A Gun for Dinosaur and Other Imaginative Tales

Gratitude

The sound of three men in "loud discussion of planting plans drew the man from Venus. This was at Mrs. Hort's neighborhood party on a fine May week-end. The forsythia's golden rain had ended; the magnolias had littered the lawns with their petals. The azaleas blazed in orange and purple and the dogwoods in pink and white.

Carl Vanderhoff, on his second bottle of beer and fourth hot-dog sandwich, said: "... I can't bother much with annuals this year. I shall have to do some surgery on that cracked Japanese maple ..." He was medium-sized and a little gray, and taught French Lit at Penn.

Sydney Devore, the oldest of the three, lit his pipe and said: "... I've got three new kinds of cactus, and as soon as I get them unpotted ..." He led a retired life as a consulting engineer.

Bill Converse, burly and ruddy, waved his fourth beer-bottle and said: "... if there's any screwy plant in the world, trust Sydney to plant it ..." He was a vice-president of the Keystone-Fidelity Insurance Company.

Several of those at the party had objected to Devore's unconventional planting, such as his setting out assorted species of cactus. Vanderhoff had supposed that cactus would not thrive in the dank of a Philadelphian suburb. These, however, did as a result of Devore's care in keeping weeds and grass away from them and potting them through the winter.

As Vanderhoff's own wife had said, Devore lived alone without a wife to keep him within the bounds of convention. But why couldn't he plant decent iris, phlox, and chrysanthemums like everybody else? The cactus made his lot stand out like a sore thumb ...

Before Converse could say more about this eccentricity, Mrs. Hort's brother, the spaceman, sauntered over. His uniform, unless one looked closely, was like that of a chief petty officer of the United States Navy. Vanderhoff understood that Grant Oakley was in fact some sort of chief mechanic on the Goddard.

Carl Vanderhoff braced himself to look interested in Venerian matters, though the flight of the Goddard had been so oversold and overpublicized. He had already seen, heard, and read so much about it, through the normal channels of information, that he was getting bored with it.

"You fellas like to plant things?" said Grant Oakley with a noncommittal smile; a compact, competent-looking little man with bad teeth.

"Wait till my roses, come out," boomed Converse. "I've got ..."

"I'm trying out this new bug-killer, R-47," said Vanderhoff. "It's said really to lick the Japanese beetles ..."

"Come over to my place after this breaks up," said Devore, "and I'll show you my South American ..."

As they all spoke at once, Oakley stared with a vague smile until they ran down. Then he said:

"How'd you like to plant something from Venus?"

"Oh, boy!" said Devore. "If I only could ..."

"Hm," said Vanderhoff. "Perhaps ..."

"People would think I was nuts," said Converse. "I suppose a plant from Venus would come crawling into your house at night like some kind of octopus?"

"No, nothing like that," said Oakley. "The plants of Venus are higher-developed than ours, but they don't run after you. What would it be worth to you to plant them?"

Devore frowned. "You mean you have some?"

Oakley smiled, dipped a hand into a coat pocket, and brought it out. He opened it just enough to show a small fistful of seeds ranging in size from that of an apple seed to that of a lima bean.

"Now," he said, "supposing these was seeds from Venus — I'm not saying they are, understand — what would they be worth to you?"

Vanderhoff said: "That would depend on what they grew up to."

Devore said: "I thought the Department of Agriculture had a regulation —"

"Who said anything about the Department of Agriculture?" said Oakley. "I haven't said these was from Venus. But supposing they was, what would you do about it?"

Devore said: "Well, I suppose I ought — but to hell with that. I want some of those. But I couldn't pay you anything like the transportation cost."

"The same for me," said Vanderhoff. "How about you, Bill?"

Converse rubbed his chin. "We-ell — if you two take some, I guess I will too. But none of us are rich, Mr. Oakley."

Oakley shrugged an eyebrow. "Neither am I. I brought these because I got to have some quick money. How would ten bucks a seed strike you?"

Devore whistled. "Suppose you tell us what they are first."

"You'll read all about it when the Department of Agriculture gets out a bulletin. But these little black fellas are the singing shrub. The medium-sized —"

"What does the singing shrub do?" asked Vanderhoff.

"It sings. The blue ones are the bulldog bush. You understand, these are just the names the fellas on the expedition called them. The scientists gave 'em Latin names, but you'll have to read those in the Department of Agriculture Bulletin."

"How about the big red ones?" said Converse.

"That's the tree-of-Eden. It has the best-tasting fruit in the world, and it seems to be harmless too. We ate lots of it. It seemed to make everybody happy and grateful. Some called it the stein plant on account of it grows a thing shaped like a pitcher or an old German beer stein."

"What does the bulldog bush do?" said Devore.

"It tries to bite, like one of those fly-catching plants on earth, only bigger. I wouldn't say to plant it if you got small babies. It might bite one hard enough to hurt."

"How about growing up and biting our heads off?" said Converse.

"No. It only grows so high, and the snappers about like so." Oakley described with his hands a biting organ about the size of a pair of human hands. "And it's not that strong. Now, how about it? Shall we have a little auction?"

There ensued a long low argument. More beer was drunk and hot dogs eaten. The sun went down; the neighborhood's bat came out and flew in circles over Mrs. Hort's party.

At last the three householders agreed each to pay Grant Oakley twenty-five dollars, for which Converse should get the three tree-of-Eden seeds, Vanderhoff all the bulldog-bush seeds, and Devore all the singing-shrub seeds. They had disputed whether each of them should try to raise specimens of all three species, but concluded that a single extra-terrestrial species apiece would be enough to handle. Vanderhoff would have preferred either the tree-of-Eden or the singing shrub, but his gardening friends put in their claims for these before he had a chance to and pressed them with such vigor that he gave way.

"Bring 'em in before frost," said Oakley, "if they haven't grown too big, that is. These came from the polar regions of Venus. Those are the only parts of the planet that aren't so hot a man has to wear a protective suit. It's about like the equator on earth. So the plants won't stand cold."

The seeds and money changed hands as Carl Vanderhoff's wife Penelope came up. Bill Converse saw her first and said: "Hello, gorgeous!" with the lupine expression he assumed in addressing his neighbors' wives.

Penny Vanderhoff simpered at him and said to her husband: "Carl, we really have to go. That sitter said she'd only stay till seven ..."

Vanderhoff slipped his seeds into his pocket and came.

"What were you talking with Mr. Oakley about?" said Penny Vanderhoff. "Venus?"

"He was telling us about the plants there," said Vanderhoff. He did not speak of his Venerian seeds because this would have started an argument. Penny would have scolded him for being eccentric, "just like that crazy Sydney Devore. I don't know what you see in that man ..."

In moments of fantasy, Carl Vanderhoff liked to imagine himself an ancient Semitic patriarch, sitting in a tent with a towel over his head, combing his beard and ordering his wives, children, and goats around. In practice he never got near this envied state, as his wife and children could and often did outshout him in familial arguments. Although he was willing to coerce his children by force, Penny always stood up for them. And in these days of easy divorce there was no question of using force on one's wife.

Penny was not so gorgeous as' Converse made her out with his leering compliments, being short and rather squarish of build, but still fairly pretty in a round-faced floral way.

Next morning at breakfast, Vanderhoff put on his firmest face and said: "I shall plant some new things today. There will be wire guards around them, and anyone who steps on one gets the derrière beat off him. Je suis tout à fait sérieux."

There was a chorus of affirmative grunts and vocables filtered through Corn Flakes. "And Dan," continued Vanderhoff, "you left your baseball equipment all over the floor again. Either you clean it up or there'll be no allowance ..."

After breakfast, Vanderhoff went out to plant his seeds. The neighborhood was waking into its usual Sunday-morning racket. The roar of power mowers was joined by the screech of the power saw in Mr. Hort's basement and the chatter of Mr. Zanziger's electric hedge trimmer. Mr. O'Ryan, hammering something in his garage, furnished the percussion effect.

Carl Vanderhoff walked about, wondering where to plant. If the bushes really bit, it would not do to plant them near the walks, as they might grab guests or men delivering things. He had had a qualm about accepting the seeds for fear they would endanger his children. But since his youngest, Peter, was four and active, he thought he was not running much risk, especially if he put up a guard heavy enough to keep plant and brat apart. Besides, if Peter did get nipped, it would teach him to obey orders in a way that Vanderhoff himself had never been able to do.

He decided to plant the seeds outside his picture window, in place of a mass of old jonquils that had practically ceased to flower and that he had been thinking of throwing away. He put on his rubbers, got out shovel and garden cart, and went to work.

When the jonquils were out of the way, he dug a hole for each of the six seeds, filled it with a mixture of mushroom soil and fertilizer, trod the earth hard, and finished off the surface with a slight bowl-shaped depression to catch the water. He watered the six places, stuck, a flat stake beside each site with a notation, and put cylindrical wire guards over the whole.

Three weeks after Vanderhoff had planted his seeds, five little yellow shoots appeared. Vanderhoff did not know that the sixth had just germinated when a beetle grub, inching its sluggish way through the soft earth, had come upon it and devoured it.

Vanderhoff diligently watered his plants. The clouds of Venus had turned out to be ordinary clouds of water-droplets, not of formaldehyde as had been feared, and the surface of the planet was quite as rainy as fictional speculators had portrayed it.

At the next session at Sydney Devore's house, Vanderhoff asked Devore and Converse how their Venerian plants were coming. Devore, who not only lived alone but further fractured convention by never speaking about his past or personal affairs, had a habit of throwing small penny-ante poker parties for the men of the neighborhood.

Vanderhoff was the most regular guest. As a thinking man he found Devore's company congenial. Converse was the next most regular, not because he was a thinking man but to get away from his wife. Not much poker was played, as they found more pleasure in drinking and talking.

Converse answered: "Only one of my three seeds sprouted, but the thing's a foot high already. Take a look next time you go by my place, Professor." Converse always called Vanderhoff "Professor" with a kind of leer.

"How about yours, Syd?" said Vanderhoff.

"They all came up, but I can't tell what they'll look like. I planted them down both sides of my front walk."

"You mean those little pink things we passed on the way in?"

"Yes. I moved the cactus to make room for them."

The azaleas went. The iris came and went. The peonies bloomed briefly and the tiger-lilies for a longer time. Vanderhoff's bulldog bushes grew with extra-terrestrial speed until one Saturday Penny said:

"Carl, what on earth are those things? They look like a Venus's-flytrap, but they're such a funny color and so big."

"Those are the plants I bought from Oakley."

"Who? Oh, you mean Mrs. Hort's brother who went to Venus. Are those Venus plants, then?"

"So he said. Tell the children not to poke their fingers at them or they'll get bitten."

"Why, Carl! I won't have such dangerous plants on the place."

"We're going to have these. Nobody'll get hurt if he does as he's told. I'm going to put heavier guards around them, and if they get out of hand I'll cut them down."

"What's that?" said Penny, turning her head. There was a sound like song birds. "It's funny, but it always sounds as if a lot of birds were singing at Devore's place, even when you can't see any."

"That must be his Venerian plants," said Vanderhoff.

"Well, I should think you could at least have taken the singing plants and given him the biting ones. It would have been more appropriate, if you must have these weird things. Why don't you do like other people, instead of always trying to be smart and different? Last year when all the crowd bought Fords, you had to go buy a Chevrolet —"

"If you start that again, I'll grow a beard and wear a beret. Then you'll have something to complain of."

Penny went off in a huff, leaving Vanderhoff to work on his plants. He had long tried, with some success, to impress his family with the belief that, though a mild man in most respects, he was inflexible about his plants and terrible in his wrath if one was hurt.

When he had finished gardening, Vanderhoff walked down the street to Devore's house, from which the birdsongs issued. He found Devore squatting before one of the little pink bushes that had grown from his Venerian seeds.

At the apex of each shrub grew a brown convoluted structure something like a flower; beneath it the stem swelled out into a bladder-like bag. As he looked more closely, Vanderhoff saw that these structures were making the birdsongs. The bladders swelled and shrank while the "flowers" on top quivered and contracted.

"What are you doing, Syd?" said Vanderhoff. "Teaching these to say 'good-morning.'"

"They can be taught?"

"Within limits. They're imitative, which is why they've been copying the local birds."

"How do you train them?"

Devore held up a can of X-53-D, the latest super-fertilizer. "They love this, and I give 'em a spoonful when they say something right. An article in the Botanical Gazette says they use these songs the way our flowers use color and perfumes, to attract Venerian flying things for pollenization." Devore addressed the plant. "Good-morning, Mr. Devore!"

"G'morning, Mis' Dwore!"

"Good plant!" said Devore. He sprinkled a spoonful of X-53-D around the base of the bush and wetted it down with his watering-can. "Reward of merit."

"I suppose you'd call that speaking with a Venerian accent," said Vanderhoff. "I must make a phonetic transcription of it some time. How do they know you from anybody else?"

Devore shrugged. "Sound or smell, I suppose. They don't seem to have any eyes. Are your bushes biting yet?"

"They try to. Each pair of jaws has a sort of antenna sticking up above it, like a radar antenna. That seems to be how they sight on their prey."

"Can they draw blood?"

"I don't know. One got my finger the other day; quite a pinch, though it didn't break the skin."

"What do you feed them?" said Devore.

"They seem to like tuna fish best. Steak and ham they find indigestible."

"Hi, Professor!" came the loud voice of Bill Converse. "Hello, Syd. How's your crab grass this morning?"

"It's beginning to show up as usual," said Devore. "How's your bouncing betty?" For Converse, despite his noise about his expert gardening, had never extirpated all the soapwort or bouncing betty with which his flower beds had been overrun when he bought his house.

"You needn't kid me," said Converse. "After all, bouncing betty does have a flower."

"Yeah," said Devore. "That miserable weed. You're just lazy." He lowered his voice. "How's the tree-of-Eden doing?"

Converse rolled his eyes. "It's as tall as I am. C'mon over and look at it."

