. _Diogenes_ hasn't replied; she must be
further off."

"Evidently he doesn't care if the radio works," said Calico.

"Or else he wants the whole armada assembled," added Daley.

"I could use a drink," blurted Kinkare. "You got anything in this place,
Sparks?"

"Gin on the shelf," said the radioman, pointing.

Kinkare picked up the bottle. "You always leave the cap off?"

"No! Somebody's been at it."

"Where is he?" asked Pink in a whisper.

"What, Captain?" Kinkare stopped the bottle halfway to his lips.

"Where the devil is the brute? We combed the place. He can't have got
through the mutiny gates. He can't have slipped past our chain. Where
the hell is he?"

"Maybe disguised as one of us," said Daley slowly. "He isn't a Martian,
but he imitated one to the last pore. Why couldn't he imitate us?"

"Well, _I'm_ me," said Kinkare, and put the bottle to his mouth. Then he
dropped it, screeching. Pinkham stared at him and saw his upper lip
turned violent, hideous scarlet. Blood began to drip to the rug. The
skin and flesh of his lip had dissolved as though sprayed with acid.

Kinkare fell to his knees, covering his face with both arms. The others
sprang to help him, Sparks reaching for the medicine chest; but Pink
snatched up the gin bottle. What the hell? Acid? Or--

From the square spout poured a gush of smoke, writhing sinuous in the
bright indirect light of the small room; it coalesced, clotted into a
body. Impossible, brain-boggling, an unreal fantasy amid the most
concrete achievements of man, the thing swelled into solidity before the
Captain's staring eyes.

He was eight feet tall, three broad; his eyes were brilliant vermilion,
his swollen head was egg-bald, and the expression on his coarse features
was at once lecherous, evil, savage and cunning. He was stark naked,
completely humanoid. And he had come out of the bottle.

A voice boomed from him like a vocalizing cannon. "I object to anyone
trying to drink me!" he roared at them.

In the reeling chaos of all his beliefs gone wild, Pinkham had one sane
thought, and yelled it as fast and short as he could. "Don't shoot! For
God's sake, don't shoot!" Then, as Calico and Jerry held their pistols
partly raised, he said urgently, "We'll only blast each other. Remember
this thing's invulnerable."

The pistols were holstered with reluctance. The five pale men--Kinkare
still thrashed in agony on the floor--gaped at the apparition, which
said, "I am Yn