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“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.