Presently they did. The tree-of-Eden, over six feet high, was a plant of curious shape. A stubby trunk, about three feet tall and four or five inches thick, ended abruptly in an organ that hung down in front of the trunk and, spraying up and out behind it, a fan of slender stems of finger-thickness, each bearing a double row of small orange leaves. Vanderhoff had a fleeting impression of a sort of vegetable peacock with its tail spread.

The organ front had a pitcher shape, rather like that of an earthly pitcher plant only larger, complete with lid. This vessel was now as big as a bucket. The lid was grown fast to the top of the vessel so it could not be raised.

"The funniest thing," said Converse in the same low voice, "is not only how fast it grows, but that it has such hard wood. Normally you expect anything that grows that fast to be soft and squashy."

He bent down one of the stems for the others to feel. It did seem to be made of strong hard wood. Vanderhoff said:

"Maybe these little berries are going to be that wonderful fruit Oakley told us about."

"Uh-huh," said Converse. "At this rate they ought to be ready to eat by September."

Devore said: "Let me suggest that you fence the tree off, or the kids will have eaten all the fruits before we old dodderers get a chance at them."

"Good idea, pal," said Converse. "Tell you what! When they're ripe I'll throw a neighborhood party, and we'll all eat them."

William Converse did fence off his tree, which continued to grow like Jack's beanstalk. The neighborhood's beds of phlox came out in crimson and white. Vanderhoff's bulldog bushes grew larger and more voracious. Penny Vanderhoff got a gashed finger feeding one and had a row with her husband about getting rid of them.

Curiously, neither the bulldog bushes nor the tree-of-Eden aroused comment. Vanderhoff's picture window was at right angles to the street, and the bushes, planted beneath this window, could not be seen from the street. Vanderhoff had threatened his children with dire penalties if they told outsiders about his marvelous plants, and apparently they had obeyed him.

The tree-of-Eden was in plain sight. But, while its strange shape caused many to ask Converse about it, they accepted his casual word that "Oh, that's just a South African stein plant."

Sydney Devore, however, could not be overlooked. First his singing shrubs twittered in imitation of the birds they heard. One, in fact, took to hooting like a screech owl, except that the plant hooted all day instead of at night like a proper owl.

Then Devore taught them to greet him with "Good-morning, Mr. Devore" as he came down his walk. When his neighbors asked him what was happening, he made jocular or enigmatic remarks, saying that he had wired the plants for sound. The plants' behavior, however, was so egregious that the explanations were not believed. As the plants grew, their tonal range and intelligibility increased.

Devore then taught them a more elaborate repertory. First he hopped up the morning greeting from a mere "Good-morning, Mr. Devore!" to such phrases as "O King, live forever!" and "All hail, your imperial highness!"

When their greetings were as magniloquent as the most egotistical paranoid could desire, he started teaching them to sing Clementine. He had trouble getting them to sing in unison, but persevered. Evening after evening the neighborhood gathered to see Devore striding up and down his walk, tapping a little Indian drum and exhorting his plants.

"Just wait," said Penny Vanderhoff to her husband. "Any day now a swarm of F.B.I, men and newspaper reporters will come down on us. They'll take you three to jail, and the reporters will write stories that'll cost you your job."

But that was the summer that so much else happened — the near-war between India and China over Nepal, the death of President Tringstad in an airplane crash, and the return of the Bergerac from Mars — that the newspapers had their attention elsewhere. At any rate, the mums and gladioli were out and nothing had yet happened when Bill Converse, after tasting a fruit of his tree-of-Eden, pronounced it ripe and invited the neighborhood to a Saturday evening party to eat the whole crop.

This was the week-end after Labor Day. On this week-end the International Council of Language Teachers' Associations, operating under the auspices of UNESCO, met in New York City. Carl Vanderhoff went to New York as a delegate, intending to return Sunday evening.

It also happened that Bill Converse read in Popular Gardening an article about Venerian plants in general and the tree-of-Eden in particular. Enough of these plants had now been grown by the Northern Regional Research Laboratory of the Department of Agriculture at Peoria, Illinois, to allow some conclusions about them. Converse, who glanced more and more through his own windows towards the Vanderhoffs' house, said nothing about this, not even to his gardening friends Devore and Vanderhoff.

The day of the Converse party, Penelope Vanderhoff telephoned Mrs. Converse, saying: "Mary? I'm so sorry, but I can't come to your party this afternoon."

"Oh," said Mary Converse, "isn't that too bad?"

"My sitter has stood me up, and Carl's away, so I have to stay home," Penny explained. '

"Aren't they old enough to be left?"

"Well, Dan is eight and Eleanor six, but if you leave them alone they fight, scream, chase each other, break windows, upset furniture, and make a shambles of the place. I can't imagine why — I've always let them do as they pleased, like it says in the book — but that's how it is. So I'll have to pass it up ..."

The conversation then became interminably feminine. When Mary Converse told her husband, he said: "Oh. Too bad. I'll take her some of the fruit."

"It'll be all right if that's all you do over there," said Mary Converse.

"Damn it!" shouted Converse. "I don't see why I put up with your groundless suspicions ..."

The refreshments at the Converse party consisted of martinis and tree-of-Eden fruits. The guests picked the fruits directly from the tree, from which Converse had removed the fence. The fruits looked like plums, but proved to be without pits. They gave out a delicious, enticing smell that had the guests drooling by the time they received their portions. The taste caused gasps, cries, closed eyes, and other stigmata of ecstasy.

The tree now towered twelve feet tall, while the pitcher-like organ in front was as large as a laundry hamper. The lid of the organ had come loose from the rest, except for a hingelike connection in the back. The edges of the lid curled up a little, so one could look down into the empty body of the pitcher.

The spray of slender stems bore hundreds of fruits. Any lesser number would have been quickly consumed. The guests hardly bothered with their cocktails in their rush to gorge themselves on Venerian fruits. When the lower branches of the fan had been stripped, Bill Converse, his face red from martinis, lugged a step-ladder from his garage and climbed it to hand down more fruit.

Converse did not eat any himself. When a lull in the demand allowed him, he took a small paper bag from his pocket, unfolded it, and dropped a dozen of the fruits into it. Then he quietly came down from the ladder and walked away from the party towards the Vanderhoff house.

There he rang the doorbell. Penelope came. Converse said: "Here's some fruit, Penny."

"Oh, thank you," she said. "Won't you come in?"

"Sure. Maybe you'd like to put those on a plate and eat 'em now."

Penelope got out a plate, dumped the fruits out on it, and ate one. "My, these are delicious. I never tasted anything like them. Won't you have one?"

"Thanks," said Converse, "but I've had all I can hold."

Back at the Converse party, guests stuffed with fruit were sitting and standing about lethargically, wiping the juice of the fruits off their hands and sipping martinis. The only fruits yet uneaten were a few on the highest parts of the tree, which could not be reached by the stepladder.

Two men walked slowly up the walk, peering about. One was lean and hatchet-faced; the other short and stout with thick-lensed glasses. While all the male guests were in sport shirts, the newcomers wore coats. The shorter one said:

"There's the house, and that's one of the plants."

The two drifted quietly up to the crowd around the tree-of-

Eden. The taller asked Mr. Zanziger: "Excuse me, but which is Mr. Converse?"

Zanziger answered: "Bill isn't here just now. He went over to the Vanderhoff house."

"Are Mr. Vanderhoff or Mr. Devore here?"

"Mr. Vanderhoff isn't, but I think Mr. Devore — yeah, that's him." Zanziger pointed to the square-jawed gray-haired figure with the pipe. Mary Converse said:

"I'm Mrs. Converse. What can I do for you?"

The hatchet-faced man said: "I have here a warrant for your husband's arrest. Also for Mr. Vanderhoff and Mr. Devore. Here are my credentials ..."

The man produced the badge of a United States deputy marshal, and added: "My name is Jacobson, and this is H. Breckenridge Bing of the Department of Agriculture. Where —"

Devore stepped up, saying: "Did somebody say I was wanted?"

"I'm sorry to say you are," said Jacobson, producing more papers from his inside coat pocket. "Here's the warrant for your arrest on the charge of buying articles whose importation is forbidden by the Plant Import Control Act of 1963, as amended 1989. Now if —"

"Why, I don't know what you're talking about," said Devore with an exaggerated expression of innocent astonishment.

"Ahem," said the short stout man. "He means that Amphorius tentatius" (Bing indicated the tree-of-Eden) "as well as several specimens of Faucifrons mordax and Cantodumus mimicus. Our investigations show —"

Devore broke in. "Are you the H. Breckenridge Bing who wrote in the Botanical Gazette on the reclassification of the Pteridophyta in the light of recent paleobotanical evidence?"

"Why — uh — yes."

Devore shook the man's hand. "That was a swell piece, but I never thought I'd be arrested by the author."

"Well — er — I assure you I would have preferred not to be a party to your arrest, but they sent me along to identify the contraband plants."

Jacobson said: "If you'll show me where Mr. Converse and Mr. Vanderhoff are, I'll run you down to the Federal Building in my car, and you'll be out on bail in a few minutes."

"What will they do to Mr. Converse and the others?" asked Mary Converse.

"Probably just a fine," said Jacobson.

"Oh," said Mary Converse in a disappointed tone.

The deputy marshal continued: "It partly depends on whether they're co-operative witnesses in the prosecution of Grant Oakley, who sold them the seeds. He's the one we'll really throw the book at. He's under arrest now."

"My brother in jail!" cried Mrs. Hort, but nobody heeded her.

Devore asked: "I suppose the Department of Agriculture will send a truck around to gather up our Venerian plants?"

Bing's mild eyes blinked behind their spectacles. "That's right. It's bad enough to bring in an exotic plant from some place on earth when its properties aren't fully known, and a hundred times more risky to bring in one from another planet. You never know what might happen. It — uh — might spread all over, like the prickly-pear cactus in Australia. Or it might have a disease that would get loose and wipe out the wheat crop."

"Oh," said Devore. "I hadn't thought of that."

"Come on, Breck," said Jacobson. "Show me the Vanderhoff house."

A guest named Dietz, who had had several martinis too many, muttered: "Don't worry, you beautiful plant, we won't let these guys take you away from us."

H. Breckenridge Bing did not seem to hear. He continued: "Now this Amphorius, for instance, has a strange property. I suppose you know that the biochemistry of the higher Venerian organisms turned out to be almost the same as that of terrestrial vertebrates?"

Devore nodded vigorously; the other hearers in more tentative fashion.

"Well, you remember that in the 1970's, Petchnikov isolated gratisone, the gratitude hormone, which is secreted by the pineal gland. It occurs in such minute amounts that it had been overlooked, but it controls animal behavior somewhat as prolactin stimulates mother-love. It's one of the things that makes community and family life possible. Now, the fruit of Amphorius contains significant amounts of gratisone, or a substance almost identical with it. The result is that anybody who eats an Amphorius fruit is soon seized by an irresistible desire to please the thing or person from whom the fruit was received. If you eat it off the tree, you want to please the tree."

"Hey, Breck!" said Jacobson, tugging at Bing's sleeve. But H. Breckenridge Bing was no man to relinquish an audience for anything less than a convulsion of nature. He continued:

"Now, Amphorius is a carnivorous plant, like Faucifrons, but instead of snatching its prey, it persuades the prey to feed itself to the plant. Small vertebrates who eat the fruit climb into the amphora" (Bing indicated the stein-like structure) "and are digested. The highest form of Venerian life, the yellow gibbon-like Sauropithecus xanthoderma, is too intelligent to thrust itself into the amphora. Instead, the tribe seizes the weakest member as a sacrifice to the plant and thrusts him into the vessel.

"If on the other hand you receive the fruit from another person, you —"

"My gosh!" cried Mary Converse. "That no-good husband of mine took a bag of the things over to Penny Vanderhoff! Three guesses what he's up to!"

Dietz, the drunken guest, said: "And that's what we ought to do to Mr. Bing and Mr. Jacobson here. Nothing's too good for our tree, not even a federal dick."

Bing gave a forced smile. "I don't think human beings would go to the extremes of the Venerian lizard-monkey —"

"Oh, wouldn't we?" said another guest. "Tear up our plant and take it away, forsooth!"

"Now look here —"said Jacobson.

"Into the jug with them!" yelled a guest, and the cry was taken up. The circle began to close in on the federal men, who backed towards the street. Deputy Marshal Jacobson drew a pistol from under his armpit, saying: "You're all under ar —"

Standing on his right was young John S. Moseley, expected to be Perm's star halfback during the coming football season. Moseley let fly a kick that sent the pistol thirty feet into the air, to fall among Converse's pachysandra. The guests closed in, clutching. There was a crash of glass from the Vanderhoff house, but nobody heeded that.

Carl Vanderhoff returned home Saturday evening instead of Sunday as he had planned. He delivered his paper Saturday morning; he saw everybody he really wanted to see by the end of Saturday's lunch; he discovered that the meetings and papers scheduled for Sunday were of little interest; finally, Professor Junius White of the University of Virginia offered him a lift home if he would leave Saturday afternoon. The thought of saving both train fare and a night's hotel bill, and of getting home in time for the tail-end of the Converse party, decided Vanderhoff to leave early.

He walked the half-block from where he was dropped by White, who had declined an invitation to stop. He marched up to his front door, went in, and dropped the brief case containing his notes, pajamas, and other equipment for the conference. He almost tripped over young Daniel's lightweight baseball bat, clucked with annoyance, leaned the bat against the corner, and made a mental note to fine Daniel.

Then he filled his lungs to shout: "Hello, family!" But he closed his mouth and let his breath out as muffled sounds of human activity came from the living room.

Frowning, Vanderhoff took three steps to the threshold of the living room. On the sofa his wife sat in hot embrace with his neighbor Converse.

Converse looked up at the sound of Vanderhoff s entrance. Vanderhoff stared blankly. Then the habits of a lifetime started to curl his lips into a cordial smile of greeting, while at the same time a rising fury distorted this automatic smile into something else — an expression at which Converse looked with visible horror.

Vanderhoff took a step forward. Converse, though he outweighed the professor of French Literature by twenty pounds, tore himself loose from Penelope, looked furtively around, and dove through the picture window. Crash!

