eir
private nervous systems, the sounds exist as waves in the public
atmosphere. I'm going to assume that the Lord Mayor and his stooges
were all trying to say the same thing when they were pointing to
themselves, and I'm going to see if all four of those sounds have
any common characteristic."

By the time dinner was over, they were all talking in circles, none
of them hopefully. They all made recordings of the speech about the
slithy toves in the Malemute Saloon; Lillian wanted to find out what
was different about them. Luis Gofredo saw to it that the camp
itself would be visible-lighted, and beyond the lights he set up
more photoelectric robot sentries and put a couple of snoopers to
circling on contragravity, with infra-red lights and receptors. He
also insisted that all his own men and all Dave Questell's Navy
construction engineers keep their weapons ready to hand. The natives
in the village were equally distrustful. They didn't herd the cattle
up from the meadows where they had been pastured, but they lighted
watch-fires along the edge of the mound as soon as it became dark.

* * * * *

It was three hours after nightfall when something on the
indicator-board for the robot sentries went off like a startled
rattlesnake. Everybody, talking idly or concentrating on writing up
the day's observations, stiffened. Luis Gofredo, dozing in a chair,
was on his feet instantly and crossing the hut to the instruments.
His second-in-command, who had been playing chess with Willi
Schallenmacher, rose and snatched his belt from the back of his
chair, putting it on.

"Take it easy," Gofredo said. "Probably just a cow or a horse--local
equivalent--that's strayed over from the other side."

He sat down in front of one of the snooper screens and twisted knobs
on the remote controls. The monochrome view, transformed from infra
red, rotated as the snooper circled and changed course. The other
screen showed the camp receding and the area around it widening as
its snooper gained altitude.

"It's not a big party," Gofredo was saying. "I can't see--Oh,
yes I can. Only two of them."

The humanoid figures, one larger than the other, were moving
cautiously across the fields, crouching low. The snooper went down
toward them, and then he recognized them. The man and woman whom
the blue-robed villager had tried to shove out of the queue, that
afternoon. Gofredo recognized them, too.

"Your friends, Mark