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Joseph Hill wiped his plump face and coiled some of the rope’s slack around his thick waist.

“Together now, Karl. One! Two!”

They stood knee-deep in mud on the bank, pulling and straining on the rope, while some few yards distant, in the shade of a grove of trees, their tiny yllumphs nibbled grass and watched them critically, but made no effort to come closer.

“If we’re late for ship’s landing, Joe, we’ll get crossed off the list.”

Hill puffed and wheezed and took another hitch on the rope.

“That’s what I’ve been thinking about,” he said, worried.

They took a deep breath and hauled mightily on the raft rope. The raft bobbed nearer. For a moment the swift waters of the Karazoo threatened to tear it out of their grasp, and then it was beached, most of it solidly, on the muddy bank. One end of it still lay in the gurgling, rushing waters, but that didn’t matter. They’d be back in ten hours or so, long before the heavy raft could be washed free.

“How much time have we got, Karl?”

The ground was thick with shadows, and Karl cast a critical eye at them. He estimated that even with the refusal of their yllumphs to help beach the raft, they still had a good two hours before the rocket put down at Landing City.