There was a scrambling in the shrubbery outside. At the same instant, from the other direction came the cries and footfalls of a crowd pursuing something along the street.

Vanderhoff did not notice. His attention was drawn by a loud cry from beyond the window, followed by the yell: "Ow! Help! It's got me!"

Vanderhoff hurried to the window. Converse had fallen among the bulldog bushes, which had instantly seized him. Two of the jaws had grips on each of his legs, or at least on the trousers that clothed them, while a fifth held a fold of his sport-shirt.

Converse, on hands and knees, had crawled as far out of the clump as he could and was trying to get farther, while the other jaws of the bushes lunged and snapped at him like the heads of snakes. He had knocked over a couple of the wire guards that Vanderhoff had set up in front of the bushes. His right hand had blood on it, apparently from a cut sustained when he broke the window. Fragments of glass, reflecting the golden sunset, gleamed on the ground among the bushes.

Vanderhoff stood with pursed lips, contemplating various kinds of assault. He did not want to kill Converse, just half kill him, so he dismissed the notion of using a carving knife. If he merely used his fists, Converse would grab him and probably give him a worse beating than he inflicted. Then he remembered Dan's bat. He strode into the hall, picked up the bat, went out the back door, and came around to where Converse sprawled in the grip of the bushes.

"Hey!" cried Converse. "Don't do that, Carl! Let's be civilized about this! I didn't mean any harm! I was just —"

The sound of a blunt instrument on a human skull ended his explanation. For most of a minute Vanderhoff stood spraddle-legged, swinging the bat with both hands like Roland wielding Durandal against the paynim. Converse yelped and moaned, but could not crawl back among the bushes lest worse befall him. After the bat had broken his nose he covered his face and head as best he could with his arms and let the blows land where they might

As Vanderhoff stepped back to catch his breath, sounds from the street attracted his attention. He stepped around the corner of his house and saw a strange procession winding towards the Converse home.

First came Sydney Devore beating his Indian drum. Then came four neighbors, each holding one limb of a short fat man who struggled.

Then came the other neighbors, male and female, doing a kind of snake dance. As the line passed Devore's place, his singing-shrubs burst into:

Vanderhoff found these sights and sounds so strange that, forgoing further revenge for the nonce, he followed the procession with the bat on his shoulder.

The marchers danced up to the Converse house. One guest raised the lid of the pitcher of the tree-of-Eden, while the four who held the little man prepared to thrust him in. Vanderhoff caught up with the head of the procession and asked Devore:

"Hey, Sydney, what's going on? Are you all crazy?"

"No-o, we're just going to reward the tree for its lovely fruit."

"You mean they're going to sacrifice this man — who is he, anyway?"

Devore explained about H. Breckenridge Bing. "The other one got away. He could run faster."

"But what'll happen to this one?"

Devore shrugged. "He'll be digested, I suppose. Serves him right. It should stimulate the tree no end."

"You're insane," said Vanderhoff, and pushed his way through the crowd to the tree.

The four stalwarts had finally inserted Bing into the amphora, despite his struggles and the tightness of the fit. Muffled cries came from inside. Bing's fingers could be seen curled over the edge of the pitcher as he tried to force his way out, but the plant now held down the lid by its own mechanisms. The amphora remained closed, though it bulged this way and that as Bing kicked and butted.

"Get away!" said Vanderhoff, shoving the Converses' guests aside and grasping the edge of the lid.

"Hey, you can't do that!" said Dietz, seizing Vanderhoff's arm. "Leave our plant alone or we'll feed you to it too!"

Vanderhoff instantly hit Dietz over the head with his bat. As Dietz staggered back holding his head, several other guests rushed at Vanderhoff. The latter waded in with the bat, cracking arms, heads, and knuckles with such verve that in an instant the attackers fell back, leaving the football-playing Moseley unconscious on the lawn.

Vanderhoff then returned to the tree-of-Eden, keeping an eye cocked for another rush. When heaving on the lid had no effect, he struck the amphora with his bat. This induced a yell of anguish from inside, but did not loosen the plant's hold.

Vanderhoff got out his pocketknife and attacked the hinge of the stein lid. He drew it across the grain again and again in the same cut. After he had sawed half an inch into the structure he found he had weakened the hinge enough so that he could raise the lid.

Bing climbed out. His glasses were gone and his scanty hair was awry. His skin was covered with red spots and his clothes were stained by the tree's digestive juices. He peered nearsightedly at Vanderhoff and said: "Did you get me out? Thanks. As for the rest of you ..."

Mary Converse shook her head and said: "I don't know what could have got into us, Mr. Bing. I'd never do such a dreadful thing."

"Gratisone got into you, that's what," said Bing. "Now you see why we can't let just anybody plant extra-terrestrial plants."

The others, too, seemed to be coming out of their madness. Mr. Hort said: "You must let us pay to have your suit cleaned."

Dietz said: "We'd better buy him a new suit. The plant's digestive juices will eat that one full of holes."

"And his glasses —"said somebody else.

It was finally agreed that Mr. O'Ryan should act as banker for the neighborhood and assess them whatever was needed to repay the damages sustained by Bing. Just as this agreement was reached, one of the township's patrol cars drew up. Out got Deputy Marshal Jacobson and the two local policemen, the latter with pistols drawn. Jacobson growled:

"You're all under arrest for forcibly intimidating a United States officer!"

"They couldn't help it, Jake," said Bing. "It was the fruit. I'm not going to press any complaints."

"Why not?" said Jacobson.

"Well, Mr. Devore said he liked my article. I didn't know anybody had even read it."

Carl Vanderhoff returned home late that evening, after he and Devore had departed in Jacobson's official car and Converse, released from the bush, in an ambulance. He told his wife:

"They let me sign my own bond. It seems I'm something of a hero for rescuing that little botanist, so I shall be let off easily. And BUI never said a word about me, but let them think it was the bushes that beat him into a pulp. He'd better! And now what have you to say?"

"I — I don't know how to explain — I must have gone out of my head — I never loved anybody but you —"

"That's all right," said Vanderhoff, and told her about gratisone. "Now that's over, send those kids in here. Dan is going to be penalized for leaving his bat on the floor, and the whole outfit will be run on orderly lines from now on. No back-talk from anybody, either."

"Yes, dear," said Penelope.

"And, if I feel like growing a beard tomorrow, I'll grow one!"

Vanderhoff's picture of himself as an ancient Semitic patriarch, sitting in his tent and ordering his wives, children, and goats around, might not last. The family would probably wear him back down to his normal mild self. But he meant to enjoy his authority while he possessed it.

A Thing of Custom

Rajendra Jaipal, liaison officer of the Terran Delegation to the Associated Planets, said fluently but with a strong Hindustani accent: "Parson to parson, please ... I wish to speak to Milan Reid, at 726-0711, Parthia, Pennsylvania ... That is right."

While he waited, Jaipal looked at the telephone as if it were a noxious vine that had invaded his garden. An unreconstructed antimechanist, he regarded most features of the Western world with a dour, gloomy, and suspicious air.

"Here's your party," said the telephone.

Jaipal said: "Hello, Milan? This is R. J. How are you? ... Oh, no warse than usual. Millions of calls to make and letters to write and hands to shake. Ugh! Now, listen. The railroad has given us two special sleepers and a baggage car through from New Haven to Philadelphia. We shall put the delegates aboard Priday evening, and a train will pick these cars up and drop them off at Thirtieth Street at seven-thirty Saturday morning. Have you got that? Seven-thirty a.m., daylight saving. Write it down, please. You will have your people there to pick them up. The baggage car will contain the Forellians, as they are too large for a sleeper. You will have a truck at the station for them. How are things doing at your end?"

A plaintive voice said: "Mrs. Kress got sick, so as vice-chairman of the Hospitality Committee I have to — to do all the work, rush around and check up and pump hands. I wish I'd known what I was getting into."

"If you think you have something to complain about, you should have my job. Have you got that letter with the list of delegates?"

"Yes ... Um ... Right here."

"Well, cross off the Moorians and the Koslovians, but add one more Oshidan."

"What's his name?"

"Zla-bzam Ksan-rdup."

"How do you spell it?" Jaipal spelled. "Got it?"

"Uh-huh. You — you'll stay with us, of course?"

"Sorree, but I can't come."

"Oh, dear! Louise and I were counting on it."

The voice was pained. Jaipal had met the Reids a year before when a similar week-end visit had been arranged with families of Ardmore. Jaipal and Reid were drawn together at once by a common dislike of the rest of the world.

"So was I," said Jaipal, "but a ship from Sirius is due Saturday. Now, there is one couple I want you to assign to yourself."

"Who?"

"The Osmanians."

There was a rustle of paper as Reid consulted his list. "Mr. and Mrs. Sterga?"

"Yes, or Sterga and Thvi. No children."

"What are they like?"

"Something like octopi, or perhaps centipedes."

"Hm. They don't sound pretty. Do they talk?"

"Better than we do. They have a — what do you call it? — a knickknack for languages."

"Why do you want me to take them?"

"Because," explained Jaipal, "their planet has natural transuranic elements in quantity, and we are negotiating a mining lease. It's veree delicate, and it wouldn't do for the Stergas to pfall into the wrong hands. Like — who was that uncouth buffoon I met at the Kresses'?" »

"Charlie Ziegler?"

"That's the one." Jaipal snorted at the memory of Ziegler's tying a napkin around his head and putting on a burlesque swami act. As Jaipal had no sense of humor, the other guests' roars at Ziegler's antics rubbed salt in the wound. He continued:

"Those people would not do for hosts at all. I know you are tactful, not one of these stupid ethnocentrics who would act horrified or superior. Now, have you got the diet lists?"

Mumble, mumble. "Yes, here's the list of those who can eat any human food, and those who can eat some human food, and those who can't eat any."

"The special pfood for the last group will be sent along on the train. Be sure it's delivered to the right houses."

"I'll have a couple of trucks at the station. You be sure each crate is clearly marked. But say, how — how about these Osmanians? I mean, what are they like aside from their looks?"

"Oh, quite jolly and convivial. High-spirited. They eat anything. You won't have any trouble." Jaipal could have told more about the Osmanians but forebore for fear of scaring Reid off. "Now, be sure not to send the Chavantians to anybody with a phobia about snakes. Remember that the Stein-ians eat in seclusion and consider any mention of food obscene. Be sure the Forellians go where there's an empty barn or garage to sleep in ..."

"Louise!" called Milan Reid. "That was R. J. Can you help me with the lists now?"

Reid was a slight man who combined a weakness for aggressively stylish clothes with a shy, preoccupied, nervous, hurried air. He was an engineer for the Hunter Bioresonator Corporation. He was a natural choice to manage the visiting extra-terrestrials, being one who found foreigners easier to deal with than his own countrymen.

His wife entered, a slender woman of much his own type. They got to work on the list of delegates to the Associated Planets who were going to visit Parthia, and the lists of local families who would act as hosts.

This was the third year of giving A. P. personnel an informal week-end in Terran homes. These three visits had all been to American homes because the A. P headquarters was in New Haven.

The success of the project, however, had made other nations demand that they, too, be allowed to show what nice people they were. Hence Athens, Greece, was the tentative choice for next year.

Milan Reid said: "... the Robertsonians have no sense of time, so we'd better give them to the Hobarts. They haven't any either."

"Then none of them will arrive for anything," said Louise Reid.

"So what? How about the Mendezians? Jaipal's note says they can't bear to be touched."

"Rajendra can't either, though he tries to be polite about it. Some Hindu tabu."

"Uh-huh. Let's see, aren't the Goldthorpes fanatics on sanitation?"

"Just the people! They wouldn't want to touch the Mendezians either. Their children have to wash their hands every time they handle money, and Beatrice Goldthorpe puts on rubber gloves to read a book from the public library for fear of germs."

"How about the Oshidans?" he asked.

"What are they like, darling?"

"R. J. says they're the most formal race in the Galaxy, with the most elaborate etiquette. As he puts it here, 'they are what you call puffed shirts, only they don't wear shirts.' "

"I didn't know Rajendra could make that much of a joke," said Louise Reid. "How about Dr. McClintock? He's another puffed shirt."

"Darling, you're wonderful. The Reverend John R. McClintock shall have them."

"How about the Zieglers? Connie Ziegler called to remind us they'd applied well in advance."

Reid scowled. "I'm going to juggle this list to put the Zieglers too far down to get any e.t.'s."

"Please don't do that, sweetheart. I know you don't like them, but living next door we have to get along."

"But R. J. said he didn't want the Zieglers as hosts!"

"Oh, dear! If they ever find out we cheated them out of their guests ..."

"Can't be helped. R. J.'s right, too. They're — they're typical ethnocentrics. I've squirmed in embarrassment while Charlie told bad jokes about wops and kikes and niggers, feeling I ought to stop him but not knowing how. Can't you just see Charlie calling some sensitive extra-terrestial a bug in that loud Chicago bray of his?"

"But they did go out of their way to get on the list ..."

"It's not that they like e.t.'s; they just can't bear to be left out."

"Oh, well, if we must ... Who's next?" she asked.

"That's all, unless R. J. calls up again. Now, what shall we do with Sterga and Thvi?"

"I suppose we can put them in George's room. What do they enjoy?"

"It says here they like parties, sight-seeing, and swimming."

"We can take them to the pool."

"Sure. And since they're arriving early, we could drive 'em home for breakfast and then out to Gettysburg for a picnic."

During the next few days, Parthia was convulsed by preparations for the exotic visitors. Merchants filled their windows with interplanetary exhibits: art work from Robertsonia, a stuffed fhe:gb from Schlemmeria, a photomontage of scenes on Flahertia.

At the Lower Siddim High School, performers at the forthcoming celebration rehearsed on the stage while volunteers readied the basement for the strawberry festival. Mrs. Carmichael, chairman of the Steering Committee, swept about supervising:

"... Where's that wretched man who was going to fix the public-address system? ... No, the color guard mustn't carry rifles. We're trying to show these creatures how peaceful we are ..."

The Quaker rolled into Thirtieth Street. The hosts from Parthia clustered about the three rearmost cars at the north end of the platform. While the trainmen uncoupled these cars, the doors opened and out came a couple of earthmen. After them came the extra-terrestrials.

