When a copter came again a week later, it was not the same flier or the same crew. The bag of food and water was dropped from a different height. The copter hovered until it saw both Jorgenson and Ganti. Then it went away.

They set to work again on seaweed hauled from the sea, and leaves smoothed over each other on suitable surfaces of rock. Stems up to four and five inches in diameter to be straightened out and almost dried to seem rotor-shafts, and lesser stems to make a framework. The mockup was tied together with string. They finished it the night before the copter was due again, and they practiced with their bits of cloth and the stones until the light ended. They practiced again at day-break, but when the helicopter came across the sea they were nowhere visible.

But there was an aircraft aground upon the island. From the air it looked remarkably convincing.

The prisoners listened eagerly from the hollowed-out cave. The mockup on the ground was in a miniature valley between sections of taller stone. It could be seen from above, but not well from the side. From one end it could not be seen at all, but from the other it was a remarkable job. It would deceive any eyes not very close indeed.

The flying helicopter hovered and hovered, sweeping back and forth. Its crew-members saw no movement anywhere, which was not possible. If there was an aircraft aground, there must be Thrid who had flown it here. They were not to be seen. The prisoners were not to be seen. The situation was impossible.

Jorgenson and Ganti waited.

The flying jailers could not report what they saw. A previous crew had done that, and when they were proved mistaken or worse, they donned chains to do hard labor so long as they lived. But the Thrid in the copter over the island dared not not-report. Somebody else might sight it, and they'd be condemned for not reporting. They couldn't report it and they couldn't not-report it!

Jorgenson grinned when the throbbing of the rotors became louder and louder as the steam-helicopter descended. He and Ganti made ready.

The flying vehicle landed. They heard it. Its crew got out, fearful but alert and with weapons handy. One stayed close by the ship, his ears shriveled with terror. The other two, weapons very much to the fore, moved cautiously to examine the aircraft which could not possibly be here.

Jorgenson and Ganti, together, scrambled from the hollowed-out cave.

Ganti swung his strip of cloth. It had a strong cord attached to each end, and he held the cords so the cloth formed a pocket in which a stone lay. The whole whirled furiously. Ganti released one cord. The stone flew. It struck the Thrid on guard by the machine squarely in the middle of his forehead. Jorgenson's stone arrived the fraction of a second later, before the Thrid started to fall. They moved out, Jorgenson grinning in a most un-businessman-like manner. They heard the startled exclamation of the other two newcomers as they realized that they saw only a mockup of a landed flier, a thing which crumbled as they touched it.

Jorgenson and Ganti swung their slings together. The jailer-Thrid turned just in time to see what was happening to them. It was final.

And the copter took off again with Ganti and Jorgenson clothed and with an adequate supply of stones in improvised pockets in their garments.

It was perfectly simple from that time on. They walked into a village of the Thrid, on the mainland. It was the village where Ganti had lived; whose governor had spoken and said and observed that Ganti's wife wished to enter his household and that Ganti wished her to. Ganti marched truculently down its wider street. Astonished eyes turned upon him. Ganti said arrogantly:

"I am the new governor. Call others to see."

The villagers could not question the statement of an official. Not............