard this clunk. After that we start starving.”

“So you are going to the temple and confront the gods and convince them of the error of their ways. Ka!”

Antella clicked his short, curved bill. “Or did you think to threaten them with our one solitary pistol?”

“I’m going to try and find out what the Twonks—or their gods, if you insist—have against us,” said Kingsbury. “Here’s the idea: It’s getting close to sunrise time, and there’ll be a crowd of ’em at the temple. I’ll go out on Dayside and find me an empty Twonk shell and get into it. With luck, I’ll pass unnoticed long enough to—”