Milan Reid strode forward to greet the taller earthman. "I'm Reid."

"How d'you do? I'm Grove-Sparrow and this is Ming. We're from the Secretariat. Are your people ready?"

"Here they are."

"Hm." Grove-Sparrow looked at the milling mass of hosts, mostly suburban housewives.

At that instant, the Chavantians slithered off the train. Mrs. Ross gave a thin scream and fainted. Mr. Nagle caught her in time to keep her from cracking her skull on the concrete.

"Pay no attention," said Reid, wishing that Mrs. Ross had fallen on the tracks and been run over. "Which of our guests is which?"

"Those are the Oshidans, the ones with faces like camels."

"Dr. McClintock!" called Reid. "Here's your party."

"You take it, Ming," said Grove-Sparrow.

Ming began a long-winded formal introduction, during which the Oshidans and the Reverend McClintock kept up a series of low bows as if they were worked by strings.

Grove-Sparrow indicated three large things getting off the baggage car. They were something like walruses and something like caterpillars, but two were as big as small elephants. The third was smaller. "The Forellians."

"Mrs. Meyer!" shouted Reid. "Is the truck ready?"

"The Robertsonians." Grove-Sparrow referred to four badger-like creatures with respirators on their long noses.

Reid raised his voice: "Hobart! No, their hosts aren't here yet."

"Let them sit on their kit; they won't mind," said Grove-Sparrow. "Here come the Osmanians."

"They — uh — they're mine," said Reid, his voice rising to a squeak of dismay. A group of gawkers had collected farther south on the platform to stare at the extra-terrestrials. None came close.

The Osmanians (so called because their planet was discovered by a Dr. Mahmud Osman) were built something on the lines of sawhorses. Instead of four legs, they had twelve rubbery tentacles, six in a row on each side, on which they scuttled briskly along. They were much alike fore and aft, but one could tell their front end by the two large froglike eyes on top and the mouth-opening between the foremost pair of tentacles.

"You are our host?" said the leading Osmanian in a blabbery voice. "Ah, such a pleasure, good dear Mr. Reid!"

The Osmanian flung itself upon Reid, rearing up on its six after tentacles to enfold him in its six forward ones. It pressed a damp kiss on his cheek. Before he could free himself from this gruesome embrace, the second Osmanian swarmed up on him and kissed his other cheek. As the creatures weighed over two hundred pounds apiece, Reid staggered and sank to the concrete, enveloped in tentacles.

The Osmanians released their host. Grove-Sparrow helped Reid to his feet, saying in a low voice:

"Don't look so bloody horrified, old boy. They're only trying to be friendly."

"I forget," blubbered the larger Osmanian. "Your method of greeting here is to shake the anterior limb, is it not?" It extended a tentacle.

Reid gingerly put out a hand. The Osmanian caught the hand with three tentacles and pumped Reid's arm so vigorously that he was nearly jerked off his feet.

"Let's dance!" cried the Osmanian, slithering around in a circle and swinging Reid opposite him. "Guk-guk-guk!" This last was a horrid coughing, cackling sound that served the Osmanians for laughter.

"No, no, Sterga!" said Grove-Sparrow. "Let him go! He has to sort out the delegations."

"Oh, all right," said Sterga. "Maybe somebody would like to wrestle. You, madam?" The Osmanian addressed Mrs. Meyer, who was fat and of mature years.

"No, please," said Mrs. Meyer, paling and dodging behind Grove-Sparrow. "I — I have to see to the Forellians."

"Quiet down, you two," said Grove-Sparrow. "You'll get exercise later."

"I hope so," said Sterga. "Perhaps Mr. Reid will wrestle with us at his home, guk-guk. It is the main sport of Nöhp."

Nöhp was the name of Osmania in Sterga's language. The Osmanian spoke to his mate in this tongue while Reid frantically paired off guests and hosts. The rest of the Quaker rumbled off.

When each set of guests had been sent off with its host, and the Forellians had crawled up on to their truck-trailer, the four little Robertsonians were left sitting on the platform. There was still no sign of the Hobarts. The employees of the railroad wheeled crates out of the baggage car, marked food for forellians, food for STEINIANS, and so forth. Reid said to Grove-Sparrow:

"Look, I — I've got to find my truck drivers and give them these addresses. Will you keep an eye on the Osmanians and Robertsonians till I get back?"

"Righto."

Reid dashed off, followed by two porters pushing a hand truck piled with crates. When he returned, the Robertsonians were still sitting in a disconsolate circle. There was no sign of Grove-Sparrow, Ming, the Hobarts, or the Osmanians. There was broken glass on the concrete, a smear of liquid, and an alcoholic smell.

As he stared about wildly, Reid felt a tug at his trouser leg. A Robertsonian said:

"Please, is dere any sign of our host?"

"No, but he'll be along. What's happened to the others?"

"Oh, dat. Dey were lying on de platform, waiting, when an Earthman came along, walking dis way and dat as if he were sick. He saw Mr. Ming and said somet'ing about dirty foreigners. Mr. Ming pretended he didn't hear, and de man said he could lick anybody in de place. I suppose he meant dat custom you call kissing, dough he didn't look as if he loved anybody."

"What happened?"

"Oh, de Osmanians got up, and Sterga said: 'Dis nice fellow wants to wrestle. Come on, Thvi.'

"He started for de man, who saw him for de first time. De man took a bottle out of his pocket and trew it at Sterga, saying: 'Go back to hell where you belong!' De bottle broke. De man ran. Sterga and Thvi ran after him, calling to him to stop and wrestle. Mr. Grove-Sparrow and Mr. Ming ran after. Dat's all. Now please, can you find de people who are going to take us?"

Reid sighed. " 'Til have to find the others first. Wait here ..."

He met the missing members of the expedition returning to the platform. "The drunk is on his way to the police station," said Grove-Sparrow. "Still no sign of your Hobarts?"

"Not yet, but that's not unusual."

"Why don't you take the Robertsonians to the Hobart place?"

"We'd probably pass the Hobarts on their way here. Tell you, though; I'll 'phone to see if they've left."

The Hobart telephone answered. Clara Hobart said: "Oh,

Milan! We were just ready to go. I'm sorry we're late, but you know how it is."

Reid, resisting an impulse to grind his teeth, did indeed know how it was with the Hobarts. They had a way of arriving at parties just as everybody else was leaving. "Stay where you are, and I'll deliver your guests in about an hour."

He went back and bid good-bye to Grove-Sparrow and Ming, who were returning to New Haven. Then he herded his two groups of extra-terrestrials up the ramps to his car.

To a man who hated to be made conspicuous, the drive to Parthia left much to be desired. The Robertsonians curled up in one large furry ball on the front seat and slept, but the Osmanians bounced around in back, excited and garrulous, pointing with their tentacles and sticking them out the windows to wave at passers-by. Most people had read about extra-terrestrials and seen them on television enough not to be unduly surprised, but an octopoid tentacle thrust in the window of your car while you are waiting for a light can still be startling.

After the Osmanians had almost caused a collision, Reid ordered them sternly to keep their tentacles inside the car. He envied Nagle and Kress, who had flown their guests home from the roof of the Post Office Building in their private helicopters.

West of the Susquehanna, the Piedmont Expressway turns south towards Westminster, to swoop past Baltimore and Washington. Milan Reid turned off and continued west. In response to his pleas, the Osmanians had been fairly quiet.

Near York he found himself stuck behind an Amishman's buggy, which the heavy eastbound traffic kept him from passing.

"What is that?" asked Thvi. "A buggy," said Louise Reid.

"Which, the thing with the wheels or the animal pulling it?"

"The things with the wheels. The animal is called a horse."

"Isn't that a primitive form of transportation here?" said Sterga.

"Yes," said Louise. "The man uses it because of his religion."

"Is that why he wears that round black hat?"

"Yes."

"I want that hat," said Sterga. "I think I should look pretty in it, guk-guk-guk."

Reid glanced around. "If you want a Terran hat you'll have to buy one. That hat belongs to the man."

"I still want it. If Terra is going to get this mining-lease, it can afford me that one little hat."

The eastbound traffic ceased for the moment. Reid passed the buggy. As the automobile came abreast, Sterga thrust his front end out the quadrant window. A tentacle whisked the black hat from the head of the Amishman.

The sectarian's broad, ruddy, chin-whiskered face turned towards the car. His blue eyes popped with horror. He gave a hoarse scream, leaped from the buggy, vaulted a split-rail fence, and ran off across a field.

As the car drew ahead of the buggy, the horse had a view of Sterga too. The horse shrieked and ran off in the other direction, the buggy bouncing wildly behind it.

Reid braked to a stop. "Damn it!" he yelled.

In the back seat, Sterga was trying to balance the Amish-man's hat on his head, if he could be said to have a head. Reid snatched the hat. "What kind of trouble are you trying to make?"

"No trouble; just a little joke," bubbled Sterga.

Reid snorted and got out. The Amishman had disappeared. His horse was in sight across a plowed field, eating grass. It was still attached to the buggy. Reid crossed the road, holding the hat, and started across the field. His feet sank into the soft earth, and the soil entered his shoes. The horse heard him coming, looked around, and trotted off.

After several tries, Reid plodded back to his automobile, hung the hat on a fence post, shook the dirt out of his shoes, and drove off. Fuming, he promised Rajendra Daipal some hard words.

The Osmanians were subdued for a while. At Gettysburg they went into the exhibition building. From the gallery they looked down upon a relief map of the Gettysburg region covered with colored electric lights. A phonograph record gave an account of the battle while a young man worked a set of keys that lit the lights to show the positions of the Federal and Confederate troops at various times:

"Now, at the beginning of the second day, Longstreet spent the morning ranging his artillery around the salient where the Third Corps occupied the peach orchard." (Lights blinked on.) "At noon the Confederates began a bombardment, and McLaws' Division advanced ..."

There was a stir among the spectators as the Osmanians wormed their way into the front row and hung their tentacles over the rail. The young man working the lights lost track of his keys and sat gaping while the recording ground on. Then he tried to catch up, became confused, and for a time had Meade's Federals in full retreat.

Reid led his guests outside. They climbed the observation tower, from which they saw the Round Tops and the Eisenhower Memorial rising from the farm which that President had owned. When Reid and his wife started down, Sterga blubbered something at Thvi. The next thing, the Osmanians were scrambling down the outside of the steelwork.

"Come back! You'll be killed!" yelled Reid.

"No danger," called back Sterga. "This is more fun."

The Reids clattered down the stairs. Reid expected to hear the plop of an Osmanian striking the concrete. He got to the bottom just ahead of the Osmanians, who slid from girder to girder with the greatest ease.

Milan Reid sat down on the bottom step and pressed his fists against his head. Then he said in a hollow voice: "Let's eat lunch."

At the Rose Hill Swimming Pool, Wallace Richards, the lifeguard, was showing off his dives. He was a young man of vast thews and vaster vanity. Girls sat around the pool watching, while other young men, all looking either skinny or potbellied by contrast, gloomed in the background.

The Forellians had swum in the morning but now had gone away. While they were there, there had been no room for anybody else in the pool. Now there were no extra-terrestrials until Milan and Louise Reid came out in bathing suits, followed by Sterga and Thvi. Reid spread a blanket and prepared to settle down to a sunbath.

The Osmanians aroused the usual stir. Wallace Richards never noticed. He stood tautly, tapering from shoulders to ankles like an inverted isosceles triangle, while he gathered Ms forces for a triple flip.

Thvi slipped into the pool and shot across it with a swirl of tentacles. Richards bounded off the board, clasped his knees, turned over three times, and straightened out. He came down on top of Thvi.

Sterga shouted in his own language, but too late. Then he too entered the water. The watchers cried out.

The surface of the pool was beaten by thrashing limbs and tentacles. Richards' head appeared, shouting:

"Damn it, give me back my trunks!"

The Osmanians whipped across the pool and shot out. Thvi waved Richards' trunks (little more than a G-string) in one tentacle and called: "You will jump on top of me, will you?"

"I didn't do it on purpose!" screamed Richards. The audience began to laugh.

"Knocked all the breath out of me, guk-guk-guk," bubbled Thvi, trying to work a couple of her tentacles through the leg-holes.

Sterga scrambled up the ladder to the high-diving board. "Earthman!" he called down. "How did you do that jump?"

"Give me back my trunks!"

"Like this?" Sterga leaped off the board.

However, instead of diving, he spread all twelve tentacles and came down on Richards like a pouncing spider. Richards ducked before the apparition descended on him and began to swim away. But his speed in the water was as nought compared to the Osmanian's. Sterga caught him and began tickling him.

Reid said to Thvi: "For God's sake, make that mate of yours let the man go! He'll drown him."

"Oh, all right. You Earthmen never want any fun." Thvi swam over to where the pair were struggling.

A limp Richards was hauled out and laid on the concrete. Somebody pumped his lungs for ten minutes until he came around and sat up, coughing and gasping. When he pulled himself together he glared about and wheezed: "Where are those God-damned octopussies? I'll ..."

Reid and his charges had left.

For cocktails, the Reids had an older couple in: Professor and Mrs. Hamilton Beach, of Bryn Mawr College. Beach, a sociologist, wanted to talk about such serious matters as interspecies relations, but Sterga and Thvi had other ideas. They swallowed their cocktails so fast that Reid could do little but mix new ones. They made horrible noises which, they explained, were an Osmanian song.

Reid worried lest they get drunk and become even more obstreperous, but Sterga reassured him: "These are nothing to what we drink on N6hp. There anything less than four-fifths alcohol is a — how would you say it — a light-wines-and-beer."

The Reids eased the Beaches out at seven so as to have time to eat and get to the strawberry festival. Reid went back into the living room to find Sterga and Thvi drinking alternately out of the shaker. Sterga said:

"Mr. Reid, I understand you people have the same reproductive methods we have."

"Uh — well — that depends on your method," said Reid, appalled by the turn of the conversation.

"You do reproduce bisexually, don't you? The male carries ..."

"Yes, yes, yes."

