h a squawking and screeching that I thought he'd gone batty."

"If possible!" jeered Harrison.

"So we started over there without him; he kept wailing and screaming,
'No-no-no! Tick!' but that made us the more curious. He sailed over our
heads and stuck on his beak, and went through a dozen other antics, but
we ploughed on, and finally he gave up and trudged disconsolately along
with us.

"The valley wasn't more than a mile southeast of the city. Tweel could
have covered the distance in twenty jumps, but he lagged and loitered
and kept pointing back at the city and wailing 'No--no--no!' Then he'd
sail up into the air and zip down on his beak directly in front of us,
and we'd have to walk around him. I'd seen him do lots of crazy things
before, of course; I was used to them, but it was as plain as print that
he didn't want us to see that valley."

"Why?" queried Harrison.

"You asked why we came back like tramps," said Jarvis with a faint
shudder. "You'll learn. We plugged along up a low rocky hill that
bounded it, and as we neared the top, Tweel said, 'No breet', Tick! No
breet'!' Well, those were the words he used to describe the silicon
monster; they were also the words he had used to tell me that the image
of Fancy Long, the one that had almost lured me to the dream-beast,
wasn't real. I remembered that, but it meant nothing to me--then!

"Right after that, Tweel said, 'You one-one-two, he one-one-two,' and
then I began to see. That was the phrase he had used to explain the
dream-beast to tell me that what I thought, the creature thought--to
tell me how the thing lured its victims by their own desires. So I
warned Leroy; it seemed to me that even the dream-beast couldn't be
dangerous if we were warned and expecting it. Well, I was wrong!

"As we reached the crest, Tweel spun his head completely around, so his
feet were forward but his eyes looked backward, as if he feared to gaze
into the valley. Leroy and I stared out over it, just a gray waste like
this around us, with the gleam of the south polar cap far beyond its
southern rim. That's what it was one second; the next it was--Paradise!"

"What?" exclaimed the captain.

Jarvis turned to Leroy. "Can you describe it?" he asked.

The biologist waved helpless hands, "_C'est impossible!_" he whispered.
"_Il me rend muet!_"

"It strikes me dumb, too," muttered Jarvis. "I don't know how to tell
it; I'm a chemist, not a poet. Paradise is as good a word as I can