Because Mike's landing had been quite unlike the others. Joe and the
Chief landed near the edge of a jungle. Haney landed in a canebrake. But
Mike came floating down from the sky, swaying splendidly, into the
estate of a minor godling.

He was relatively unharmed by the shaking-up he'd had. The strength of
muscles depends on their cross-section, but their weight depends on
their volume. The strength of a man depends on the square of his size,
but his weight on the cube. So Mike had taken the deceleration and the
murderous vibration almost in his stride. He floated longer and landed
more gently than the rest.

Joe grinned painfully at the memory of Mike's tale. He'd come on board
the rescue destroyer in a towering, explosive rage. When his
ribbon-parachute let him down out of the sky, it deposited him gently on
ploughed fields not far from a small and primitive Hindu village. He'd
been seen to descend from the heavens. He was a midget--not as other
men--and he was dressed in a space suit with glittering metal harness.

The pagan villagers greeted him with rapture.

When the searching-party found Mike, they were just in time to prevent a
massacre--by Mike. Adoring natives had seized upon him, conveyed him in
high state to a red mud temple, seemingly tried to suffocate him with
evidences of their pride and joy at his arrival, and dark-skinned
maidens were trying hopefully to win his approval of their dancing. But
the rescue-party found him with a club in his hand and blood in his eye,
setting out furiously to change the tone of his reception.