"Why haven't you and Mrs. Reid done so?" Reid bit his lip. "We have. Our son is away at camp, as a counsellor."

"Ah, that is fine. Then you can comply with the custom of the Hliht."

"What custom?"

"We always trade mates with our guests. It is inhospitable not to."

"What?"

Sterga repeated.

Reid goggled. "You — you're not serious?"

"Certainly. It will be —"

"But that's physically impossible, even if our customs allowed it."

"No, we are not so different as you might think. I have investigated the matter. Anyway, we can have a lot of fun experimenting, guk-guk."

"Out of the question!" snapped Reid. "Our customs forbid it."

"You Earthmen want that mining lease, don't you? Well then?"

"Excuse me," said Reid, and went into the kitchen. There Louise was helping the temporary maid to put the final touches on the dinner. He drew her aside and explained the latest demand of their guests.

Louise Reid goggled in her turn. She opened the door to get a glimpse of Sterga in the living room. Sterga caught her eye and winked. This was an unnerving spectacle, as the Osmanians blinked their eyes by withdrawing them into their heads and popping them up again.

She turned away and pressed her hands over her face. "What shall we do?"

"Well, I — I can tell you one thing. I'm going to get rid of these so-called guests. If I ever catch R. J ..."

"But what about the mining concession?" ' "To hell with the mining concession. I don't care if it causes an interplanetary war; I won't put up with these rubber jokers any longer. I hate the sight of them."

"But how? You can't just push them out the front door to wander the streets!"

"Let me think." Reid glanced out the window to make sure the Zieglers' lights were on. "I know; we'll give them to the Zieglers! It'll serve both of them right."

"Oh, darling, do you think we ought? After all ..."

"I don't care if we ought or not. First, you'll get a wire that your mother is sick and you have to pack and leave for Washington tonight ... Start serving; I'll set the wheels in motion."

Reid went to the telephone and called his friend Joe Farris. "Joe?" he said in a low voice. "Will you ring me back in fifteen minutes? Then don't pay any attention to what I say; it's to get me out of a jam."

Fifteen minutes later, the telephone rang. Reid answered it and pretended to repeat a telegraphic message. Then he came into the dining room and said sadly:

"Bad news, sweetheart. Your mother is sick again, and you'll have to go to Washington tonight." He turned to Sterga. "I'm sorry, but Mrs. Reid has to leave."

"Oh!" said Thvi. "We were so looking forward —"

"Now, I can't be properly hospitable by myself," continued Reid. "But I'll find you another host."

"But you are such a fine host —"protested Sterga.

"Thanks, I really can't. Everything will be all right, though. Finish your dinner while I make the arrangements. Then we'll go to the festival together."

He slipped out and walked to the Zieglers' house next door. Charles Ziegler, wiping his mouth, answered the bell. He was stout and balding, with thick, hairy forearms. He wrung Reid's hand in a crushing grip and bellowed: "Hey there, Milan old boy! Whatcha doing these days? We ought to get together more often, hey? Come on in."

Reid forced a smile. "Well, Charlie, it's like this. I — I!m in a predicament, but with a little help from you we can fix it up to please everybody. You wanted A. P. guests on this visit, didn't you?"

Ziegler shrugged. "Connie felt she had to get into the act, and I guess I could have put up with a houseful of lizard-men to please her. Why, whatcha got in mind?"

Reid told of his mother-in-law's illness as if it were real. "So I thought you could come to the celebration and pick up my Osmanians ..."

Ziegler slapped Reid on the back. "Sure, Milan old boy, I'll take care of your double-ended squids. I'll fill 'em full of G-bombs." This was a lethal gin drink of Ziegler's own concoction. "Hey, Connie!"

At the strawberry festival, people and extra-terrestrials stood in a line that wound past a counter. There they were served strawberry ice cream, cake, and coffee, cafeteria-style. Strips of colored paper festooned the ceiling; plantetary flags draped the walls.

Some guests, either because they could not eat Terran food or because they were not built for standing in line with trays, made other arrangements. The Forellians occupied one whole corner of the basement while their hosts fed them special provender with shovels.

The extra-terrestrials were identified by tags pinned to the clothes of those species who wore them, or hung around their necks otherwise. As the Osmanians had neither clothes nor necks, the tags were fastened to straps tied around their middles, with the tags uppermost like the brass plates on dog-collars.

Reid found himself opposite a Chavantian, coiled up on a chair. The Chavantian reared up the front yard of its body and daintily manipulated its food with the four appendages that grew from the sides of its neck.

"I," squeaked the Chavantian, "am fascinated by the works of your Shakespeare. Such insight! Such feeling! I taught Ter-ran literature, you know, before I entered the diplomatic service."

"So?" said Reid. "I used to teach, too."

Reid had become a high-school mathematics teacher under the mistaken belief that teaching was an occupation for timid, ineffectual people who feared to face the world. He soon learned that it called for brawn and brutality far beyond anything demanded by the business world. "Have you been well treated so far?"

"Oh, we are sometimes made aware of our unfortunate resemblance to an order of Terran life towards whom most of you do not feel very friendly." (Reid knew the Chavantian meant snakes.) "But we make allowances."

"How about the other guests?" Reid craned his neck to see who was present. The Hobarts and their Robertsonians had not arrived.

"All fine. The Steinians are of course not here, as this would be a revolting spectacle to them. 'Just a thing of custom: 'tis no other; only it spoils the pleasure of the time.' "

The Reids and their guests finished eating and went up to the auditorium, which was already half full. The young of several species had rubber balloons, each balloon straining gently upward on its string. They made so thick a cloud that those in the rear found their view of the stage obscured. ,

The program opened with a concert by the high-school band. Then the local Boy Scout troop presented colors. The Reverend McClintock officially welcomed the guests and introduced them, one by one. As they were introduced, those who could, stood up and were applauded.

Then followed songs by a local choral society; dances by a square-dancing club; more songs; American Indian dances by a cub scout pack; awards of prizes to Associated Planets essay-contest winners ...

The trouble with amateur shows of this sort is not that the acts are bad. Sometimes they are quite good. The real difficulty is that each performer wants to give his all. This means he wants to put on all the pieces in his repertory. As a result, each act is twice as long as it should be. And, because the contributors are unpaid volunteers, the manager can't insist on drastic cuts. If he does, they get hurt and pull out altogether.

The show was still grinding on at ten-thirty. Balloons, escaped from their owners, swayed gently against the ceiling. The young Forellian snored like a distant thunderstorm at the back of the hall. The young of several other species, including Homo sapiens, got out of hand and had to be taken away. The Osmanians fidgeted on seats never designed for their kind and twiddled their tentacles.

Milan Reid ostentatiously looked at his watch and whispered to Sterga: "I have to take my wife to the train. Goodnight. Good-night, Thvi."

He shook their tentacles, led Louise out, and drove off. He did not, however, drive to the railroad station or the airport. He did not think that the situation called for Louise's actually going to Washington. Instead, he left her at the apartment of one of her girl-friends in Merion. Then he went home.

First he went up to the Zieglers' front door. He put out his thumb to ring, to make sure his plans had gone through. Then he drew back. From within came screams of laughter: Connie's shrill peals, Charlie's belly-roars, and the Osmanians' hideous cackle.

His guests had obviously made contact with their new hosts. There was no need for him to go in. If he did, Charlie would insist on his joining the party, and he loathed raucous parties.

Reid went to his own house and got ready for bed. Though not much of a late-evening drinker, he mixed himself a strong rye-and-soda, turned on the radio to a good-music station, lit his pipe, and relaxed. From next door, outbursts of crazy laughter rose up from time to time, with odd thumping sounds and once the crash of breaking glass. Reid smiled quietly.

The telephone rang. Reid frowned and lifted the handset.

"New Haven calling," said the operator. Then came the nasal tones of Rajendra Jaipal: "Hello, Milan? This is R. J. I didn't know if you would be home yet from the celebration. How are your guests?"

"I got rid of them," said Reid.

"You what?"

"Got rid of them. Gave them away. I couldn't stand them."

"Where are they now?" Jaipal's voice rose tautly.

"Next door, at the Zieglers'. They seem —"

"Oh, you did not!"

"Damn right I did. They seem to be having a high old time."

"Ai, Ram Ram! I thought I could trust you! You have upset interplanetary relations for centuries! My God, why did you do that? And why the Zieglers, of all people?"

"Because the Zieglers were handy, and because these squids are a pair of spoiled brats; impulsive, irresponsible children, with no manners, no morals, no sense, no nothing. If —"

"That does not matter. You have your dutee to humanity."

"My duty doesn't include trading wives with a space-octopus —"

"Oh, you could have found a way around that —"

"And why — why didn't you warn me of their cute little ways? My day has been pure hell."

Jaipal's voice rose to a scream. "You selpish, perpidious materialist —"

"Oh, go jump in the lake! You're the perfidious one, palming these interstellar zanies off on me. I suppose you neglected to tell me what I was getting into for fear I'd back out, huh? Well, didn't you? Didn't you?"

The telephone was silent. Then Jaipal said in a lower voice: "My dear pfriend, I admit that I too am a sinful, imparfect mortal. Please forgive my hasty remarks. But now let us see if we can repair the damage. This is most serious. The economic future of our planet depends on this mining lease. I shall ply down at once."

"It won't do you any good to get here before seven. I'm going to bed, and I won't even answer the doorbell till then."

"Then I shall be on your doorstep at seven. Good-bye."

When Reid looked out next morning, there was Rajendra Jaipal in a gray-flannel suit sitting on his doorstep. As the door opened, Jaipal's gaunt, somber figure arose.

"Well, are you readee to show me the wreckage of mankind's hopes?" he said.

Reid looked across at the Zieglers' house, where all was silent. "I think they're still asleep. Uh — have you had breakfast?"

"No, but —"

"Then come in and have some."

They ate in gloomy silence. Since awakening, Reid had begun to worry. In morning's cold light, his bold stroke of last night no longer seemed so dashing. In fact it might prove a colossal blunder.

Of course, one couldn't submit one's wife to an extra-terrestrial's amatory experiments. (Or could one, for the sake of one's planet?) In any case, he could surely have gotten around that. He could have sent Louise away but himself put up with the Osmanians for a few more hours.

It was after nine of a bright sunshiny day when Reid and Jaipal approached the Ziegler house. Reid rang.

After a wait, the door opened. There stood Charles Ziegler, wearing a pair of purple-and-white checkered shorts. For an instant he glowered through bloodshot eyes. Then he grinned.

"Hel-lo there!" he cried. "Come on in!"

Reid introduced Jaipal and went in. The living room was a shambles. Here lay an overthrown floor lamp; there a card table with a broken leg teetered drunkenly. Cards and poker chips bespangled the floor.

From the kitchen came sound of breakfast-making. Sterga slithered in, balancing an ice bag on his head with two tentacles, and said:

"Such a night! My dear Mr. Reid, how can I thank you enough for finding such a congenial host? I did not think any being in the Galaxy could drink me down, guk-guk!"

Reid looked questioningly at Ziegler, who said: "Yeah, we sure hung one on."

"It meant we could not carry out the experiment as I hoped," said Sterga, "but that is all right. Next year, even if the rest go to Athens, Thvi and I will come here to the Zieglers'." The Osmanian reared up and clutched Ziegler's neck, while Ziegler patted the rubbery hide. "We love them. He is a good wrestler, too. And don't worry about your mining lease, R. J. There will be no difficulty."

Reid and Jaipal excused themselves. Outside, they looked at each other. Each made the same gesture, raising his shoulders while spreading his hands with the palms up. Then they saluted each other with a wave of the hand, while their faces expressed despairing incomprehension. Reid turned back to his house, and Jaipal walked swiftly away.

The Egg

Gnoth, the Yerethian consul, looked at his watch and said: "Damn it, if she does not get here soon, we shall miss the start of the feature."

Triw kept on painting her horns. "What difference does it make? We can always stay around to where we came in."

"You know I hate seeing a movie cut up that way," snorted Gnoth, scratching his scales. "It is like a statue with the head broken off and put under the feet. It is still all there, but the effect is not the same." The Yerethian glanced at the incubator. "You do not suppose we could — ah — go out and leave the door unlocked?"

"Before Pat gets here?" cried Triw. "Gnoth, are you out of your mind? You know what Terran thieves are like, and to leave our egg untended so close to hatching-time ..."

"Speaking of which, are you sure of the date?"

"Of course."

"It would not do to have it hatch when the Earthgirl was alone with it."

"No, I figured it all out," said Triw, buffing the diamond set in her left lower tusk. "Allowing for this silly decimal system and everything. Today is September twelfth, and it will hatch on the sixteenth. There is Pat now!"

Gnoth threw open the big front door of the modified barn that served as his consular residence. Patrice Ober stood on the threshold with a book in her hand.

"Come in!" said Gnoth, switching to English and holding down his bellow so as not to frighten the girl. Patrice stepped on to the polished floor.

If you had asked Gnoth to describe Patrice, he would have said she looked like other Terrans, a little skinny waist-high thing with a pale soft skin, rudimentary jaws, no tail, and no scales, plates, knobs, spikes, horns, tusks, or other splendid ornaments. Moreover, Terrans had five digits per limb, so they based their number-system on ten instead of the more logical eight. If you had pressed him further, he would have said that, while to him all Terrans looked much alike, Patrice was deemed attractive by her fellow-beings and that her eyes were green and the filaments on top of her head were dark.

"So nice to see you, my dear!" said Triw in a good imitation of a Terran hostess. "Let me show you around."

She put out a four-clawed hand. Patrice, after a slight pause, took it.

"First, here is our pride and joy," said Triw, raising the lid of the incubator. Patrice looked at the egg.

"It will hatch in four days," said Triw.

"A baby Yerethian must be pretty big," said Patrice.

"Bigger than you, my dear."

"Would it be dangerous?"

"What, my baby dangerous?"

"I mean, to one of us." Gnoth broke in: "It could be."

"What's it like?"

"It's a carnivore with complete instincts but no intelligence. That is why we keep them in cages. After three years they begin to lose their instincts and become teachable. But do not worry. It will not hatch."

