"How? Piggy-back?"
"Any way-but do it! The ship is sinking!"
Tex opened his mouth, closed it again, and dived toward a small locker. Matt yelled. "Tex-get a line!"
"What do you think I'm doing? Ice-skating?" Tex reappeared with a coil of thin, strong line used in warping the little craft in to her mother ship. "Easy now-lift him as I slip it under his chest."
"We ought to make a proper sling. We might hurt him."
"No time for that!" urged Oscar from above them. "Hurry!"
Matt swarmed up to the door with the end of the line while Tex was still fastening the loop under the armpits of the unconscious man. A quick look around was enough to confirm Oscar's prediction; the jeep lay on her side with her fins barely touching solid ground. The nose was lower than the tail and sinking in thin, yellow mud. The mud stretched away into the mist, like a flat field, its surface carpeted with a greenish-yellow fungus except for a small space adjacent to the ship where the ship, in failing, had splashed a gap in the surface.
Matt had no time to take the scene in; the mud was almost up to the door. "Ready down there?"
"Ready. Ill be right up."
"Stay where you are and steady him. I think I can handle him." Thurlow weighed one hundred forty pounds, Earth-side; his Venus weight was about one hundred and seventeen. Matt straddled the door and took a strain on the line.