Hastily he adjusted his face mask, reversed the compression, and kicked open the side door. With one bat of his paw he knocked the thing back out onto the grass.

Terl sat there watching it. He was afraid his plans were going up in a puff. The thing must have been more heavily affected by the stun blast than he knew. Crap, they were weak!

He opened the cab top and looked over at one of the horses.

He could see its sides moving. It was breathing and wasn't in any convulsion. It was even recovering. Well, a horse was a horse, and a man might be...

He suddenly got it. The man-thing couldn't breathe breathe-gas. The bluish color was fading; the convulsions had stopped. The chest was panting as the thing gulped in air.

That gave Terl a problem. Blast if he was going to ride back to the minesite in a face mask. He got out of the car and went to the farther horse. It was recovering, too. The sacks were lying near it. Terl rummaged through one and came up with some thongs.

He went back and picked up the man-thing and slammed it up on top of the car. He arranged it so its arms stuck out to each side. Tying piece after piece of thong together he made a long rope. He tied one end to one wrist of the thing, passed the rope under the car– grunting a bit as he lifted it up to do so– and tied the other wrist. He yanked it good and tight. Then he pushed at the man-thing experimentally to see whether it would fall off.

Very good. He threw the sacks onto the gunner's seat and got in, closed up, and restarted the atmosphere change.

The nearest horse was lifting its head, struggling to get up. Aside from surface blood boils caused by the stun gun, it seemed to be all right, which meant that the man-thing would probably recover.

Terl stretched his jawbones in a grin. Well, it was coming out all right after all.

He started up the car, turned it, and headed back toward the minesite.

Terl was all efficiency, great plans bubbling in his cavernous skull.

The old Chinkos had had a sort of zoo outside the compound, and despite the years that had intervened since the Chinkos were terminated here, the cages were still there.

There was one in particular that was just right. It had a dirt floor and a cement pool, and netting of heavy mesh strung all around it. They had had some bears there that they said they were studying, and although the bears had died after a while, they had never escaped.

Terl dumped the new beast into the cage. The thing was still only semiconscious, getting over the shock of breathe-gas most likely. Terl looked at it lying there and then looked around. This had to be just right, all precautions taken.

The cage door had a lock on it. It was open to the sky and there was no netting over the top– what bear could climb a thirty-foot set of bars?

But there was a possibility that this new beast might tamper with the cage door. It wasn't probable. But the door didn't have a good lock on it.

Terl had dumped the bags in the cage, having no place else to put them. And the long thong rope he had used was lying on the bag.

He decided it would be wise to tie the beast up. He passed the thong around the neck of the thing and tied it there with a simple rigger knot and tied the other end to a bar.

He stood back and checked things again. It was fine. He went out and closed the cage door. He'd have to put a better lock on it. But it would do just now.

Satisfied with himself, Terl ran the car into the garage and went to his office.

There was not much to do. A few dispatches, just forms, no emergencies. Terl finished up and sat back. What a dull place. Ah, well, he had started wheels rolling to get off it, to get back home.

He decided he had better go out and see how the man-thing was getting along. He picked up his breathe-mask, put a new cartridge into it, and went out through the offices. There were a lot of empty desks these days. There were only three secretarial-type Psychlos there, and they didn't pay much attention to him.

Outside the compound, he reached the gate of the cage. He stopped, his eyebones rattling.

The thing was clear over to the gate!

He went in with a growl, picked the thing up, and put it into its original place.

It had untied the knot.

Terl looked at it. Plainly it was terrified of him. And why not? It only came up to his belt buckle and was about a tenth of his weight.

Terl put the thong back around its neck. Being a mining company worker, accustomed to rigs and slings, Terl knew his knots. So this time he tied a double-rigger knot. That would hold it!

Cheerful once more, Terl went to the garage and got a water hose and began to wash down the Mark ll. As he worked, he turned over various plans and approaches in his head. They all depended on that man-thing out there.

On a sudden hunch, he went back outside to look into the cage. The thing was standing inside the door!

Terl crossly barged in, carried it back to its original position, and stared at the rope. It had untied a double-rigger knot.

With fast-working paws, Terl fixed that. He put the rope around its neck and tied it with a bucket-hoist knot.

The thing looked at him. It was making some funny noises as if it could talk.

Terl walked out, fastened the door, and got out of sight. He wasn't a security chief for nothing. From a vantage point behind a building, he levered his face mask glass to telephoto and observed.

The thing, in no time at all, untied the complex bucket-hoist knot!

Terl rumbled back before it could get to the door. He went in, plucked the thing up, and put it back on the far side of the cage.

He wound the rope around and around its neck and then tied it with a double-bucket knot so complex that only a veteran rigger could loosen it.

Once more he went off to an unseen distance.

Again believing itself unobserved, what was the thing doing now?

It reached into a pouch it was wearing, took out something bright, and cut the rope!

Terl rumbled off to the garage and rummaged about through centuries of cast offs and debris until he found a piece of flexirope, a welding torch, a welding power cartridge, and a short strip of metal.

When he got back, the thing was over by the door again, trying to climb the thirty-foot bars.

Terl did a very thorough job. He made a collar out of the metal and welded it hotly around the neck. He welded the flexirope to the collar and welded the other end into a ring, hooking the ring over a bar thirty feet above the dirt floor of the cage.

He stood back. The thing was grimacing and trying to hold the collar away from its neck, for it was still hot.

That'll hold it, Terl told himself.

But he hadn't finished. He wasn't a security chief for nothing. He went back to his office storeroom and broke out two button cameras, checked them, and switched them to the wavelength of his office viewer.

Then he went back to the cage and put one button camera way up in the bars, pointing down, and put the other one out at a distance where it could view the exterior.

The thing was pointing at its mouth and making sounds. Who knew what that meant?

Only now did Terl feel relaxed.

That night he sat smugly in the employee recreation room, responding to no questions, quietly drinking his kerbango in a very self-satisfied way.