"What if he — it — was premature?" asked Patrice.

"There is no chance. But if it should happen, you must call the theater to have us sent home."

"What theater are you going to?"

"The Forest Drive-in. We always go to drive-ins because they are the only ones that have space for us."

"What are you seeing?"

Gnoth said: "Sands of Yereth. This is business as well as pleasure."

"How do you mean?"

"Our government likes us to see all movies having to do with Yerethians, to make sure your movie makers are not making hostile propaganda against us."

"Why would they do that?"

"Oh, they must have villains, and, unless we watch out, Hollywood will show all people from other planets to be scoundrels."

"A villain has to belong to some race."

"We do not mind an occasional Yerethian villain if they show some good Yerethians too."

"Oh," said Patrice.

"This is the powder room," said Triw. "It is for our Terran guests, so everything is the right size for you. Do stop fidgeting, Gnoth! There is plenty of time."

Looking around, Patrice said: "I'd think it would be a bother, having everything in two sizes." There was a Yerethian-sized sofa in front of the entertainer and, a few yards away, a sofa of half that size for human beings.

"Our government pays for it," said Triw. "Here is the kitchen. This small fridge has Terran food, so you can get yourself a snack."

"How will you get to the theater?"

"William the gardener will drive our limousine," said Triw. "It is really a big truck fixed up."

"Does anybody else work for you?"

"Last week Xat, our maid, got sick and went back to Yereth. We have applied to the Embassy for another servant of our own kind, but it may take years. So now we must hire baby-sitters. I see you brought a book."

Patrice held up a library copy of Jane Eyre. "It's our first homework assignment for senior English."

"Come on!" rumbled Gnoth in his own tongue. "We can just make the first feature."

The Yerethians went. Patrice strolled about. There was a bookcase full of Terran books and another, with twice the space between the shelves, for Yerethian books. She laid down her own book and pulled out one of the big Yerethian volumes. The writing consisted of wiggly lines that ran from top to bottom of each page, about twenty lines to a page.

She put back the book and took up her wandering again.

At the incubator she gingerly raised the lid for another peek at the egg. It was as big as a trunk.

A faint noise came from the egg. She thought she saw it shake, as if something were moving about inside it. She put out a hand, then jerked it back as a loud bump came from the thing. She glanced towards the door.

The egg quieted down. Patrice shrugged. She was not a worrying type. The Yerethians would surely know when their own eggs hatched. She crossed over to the smaller sofa, sat down, and dug into Jane Eyre.

The telephone rang in Patrice Ober's home. Mrs. Ober answered: "Hello?"

"Mrs. Ober? This is Terry. Pat there?"

"No. She's baby-sitting."

"Where?"

"She — she went to the Yerethians' barn."

"Oh. Well, thanks. G'bye."

"Good-bye, Terry."

As Mrs. Ober hung up, her husband said: "Hey! Was that Terry Blaine?"

"Sure it was."

"Then why the devil did you tell him where Pat was?"

"Why not? He asked me."

Mr. Ober threw down his newspaper. "You know why not. He'll jump on his buzzer and fly over. They'll be alone in that house for hours, and he'll have his mind on one thing."

"Don't you trust your own daughter?"

"As far as I trust any girl when a handsome nogood like that puts the pressure on her."

"He is not a nogood."

"He is. You just can't see it because his looks and his line have turned your head."

"Well, if you must know, I was worried about her being alone in a house full of dinosaurs. She ought to have another human being to keep an eye on her. Terry won't eat her."

"Gnoth wouldn't eat her, and furthermore he wouldn't do what Terence Blaine will do it he gets a chance. You know that wild crowd he goes around with ..."

In Gnoth's house, Patrice Ober found Jane Eyre absorbing in spite of its leisureliness and the archaism of its language.

After an hour's reading, however, her attention flagged. Her mind wandered to her own affairs, which consisted mainly of boys. She was not at the moment going steady, as several boys were striving for that relationship and Pat had not made up her mind which to take.

Terry Blaine was in the lead, being the biggest and most aggressive and a football hero besides. The trouble with Terry was that he made no bones about wanting what she thought most boys wanted. She supposed that if she did go steady with him she would sooner or later have to give in, even though you could get in trouble that way if you weren't careful. The masterful Terry seemed to expect it, and Patrice was an obliging girl who hated to turn people down. She had held out so far out of affection for her parents, but you couldn't expect old people in their forties to know how young people felt.

As for Andy Dupas, the runner-up ... Andy was a queer duck who kept his thoughts to himself. He wasn't so big and good-looking as Terry, but in some ways he was nicer. He was punctual and responsible and kept his word. He did not proposition her on every date. In fact, he never had. Patrice hoped that didn't mean Andy was somehow abnormal.

Where Terry got his way by muscle and push, Andy got his by looking something up in a book or working out a formula in his head. When he had first dated her, for instance, he hadn't known how to dance. A month later he had suddenly turned into one of the best dancers in the school.

"Just figured it out," was all he would say.

Some of Pat's friends thought Andy a bore, but she did not share their prejudice against brains. However, Andy had already graduated from the High and was going away next week to M.I.T. on a scholarship. So he would be out of the running.

As for Henry and Leroy, they were far back in the race, though it would be nice to keep in touch with them in case she and Terry ever broke up ...

The bell rang. Patrice went to the door.

"Who is it?" She wasn't going to let just anybody in.

"It's me," said Terence Blaine's voice.

Patrice opened the door, which had a trick latch that required the use of both hands at once. There he stood, six feet of blond male animal. Behind him, on the Yerethians' lawn, stood his flying platform. In one hand he held a stack of phonograph records in their envelopes.

"Hi," he said. "How's my little cabbage?"

This was the year that American youths shaved their scalps and wore false beards. Terry's was green. He folded Patrice in his arms, bent her back towards the floor in an Apache embrace, kissed her, and set her on her feet again.

"How'd you get here?" she asked.

"I called your house. Thought you might be lonesome."

He sat down on the man-sized sofa, pulled her down, kissed and pawed her a bit, then squirmed in discomfort. He pulled Jane Eyre out from under him.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Homework."

"You actually do homework?"

"Sure. I still want to go to college."

"Hah! Setting a bad example, my wench. First thing you know, they'll expect us all to study and pass exams, and then where'll we be? I've never cracked a book outside of school hours and I'm not gonna. What's this?"

"English assignment. Nineteenth-century stuff."

"You mean old Rollins makes you read the slop some blob of gup wrote back in the Middle Ages? Some fossil who wore iron pajamas and wrote on clay tablets or something?"

"No, and anyway it was a she who wrote it."

"Aw, ta hell with it." Terry tossed the book to the floor. "Let's dance."

While he took his records out of their envelopes and spiked them on the phonograph spindle of the entertainer, Patrice straightened her hair. She wished Terry wouldn't wrestle around so. Presently the machine was giving out Marijuana for Two. Terry hauled Patrice to her feet and swung into the Guatemalan brinco. This called for both to leap into the air and come down on all four heels with every eighth beat.

"Are — are you sure we're not making too much noise?" said Patrice between hops.

"Who'll know?" said Terry, making a particularly loud bang. "Come on, limber up. Got arthritis already?"

Patrice exerted herself to follow him. In one twirl he banged her into the side of the incubator so that it rocked a little.

"Ow!" said Patrice, stopping. "Hurt?" said Terry.

"You bet. I'll have a bruise the size of your hand."

"Oh. Too bad. Can't you dance any more?"

"Not tonight, Terry." She limped to the sofa. "Well, I'm hungry. These reptiles got any human food in their dump?"

Patrice indicated the smaller icebox and sat down. While Terry was in the kitchen, more sounds came from the incubator. Were they louder? She almost got up to look, but the pain in her battered thigh made her hesitate.

Terry strode out of the kitchen with a tray holding two sandwiches and two glasses of milk. Patrice almost told him about the egg. She hesitated for a peculiar reason. One of Terry's favorite subjects was how they ought to get married as soon as the law and their parents allowed, and at once beget a horde of offspring. Such a program did not suit Patrice's collegiate ambitions and, besides, she found his excessive interest in the reproduction of the species embarrassing. Now she feared the sight of the egg would send his mind off in that direction.

Before she could decide, he cut her off with a loud stream of talk: "C'mon, wrap yourself around this! Make you feel better. Say, I just heard the funniest thing ..."

Patrice forgot the egg. They ate, talking with full mouths: the endless, garrulous chatter of adolescents, so full of words and so empty of meaning to outsiders.

At last Terry put the tray away, wiped his mouth, and slid large hands around Patrice. "Now, my trull, if you can't dance, there's only one other thing you're good for ..." The music ground on.

The Obers' telephone rang again. This time Mr. Ober answered: "Yeah?"

"Mr. Ober? This is Andrew Dupas. Is Pat there, please?"

"No. She went over to the Yerethians' place to baby-sit."

"Hmm. Thanks."

Mr. Ober turned with a grin to his wife. "That was Andy. If one human being to watch Pat is good, two ought to be better."

"If he and Terry get there together they're liable to fight."

"Maybe, but Andy's pretty smart. Hell see that everything comes out all right."

Terence Blaine was well into his campaign. He had shed his beard and his hands were busy.

"Take it easy," he panted. "I won't hurt you."

"No, Terry darling —"

"Aw, come on! Be a sport!"

"But I don't want to."

"All the girls do it."

"No, let me up —"

"And you'll feel good afterwards —"

"Leave my clothes alone."

"But we love each other, don't we? That makes it all right —"

They were so busy with determined attack on one side and wavering defense on the other that they did not hear the commotion from the incubator, over the music of I Hate Your Guts from the entertainer. There was a rending sound. The lid rose. Out came the head of the baby Yerethian.

The neck followed, then the forelegs. The rest of the creature poured over the edge of the floor. The lid fell back with a thump. The smirpers looked up. Patrice screamed.

A new-hatched Yerethian is about ten feet long counting its tail. It does not look much like an adult, aside from the reptilian aspect of both. The baby lacks the spines, horns, and other ornaments of the adult, nor does its skull bulge with brain. It looks a little like a long-legged, long-necked alligator, with jaws big enough to bite a man's head off. It walks on all fours instead of upright like the adult.

The baby swiveled its big slit-pupiled eyes towards the petrified pair on the sofa. It hissed and trotted briskly towards them, jaws chomping and sixteen claws clicking.

Terry and Patrice bounced off the sofa and ran for the door. Terry got there first. He tried to open the door, not knowing the trick of the latch. The door refused to open.

Patrice tried to push him out of the way to open it herself. He shouldered her aside, mastered the latch combination, and started to open the door. Then the Yerethian was upon him.

It opened its jaws and swung its massive head sideways, like the business end of an excavating machine. The head struck

Terry in the side and knocked him over. The jaws clomped on a mouthful of Terry's satin whizz-jacket, which came apart with a ripping sound. In falling, Terry knocked Patrice down too.

They sat up and for half a second looked at the Yerethian, standing in front of the door and digging shredded satin out of its teeth with its foreclaws.

They got up and ran again. Both headed for the powder room. Being bigger and faster, Terry got there first. He lunged inside, slammed the door, and locked it. Patrice pulled on the knob, shrieked "Let me in!", beat on the door, and then saw the Yerethian charging down upon her.

Patrice ran along the wall of the huge room while the Yerethian crashed into the powder-room door, picked itself up, and started after her. It was less agile on sharp turns than she but faster on the straightaway. She saw it was gaining and would catch her long before she could reach the outer door again.

She ran past a bookcase — the one with the smaller shelves, for human books. As she came to the end, she whipped around into the angle between the end of the bookcase and the wall. The Yerethian shot past her and skidded to a stop thirty feet away.

Patrice darted back around the end of the bookcase and climbed up the front of the case, as if the shelves were ladder-rungs. She was halfway up before the Yerethian began its next charge and all the way up by the time it arrived. It slithered to a halt beneath her and looked up.

"Go away!" she told it. "HELP! HELP! Go away, ugly! HELP!"

The Yerethian reared up against the front of the bookcase and stretched its neck. "HELP!" shrieked Patrice.

She reached down under the top of the bookcase, pulled out a book from the top shelf, and threw it at the Yerethian. The book bounced off its nose. It shook its head and grunted. Another book followed. This time the Yerethian blinked and dodged. It felt around with its claws, took a firm grip on the front edges of the shelves, and began to climb.

"HELP!" About two shelves up, and it would be able to reach her.

The bookcase swayed outward and fell with a frightful crash. Patrice jumped clear but turned an ankle as she came down.

She sat up, gasping with pain, and looked at the ruinous heap. The Yerethian's head rose out of the pile of books and broken bookcase. It blinked, hissed, and took up the chase.

Patrice hobbled towards the door. Claws scrabbled on the floor behind her.

The door, which had been open a crack since their first attempt to flee, now opened widely. In it stood Andrew Dupas, wearing a purple false beard. The lights inside were reflected on his owlish glasses.

"Hey!" cried Andy.

He ran forward and snatched up a light chair, one of those meant for men. He danced between the Yerethian and Patrice, holding the chair with its legs extended as lion tamers do. The Yerethian paused, made a couple of lunges, then seized the chair in its jaws and sent it whirling away. Then it closed in on Andy.

Andy glanced around and ran toward the smaller sofa. He threw himself flat, dove under the sofa, and came out the other side, scrambling between the struts like mad. As he was of medium size and rather spare, he got through. The Yerethian, following him, got stuck. Its head and neck stuck out from under the rear of the sofa while its forelegs were out of sight under the piece.

Andy turned on his pursuer. "Yeah, whatcha gonna do now?" he snarled.

The Yerethian gave a hoarse cry and snapped at him. He stood just out of reach and slapped its muzzle. It heaved and lunged and pushed the sofa along the floor.

"Can't we catch it?" cried Patrice. "If it upsets the sofa it'll get loose again."

"Let me think."

Andy ran around to the front of the sofa, pulling off his belt. He climbed up on the sofa. As the Yerethian bent its neck back to try to reach him, he whirled the belt so that the buckle whipped around the neck. He caught the buckle in his other hand, slipped the free end through the buckle, and pulled the free end so that the noose tightened. Then he braced his feet and pulled with both hands.

