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"hammer" from his belt. It was only a piece of wood,
first gnawed into a club-shape and then dried, over heart-breaking weeks, in
the intermittent sunlight until it was harder than most things on Zygra . Solomon closed his fist around it and wiggled to the
very edge of the bladder-wrack.
    "A ripe one may not be a bad idea,"
Victor suggested. "The monitor is more likely to try and retrieve a ripe
one, isn't it?" "Shut up," Coberley told him again.
    Tense, they held their
breath as the monitor drew abreast of the pelt enshrouding Solomon. It sensed
the presence of its responsibility, slowed down and bobbed towards the side of
the channel. Victor whimpered faintly.
    Relays
evaluated, circuits closed. The monitor decided that this pelt ought not to be
stranded and left behind, but returned to the herd. Arms reached out from its
nearer handling unit, closed tenderly on the pelt and Solomon too, lifted the
load and began to swing it across the low deck so it could be replaced in
mid-channel— exactly
as we hoped, Horst
reminded himself without excitement. His mouth was dry and his guts were
churning.
    Go to it, Solomon. Make it come true all the
way!
    How many long lonely hours of planning, how
many dreams and arguments, had led to this momentl Now, now Solomon was making his bid for mastery of the little vessel: in
mid-air stripping off the pelt with huge sucking noises, startling the monitor
and throwing it over to the seldom-used interference circuits. He dropped
awkwardly on the deck, almost losing his footing as the impact drove the
monitor completely below the surface. His "hammer" rose and fell with
a slam on the base of the handling unit, cracking the plastic across and letting
water into unproofed circuits so that steam spurted
out and something hissed as if in rage.
    The
arms let go the pelt and it fell in the water. Solomon paid no attention. With
all his might he was trying to extend that crack completely across the
monitor's hull, to wreak havoc that would force the machine's return to the
main station for servicing and carry him ignorantly with it.
    "Look out!"
    Who
called? Horst
realized with amazement that it had been his own voice, and he had spoken too
late. The handling unit on the other side of the monitor was intact, and it
sprang into action. Two huge arms snatched Solomon off the deck. The power
surged and the stern-jets screamed, driving the hull into mid-channel again.
The arms shot out to full stretch and let Solomon go. He plunged into the bladderwrack beyond the channel, screaming, and the scream
ended abruptly as the glugging noise of collapsing floats greeted his fall.
    There was a period of worse than silence,
during which the monitor evaluated its own damage, decided it was still
serviceable, and resumed the pursuit of its pelts. When it was out of sight,
Horst stirred.
    "Now, we have no choice," he said.
"If we're going to get off Zygra alive we'll
have to tackle the main station."
    "You're crazy!" Victor shrilled.
"If we can't even take a monitor,
what chance have we of—?"
    "I'd
rather be crazy than dead," Horst whispered. "At least ... I think I would."

V
    When the announcement
reached Kynance , it was bald and to the point:
    The
previous incumbent of the post of supervisor of Zygra has failed to exercise his option of a further year's employment. Kindly ready
yourself for departure aboard the starship Zygra One at fourteen hundred tomorrow.
    She looked at it a second time and gave a
sigh. She reminded herself about the repatriation clause and wondered if the
attraction of a guaranteed trip home was going to lose its glamour in the same
way as zygra pelts already had.
    Suppose
the "previous incumbent" had exercised his option: what would they
have done with her, having stuffed her mind full of so much information? Washed
it all out again? Kept her on the staff in some minor capacity for a year and
then sent her to Zygra after all?
    No,
more likely just turned her loose. In the history of the