e of the thing?" Garlock asked.

"No. I asked half-a-dozen people, but nobody would even listen to me
except one half-grown boy, and the best he could do was that it might be
something he had heard another boy say somebody had told him might be a
'lemart.' And as to those lower-case Arpalones, the best I could dig out
of anybody was just 'guardians.' Did you do any better?"

"No, I didn't do as well," and he told the girls about his own
experience.

"But I didn't find any detectors or receptors, Clee," Lola frowned.
"Where were they?"

"'Way up--up here," he showed her. "I'll make a full tape tonight on
everything I found out about the guardians and the Arpalones--besides my
regular report, I mean--since they're yours, and you can make me one
about your friend the green bat...."

* * *

"Hey, I _like_ that!" Belle broke in. "That _could_ be taken amiss, you
know, by such a sensitive soul as I!"

"Check." Garlock chuckled. "I'll have to file that one, in case I want
to use it sometime. How're you coming, Belle?"

"Nice!" Belle's voracious mind had been so busy absorbing new
knowledge that she had temporarily forgotten about her fight with
her captain. "I'm just about done here. I'll be ready tomorrow, I
think, to visit their library and tape up some planetological and
planetographical--notice how insouciantly I toss off those two-credit
words?--data on this here planet Hodell."

"Good going. You've been listening to this stuff Lola and I were chewing
on--does any of it make sense to you?"

"It does not. I never heard anything to compare with it."

"Excuse me for changing the subject," Lola put in, plaintively, "but
when, if ever, do we eat? Do we _have_ to wait until that confounded
James boy gets back from wherever it was he went?"

"If you're hungry, we'll eat now."

"_Hungry?_ Look!" Lola turned herself sidewise, placed one hand in the
small of her back, and pressed hard with the other her flat, taut belly.
"See? Only a couple of inches from belt-buckle to backbone--dangerously
close to the point of utter collapse."

"You poor, abused little thing!" Garlock laughed and all three crossed
the room to the dining alcove. While they were still ordering, James
appeared beside them.

"Find out anything?" Garlock asked.

"Yes and no. Yes, in that they have an excellent observatory, with a
hundred-eighty-inch reflector, on a mountain only seventy-five miles
from here. No, in tha