The baby Yerethian was wheezing for breath a minute later when the door opened, and in came Gnoth and Triw.

"My child!" bellowed Triw, lumbering forward. She gave Andy a push that spun him away like an autumn leaf. His unsupported pants fell down and tripped him so he skidded sprawling.

Triw broke the sofa apart to extricate her young and gathered the creature to her bosom. It bit her arm, at which she dealt it a slap that would have crushed a man to jelly.

"Keep calm! Keep calm!" roared Gnoth. "What is the matter? Quick, is anybody hurt? Do not all talk at once. Great Knash, that this should happen to us! Keep calm, everyone!"

"Calm down yourself," said Triw. "My dear little baby is safe and sound."

"How about you two?" said Gnoth.

Patrice said: "I turned my ankle, but it's better now."

"Nothing but a few bruises," said Andy, his glasses dangling from one ear. He replaced them. "May I have my belt back, please?"

Gnoth handed the belt to Andy, who secured his falling trews. At that instant, Terry's record of Heaving and Panting ended.

As this was the last record in the stack, the entertainer gave a click and fell silent. Gnoth turned it off. He looked at the machine, the floor, and the incubator.

"Have you two been dancing?" he said in an ominous tone.

Patrice said: "I was but Andy wasn't."

"You mean you were doing a — what do you say — a solo?"

"N-no, I mean I was dancing with Terry. Andy only got here just now."

"Who is Terry?"

Patrice nodded towards the powder room, whose door Terry had opened. Patrice, trying to put her looks in order, presented both boys to the Yerethians. Her voice quavered with nervousness. You can't help feeling a little scared when a being that could make two bites of you is mad at you, no matter how civilized it seems.

"And you lurched against the incubator and moved it, is that not true?" rumbled Gnoth. "I see scratch-marks on the floor."

"Well — uh —"said Terry.

"So if our child suffers from premature hatching, it will have been your doing!" thundered Gnoth.

"Wait a minute!" said Andy. "When was this egg supposed to hatch?"

"In four days," said Gnoth. He looked at his wife. "Is that not what you said, Triw?"

"It is. I asked Niag at the Embassy to make sure. He said it would be the fourteenth day, our system, of your month of September. So I added two days to change from our number system to yours, which gives the sixteenth —"

"You added?" said Andy.

"Of course. Our fourteen is your sixteen, or — dear me — is it that your fourteen is our sixteen?"

"I'm afraid it is," said Andy; then to Gnoth: "You see how it is, sir. The egg didn't hatch ahead of time after all."

Gnoth waved an apologetic paw. "I see now. I am terribly sorry. Mr. Blaine, you must let me buy you a new coat."

"He doesn't deserve it," said Patrice. "He ran into the John and locked me out with that th — with your baby."

"Isn't this yours?" said Andy to Terry, handing him the green beard.

Terry snatched the beard and put it on. "Want a lift home?" he asked Patrice.

"Thank you, Mister Blaine, but I'll go home with Andy."

"Big hero, eh?" said Terry to Andy. "Don't go shooting off your mouth about what happened here if you want to stay healthy."

He started for the door. Gnoth, counting out Patrice's fee, rumbled: "Just a minute, Mr. Blaine. And the rest of you."

"Whaddya want?" said Terry.

"Your personal relations are no concern of mine, but I think it would be just as well if we all kept silent about what happened."

"How so?" said Andy.

"If your story got out, Miss Ober would have trouble with her parents. Mr. Blaine would suffer embarrassment because of the pusillanimous part he played, and Triw and I should have trouble getting Terrans to work for us. You, Mr. Dupas, are the only one who would gain from the broadcasting of this news, and I hope you can be persuaded to — ah — make common cause with us."

Andy looked for Terry, but the latter had already stalked out. He thought, then said: "Okay. Let's go, Pat."

Terry's flying platform whirred off into the night as Andy started his old but well-kept automobile. On the way home, Patrice asked:

"Why didn't you hit that big blob of gup? He deserved it."

"Sure, he did. The trouble is, he can lick me. He did once, in fact. He knows what we think of him, so why should I ask for another beating-up just to underline it?"

They parked and smirped in front of the Ober house. After a while, Andy said: "You know I'm going in two days."

"Yes. Do — do you want me to wait for you?"

Patrice knew right away she had said the wrong thing. The moonlight gleamed coldly on Andy's glasses as he said:

"You're too young for that, Pat. As for me, it'll take me at least seven years to get my Ph.D. If you're still around at the end of that time, we'll talk about it some more."

Patrice went in. She explained her dishevelment and limp as the result of tripping and falling on the walk in front of the Yerethian house. Then she went to bed and cried on her pillow.

Let's Have Fun

Doc Lofting was on another drunk in the recreation room of the Embassy. This was different, being a crying drunk. The Fourth Secretary, Kemal Okmen, asked: "What's the matter, Doc?"

"Uzhegh is dead," mumbled Lofting, a plump little man with a white goatee. "The Provincial?"

"Yes."

"A friend of yours? I know you like these lizards —"

"Hadn't seen him in years."

"Then why the grief?"

"Reminds me ..."

"Of what?"

Cecil Mpanza, the Communications Engineer, dropped into the third chair. "It's his big secret."

"What secret?" asked Okmen.

"Whatever brought him to Ahlia twelve years ago. Whatever made him stick despite heat, fog, and gravity. Whatever makes him do favors for the Ahlians."

"Isn't it time you told?" said Okmen.

Doc stared at his glass. "Well, now Uzhegh's dead ..."

"Well?"

"Buy me 'nother and I'll tell."

"I take refuge in Allah!" said Okmen. "Charlie! Give Doc another. Now talk, old boy."

Doc wiped away the tears. "How to begin ... Won't matter now. Too far in ..."

"In what?" said Okmen.

"Confederated Planets. This thing — this — well, what brought me here — was back in twenty-seven, when the first Interplanetary Conference was held."

"The one in the U. S. that set up the C. P.?" asked Mpanza.

"Yes. I was jush — just a general practitioner in the suburb of Far Hills, near the Conference."

As Doc proceeded, he seemed to get the knots out of his tongue. "You've read about it. The old problem: local independence versus unity. The Ansonians refused to attend and are still outside the Confederation. The Ghazaqs sent an unofficial observer and joined later. The Ahlians sent a delegation, but all tied up with restrictions."

Mpanza asked: "Is that why the Confederation's constitution is so weak?"

"Partly. Lot of other delegations, including our own, were under similar restrictions. Most intelligent organisms like to order outsiders around but are horrified by the idea of being ordered in their turn.

"Now, the Ahlians were a special case. They were barely willing to consider any agreement; if they were pushed they'd pull out. Those who wanted a strong union wanted Ahlia in. It's a rich and powerful planet, and the Ahlians have a lot of what we unscientifically call character."

"All the stuffy virtues," said Okmen. "Thrift, punctuality ..."

Back in twenty-seven, five youths stood in front of the post office in Far Hills' small shopping center. In age, they ranged from fifteen to nineteen. All were decently dressed in shorts and T-shirts; all looked well-fed and well-cared-for.

But they scowled. They scowled because Mr. Patchik had ordered them out of his pharmacy for making a disturbance. So they had left the delightful coolth of Patchik's Drug Store to stand in the dank ninety-degree heat.

Their speech must be abridged because it consisted largely of Anglo-Saxon monosyllables used with wearisome repetition. Bowdlerized, it ran as follows. Meehan, the oldest, said: "Let's have fun."

"Such as?" said Fisher.

"I know a place we can drive two hundred miles an hour."

"Nah, they got a cop watching it. That's how Buddy Gar-stein got spattered last month."

"I seen it," said Carmichael. "Funniest thing you ever saw, poor Buddy spattered all over the county, from trying to get away from that cop."

Snow said: "Some day I'm gonna get that buggy cop. If you tie a herculite wire across the road on a level with his neck —"

"Nah," said Meehan. "They've conch to that one. That's why they got that cutter-bar in front of their windshields. What else you spuds got in mind?"

"I know a couple girls we could get to come out in Summers Park," said Carmichael. "There's a place low down with bushes around. If they yelled, nobody'd hear. A couple of us could hold 'em —"

"Nah, I like mine willing," said Meehan. "How about a barn? Couple barns haven't been burned yet."

"Good idea," said Fisher. "I saw the Morrison barn get burned. Funniest thing you ever heard, way those horses screamed while they was roasted." Fisher giggled.

"Dunno," said Carmichael. "After these last fires, a lot of people are sitting out in their barns with shotguns. I got a better idea. You know old man Slye? He's got a marble statue in his garden. Some kind of nymph or Venus or something. Old man Slye sure loves that statue. Well, let's bust it up. I can get a sledge hammer."

"Hey," said Meehan. "Here comes Longpants Riegel with his tame lizard. One of those whatjacallems."

"Ahlians," said Kraus, the youngest.

The others gave Kraus a frosty stare. He had been guilty of knowledge.

"Like to get one of those buggy lizards," said Meehan. "Hang his head on my wall."

"You'd have a time," said Carmichael.

"Nah, with a good rifle? They wouldn't do nothing to me."

"How come they wouldn't?"

"They're not human, that's how come. The lizards."

"Maybe they got a closed season on 'em," said Kraus.

"So what? My old man would pay my fine. I'd just scream I was being frustrated. Some day we gotta give Longpants a visit."

"Yeah," said Snow. "Look at his buggy pants. And walking, in this weather. He's buggy, all right."

"Guess he's got to walk," said Kraus. "He couldn't get the lizard in his car. That lizard must be eight feet high."

"Playing around with off-earthers proves he's buggy," said Fisher.

Assistant Professor of Astromagnetics Norman Riegel was now within earshot, accompanied by Uzhegh of Kich. Uzhegh was the delegate to the Interplanetary Conference from the planet called by Terrans after its human discoverer, Captain Hjalmar AM. The Ahlians called their own world Hwrajar-Pchum. For obvious reasons, Earthmen preferred "Ahlia."

Riegel, dwarfed by his reptilian friend, had a few mildly eccentric habits. For instance, he wore long trousers through the summer, instead of shorts, because he was conscious of his scrawny legs and varicose veins. He shaved the sides of his face in a decade when burnsides were universal.

As he neared, the five began muttering like ventriloquists without moving their lips:

"Look at the mad scientist!"

"Watch out, he'll bite."

"Look at his buggy pants."

"Lizard-lover!"

"Oh, Professor! Whee-Whee-eew!" (Whistle.)

Riegel marched ahead, his face set. He had to shoulder his way between Meehan and Carmichael to enter the post office.

"Look how mad he looks."

"Bet he'd like to kill us."

"Aw, he won't do nothing."

"He's too buggy to do anything."

Uzhegh remained outside because the door was small for him. As Riegel came out with a handful of mail, the muttering rose again. Uzhegh leaned over and yawned suddenly in Fisher's face, showing his teeth and flicking out his long yellow tongue.

Fisher gave a little shriek, tried to leap back, tripped, and sat down. The other four youths laughed. While their attention was on Fisher, Riegel went into Patchik's Drug Store. Here he picked up an afternoon paper and bought a gallon of ice cream. Then he and Uzhegh set off towards the Scarron mansion, where Riegel and his wife lived while they ran the estate as a kind of camp or boarding school for the young of the delegates to the Conference.

"Will thith not melt on ze way home?" asked Uzhegh, carrying the container.

"No; that's a new super-insulating plastic," said Riegel. "It'll keep for a week, even in this heat."

"Zat — that will be long enough for this party. Tell me, why did zose young Terrans treating you so disrespectful? Are they members of some hostile clan?"

Riegel shrugged. "No. They just don't like me."

"Why?"

"I suppose I know too much."

"That is a peculiar reason."

"Well, there's always been some hostility between the thinking fraction of my species and the unthinking majority. It becomes aggravated as science advances and becomes less comprehensible to the layman."

"Why do you thubmit?"

"What could I do? I'm not allowed to shoot them. If I punched one, the rest would spatter me. At least two are bigger than I, and I'm three times their age. And if I did beat up one I'd go to jail."

"It is not the way we do sings," said Uzhegh. "Now, tell me, this is a working day, and zey look old enough to work. Why are they doing nossing?"

"Don't you know about our educational and child-labor laws? They're not allowed to work till they're twenty-five."

"Why? They looking adult."

"The unions want 'em out of the labor market. There's not enough work to go round even with our eighteen-hour work week. So, the state makes all the young stay in school till they're twenty-five. It's summer vacation now, but thank God that'll soon be over."

"I should sink all that education would make them more courteous and cultured-acting."

"Oh, most of them passed the academic saturation-point years ago, at thirteen or fourteen."

"The academic what?"

"I mean, they're incapable of absorbing any more book-learning. They can't be taught trades because their parents all want them to belong to the business and professional classes and are outraged if they're made to use their hands. So they're given courses in things like basketry and square dancing. Between times they hang around, bored and spoiled, and think up deviltry."

"I am not sinking we should find this custom thuitable."

"You stick to your own customs. If any missionaries for Terran ideas come to Ahlia, I hope you kill them."

Uzhegh shook his crested head. "Yet you have an elaborate apparatus for enforcement of law. Why is it not operating?"

"Because of our theories of juvenile psychology. These hold that all misbehavior is the result of frustration or insecurity and therefore the parents' fault."

"I am glad all Terrans are not like zose. It is partly knowing some like you and Doctor Lofting that made me recommend that our delegation be empowered to sign the constitution. You have done marvelous to keeping ze young of all those different thpecies playing together."

"It hasn't been easy," said Riegel. "Some are worse than human children. The young Akhran is careless about its respirator, and twice we've found it after it had taken it off and passed out. The Moorians, being arboreal, are almost impossible to housebreak. And I had to refuse admission to the young Ghazaq for fear it would eat some of our smaller off-earthers."

"Considering their ancestry, it is natural. How is my Tsit-sav?"

"Fine."

"Has he behaving?"

"Very well. He's a responsible youngster."

"We of Hwrajar-Pchum all are, by comparison."

