Two: The door was sealed, so there should be no more sabotage, accidental or deliberate.
Three: The priests should be satisfied. The water was running again, my eyes had been duly burned out, and they were back in business. Which added up to—
Four: The fact that they would probably let another repairman in, under the same conditions, if the beacon conked out again. At least I had done nothing, like butchering a few of them, that would make them antagonistic toward future ancestral messengers.
I stripped off my tattered lizard suit back in the ship, very glad that it would be some other repairman who’d get the job.
—Harry Harrison
Transcriber’s Note
This etext was produced from Galaxy February 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.