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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.

Nodalictha said warmly, “You’re a darling, Rhadampsicus! It was outrageous of those nasty creatures to intend to harm my pets! I’m glad you attended to them!”

“And I’m glad you’re pleased, my dear,” Rhadampsicus said pleasantly. “Now shall we set out for home?”

Nodalictha looked about the cosy landscape of the ninth planet of Cetis Gamma. There were jagged peaks of frozen air, and mountain ranges of water, solidified ten thousand aeons ago. There were frost-trees of nitrogen, the elaborate crystal formations of argon, and here a wide sweep of oxygen crystal sward, with tiny peeping wild crystals of deep-blue cyanogen seeming to grow more thickly by the brook of liquid hydrogen. And there was their bower; primitive, but the scene of a true honeymoon idyll.