"Tsitsav has taken the Gordonian, Kranakiloa, under his wing."

"Wing?"

"Protection. Gordonians are jolly enough but carry playfulness to the point of damn foolishness."

"I know. They clown even in ze most solemn moments at the Conference."

They walked in silence. Riegel glanced with affection towards the tall solemn Ahlian. He had found Ahlians the most attractive of the delegates, though most Terrans considered them stuffed-shirty. Their rigid morality struck most earth-men as either hypocritical or impractical. At the same time, it made the more flexible Terrans uncomfortable in their presence. Perhaps Norman Riegel liked them because he was a little like an Ahlian himself.

Uzhegh spoke: "Here we are. Where do I putting zis container?"

They were walking up the driveway of the Scarron estate. The estate had been for sale since Mrs. Scarron died at the ripe but not exceptional age of 143. None of the heirs wanted the place to live in, as the mansion was considered a white elephant.

When the Conference had begun, the Terran bureau that coped with other-worldly visitors sought a means of caring for their young. The bureau had therefore approached Riegel, as the local head of the Society for Interplanetary Union. He, in turn, persuaded the Scarron heirs to lend the mansion rent-free for the summer and a furniture dealer to lend some second-hand furniture. Riegel and his wife, childless themselves, moved into the mansion and ran it as a school-camp for young off-earthers.

Now the Constitution was about to be signed and the extraterrestrial young given back to their parents. The Riegels intended to give the young ones a last farewell party.

Somebody saw Riegel and Uzhegh. The twenty-three off-earthers poured out, walking, running, hopping, and slithering. The one that looked a little like an aard-vark, for instance, was Gnish Axal, the Vza from Altair V. They talked in various approximations of English, except the Wanian whose vocal organs did not work in the human aural range, the Thomasonian who communicated by sign-language, and the two Borisovians who talked by flashing built-in colored lights.

The Gordonian, Kranakiloa, flowed out with the rest. It looked something like an oversized otter with six limbs. The Gordonians presented a problem to the Conference. They had the lowest intelligence of any species represented, though they talked and used tools. There had been discussion of putting them under a trusteeship, but the delegates could not agree on any plan.

Kranakiloa danced around Riegel and Uzhegh, squeaking: "Gimme! Gimme!" and snatching at the container of ice cream.

Tsitsav, the young Ahlian, caught the Gordonian, shook it, and said: "Run off and play or I will thpank you."

Tsitsav was about as tall as Riegel, though of even lighter build. He spoke in his own language to Uzhegh, who responded. Their long forked tongues flickered out, touched, and vanished. Riegel had an impression that the older Ahlian was devoted to his offspring. But it was hard to tell, because, to an outsider, Ahlians' faces seemed expressionless.

The Ahlians walked off claw in claw. Alice Riegel came out and shooed the off-earthers back to their playground. She gave Riegel a sharp look and said:

"What's the matter, darling?"

"Nothing. Just the young thugs at the post office." Riegel gave details.

"Shouldn't you tell the police?"

"That wouldn't do any good, I've told you. They haven't done anything to be arrested for."

"Couldn't they stretch disorderly conduct to cover it?"

"Maybe, but they won't. You know how people are. 'Nothing's too good for our kids' — and they won't believe what 'our kids' are up to."

A wild look came into Riegel's eye and a shrill hoarse tone into his voice. The effect was startling, as his manner was normally urbane and self-possessed. "Some day I'll get a gun and mow the little bastards down! King Herod had the right idea."

"Now, dear," said Alice Riegel. "You need a good strong cup of tea."

"What I need," said Riegel, "is a set of crosses, some spikes, and a hammer."

"The party's coming fine," said Alice brightly. "They've been as good as gold, except that Gnish started to dig up the front lawn for grubs, and I caught Kranakiloa dancing on the high-diving springboard. When I ordered him down he just laughed."

"What did you do?"

"Oh, Tsitsav hauled him down and spanked him, though it's a little like spanking a piece of steel cable."

"They are tough. How about the pool?"

"We've drained and scrubbed it. Doctor Lofting's coming over to give them their final checkups and help with the party."

"Good old Doc! Without him and Tsitsav I don't know how we'd have survived."

The five youths leaned against the front of the post office. Fisher, having picked himself up, glowered at the backs of Riegel and the Ahlian. He said:

"Now we just gotta spatter those ..." He rolled out a string of epithets that stigmatized his subjects' legitimacy, ancestry, chances of salvation, and sexual habits all at once. "We're not gonna let 'em get away with that!"

"What you got in mind, spud?" said Meehan.

"Listen. Longpants bought a gallon of ice cream. That means a party for all the little off-earthers, see? Now, have we all got baseball bats?"

"I don't have none," said Snow.

"Then we'll bust into old man Rizzi's sporting-goods store and get you one. Now, here's what we'll do ..."

He was finishing his explanation when Doctor Lofting got out of his car and walked towards the post office. Again the ventriloquistic muttering arose:

"Look at old Whiskers."

"Bet he chews it in his sleep."

"Nah, that's to make him look like a doctor."

"Him a doctor? Just a drunken old bum."

"He couldn't doctor a horse."

At the entrance to the post office, Lofting turned and said pleasantly: "Boys, if you're trying to make a date with me, you're wasting your time. I'm not that kind of guy."

Then he went in. Lofting at this stage was neither old nor drunken; merely convivial and middle-aged. A widower, he had been drawn to the Riegels by a common interest in the Society for Interplanetary Union. His beard was the only unconventional thing about him, though it was enough to draw the attention of the five.

As Lofting got back in his automobile, Carmichael said: "Sassy little bastard, ain't he?"

"Some day we'll pay him a visit," said Snow.

"Hey, not till we've worked Riegel over!" said Fisher.

"Okay," said Meehan. "Time enough to figure something out for Doc later. Let's meet at twenty-hundred ..."

The parry went beautifully through the long August evening. The young off-earthers sang and romped and played games, all but Gnish the Vza, who lay panting in the heat, and the spidery Martian who was not built for Terran gravity.

Alice Riegel looked at the darkening sky. The Gordonian was getting out of hand, prancing around and nipping the other guests to get them to chase it. Twice Norman Riegel had ordered it down from the high-diving tower of the empty pool.

Lightning flashed and thunder growled. Zeu, the Morenan, threw its tentacles around Alice Riegel in terror. She called:

"Dear! We'd better take them inside."

Riegel looked skyward. "Not yet. It won't rain for another half-hour."

Meehan's gang watched the proceedings through a privet hedge on the grounds. While Mrs. Scarron lived, her gardener had kept the hedge in trim, but now it had shot up to a height of ten feet. From where they stood, the youths could see the mob of young extra-terrestrials playing behind the house. They could not, however, see the kitchen door, which was hidden by a corner of the rambling edifice.

The gang had arrived late, because Kraus had not appeared at the rendezvous, and they had gone to fetch him. In fact, he was afraid of the consequences of the raid and less avid for aggression and destruction than the others. He had hoped they would go without him. But, when they appeared at his home, fear of losing status as a gang member led him to join them.

"Shall we get 'em now?" whispered Fisher, swinging his bat in little circles. "Shall we?"

-"Wait till it gets darker," said Meehan. "They'd know us even with masks in this light."

"Gonna rain soon," said Snow. "Then they'll go in."

"Keep your shirt on, spud," said Meehan. "Who's running this?"

"Boy, I'd sure like a crack at that Martian," said Carmichael. "He'd go splush like a bug."

"He's a buggy bug all right," said Snow, suppressing a giggle at his own wit.

The off-earthers played musical chairs, all but the Martian, the Vza, and Kranakiloa the Gordonian. Kranakiloa was chasing its tail in circles, as its mind could not be kept on any one thing for more than a few seconds.

Thunder came louder. Though the sun had not long set, the clouds darkened the scene almost to full nocturnal gloom. Doc Lofting, wearing a butler's apron, called from the kitchen door:

"Hey, Norman! Better start herding 'em in. I'll dish up the ice cream and cake." Those off-earthers who could not eat these substances were to get their native foods.

"We gotta go now!" wailed Fisher.

"Okay, put the bags on," said Meehan. Each youth produced a paper bag with holes cut for eyes, pulled it over his head, and fastened it in place with a rubber band around his neck.

"Hurry up!" groaned Fisher.

"Ready?" said Meehan. "Let's go!"

The Riegels were herding the last of the extra-terrestrials in the kitchen door when the five youths pushed through the hedge, breaking down some of the privet plants, and ran towards the back of the mansion. They ran quietly, stopping and gripping their bats. As they rounded the corner of the house they could see the kitchen door and the tail-end of the procession going in.

At that instant, Kranakiloa ducked under Riegel's arm and bolted out the door, screeching: "You gan't gatch me!" It loped across the back lawn towards the swimming pool. The first drops fell.

"I will getting him, Profethor," said Tsitsav, the young Ahlian. He pushed past Riegel.

Kranakiloa headed for the high-diving tower. Fisher pointed at the long dark shape rippling past in front of the gang.

"Let's get that one!" he said. "He's by himself."

"Come back!" cried Tsitsav.

Kranakiloa glanced around. There was a bright flash and a crash of thunder. Kranakiloa scooted for a patch of shrubbery.

"Hey! Who you are?" said Tsitsav to the gang as they converged from different directions on the track of the fleeing Gordonian.

The gang slowed uncertainly. Tsitsav danced around to place himself between them and Kranakiloa, who had vanished into the bushes.

"You go away!" said Tsitsav. "I am responsible for him."

Meehan and Fisher stepped forward, swinging their clubs. Tsitsav advanced too, baring his teeth, though he weighed only half what they did.

There was an instant of furious whirling action, a thudding of bats in the hands of five brawny adolescents. Then they stepped back. Meehan wrung blood from his right arm, which had been gashed by Tsitsav's teeth. Tsitsav lay on the sward, his limbs thrashing and tail flopping.

The sound of footsteps brought the boys around. Riegel and Lofting were bearing down on them, the latter armed with a rolling pin. The Meehan gang, despite their advantage in weight and armament, raced off into the darkness, scattering. The older men ran after them until they were winded i and the youths had outrun them and vanished.

"C'mon back — see if he's alive —"gasped Lofting.

He and Riegel returned, breathing heavily. The rain started to come down hard. Riegel said:

"Did you see — any of their faces?"

"No — they had some kind of mask — or hood."

Riegel raised his voice over the storm. "I can guess who they were."

"So — can I but — you'd have a hell of a time proving it."

They got to where Tsitsav lay. Lofting bent over and said: "Get my bag. You'll find it inside the front door. And tell Alice to keep the others in."

When Riegel got back, Lofting looked up at him, water dripping from his goatee. "I'll check, but it'll just be a formality."

"Dead?"

"Good and dead. Skull smashed."

"Isn't there — I mean, he's more like a reptile, and they're pretty tenacious ..."

"No. His brains are squashed and his heart's stopped." Lofting got instruments out of the bag.

"Shall I call police?"

"Just a minute. Let me think," said Lofting. He continued his examination. The downpour slackened. At last Lofting spoke:

"If we call the cops, they'll arrest our young friends and there'll be a big stink, but nobody'll be convicted. We can't swear we recognized anybody because of those bags over their heads. Even if we could, you know what juries are. Electrocute one of our poor dear boys for socking some slimy reptile from outer space?"

"We have to start somewhere with equal enforcement of law."

"What law? The state legislature debated a bill to count off-earthers as people at the last session, but did nothing. Some politicians used just that argument about our poor dear boys. No doubt such a law will be passed, but not in time to help Tsitsav."

"Well, do we just let those little obscenities get away with it?"

"I'm thinking."

"What in hell shall I tell Uzhegh?"

Lofting continued: "If this comes out, it'll break up the Conference. The Ahlians won't sign the Constitution, not that I'd blame them. A lot of the others will pull out too. Away goes Interplanetary union! That's too important. I don't think it's worth revenge for Tsitsav's murder, even if we could get revenge."

"Well then, what? Shall we pretend it was an accident?"

"You're catching on, Norm. First I'll heave Tsitsav into the pool." The body flopped on to the concrete below. "Now let's catch that fool Gordonian. Maybe he doesn't know enough to spoil our scheme."

They dragged a whimpering Kranakiloa out of the bushes. The Gordonian could hardly talk intelligently — not that its talk was ever very intelligent. All they got from it was that it had seen Tsitsav running after it, had started for the shrubs, and then had been frightened out of its few wits by the thunder and hidden itself.

"Go on in the house, Krana," said Riegel, "and get your ice cream and cake." When the Gordonian had left, he said to the doctor: "It apparently never even saw the five masked figures. Now what?"

"We'll say Tsitsav climbed the tower looking for Kranakiloa and fell into the empty pool."

"So we did," said Lofting. "There was a lot of grief and sympathy but no hostility."

"But how did that land you here?" asked Mpanza.

"Couldn't stand it where I was. The Riegels got disgusted with Far Hills and moved away too. I stayed for a few years, watching Meehan's gang sneer when they saw me. They knew I knew. It hurt my professional conscience to fake the death certificate, and it hurt it even more to let those five get away scot-free. Young Tsitsav, under his scales, was a good person.

"Well, I began hitting this stuff more than I should, and my practice went to pot. So I came out here, as it's hard to get a qualified medico to serve the Embassy on Ahlia. If you wonder why I like to do favors for the Ahlians, who aren't very chummy, it's to try to make things up to them."

Okmen said: "If the bottle bothers you, you can fix that by being psyched."

"But don't you see, their modern techniques drag everything out of you? How long could I have hidden the true story of Tsitsav?"

"Oh. But now —"

"Now I don't give a damn any more."

"Well, what did happen to Meehan's gang?"

"Oh, Meehan was killed in a knife fight over a girl, Carmichael went to jail for burglary, and Fisher was killed trying to fly his family's 'plane under a bridge. The other two grew up to be more or less normal adults.

"A few years later, the current child-rearing fad changed from progressive-permissive to rigidly disciplinary. So, the last I heard, the kids were being kept under fair control. But from my point of view, the harm had been done. Charlie! Pour me another, please."