her way, it's better than what Jones
calls them.

They took away our rifles and brought us right to Kroger and Pat,
without our even asking. Jones is mad at the way they got the rifles so
easily. When we came upon them (a group of maybe ten, huddling behind a
boulder in ambush), he fired, but the shots either bounced off their
scales or stuck in their thick hides. Anyway, they took the rifles away
and threw them into the stream, and picked us all up and took us into a
hole in the cliff wall. The hole went on practically forever, but it
didn't get dark. Kroger tells me that there are phosphorescent bacteria
living in the mold on the walls. The air has a fresh-dug-grave smell,
but it's richer in oxygen than even at the stream.

We're in a small cave that is just off a bigger cave where lots of
tunnels come together. I can't remember which one we came in through,
and neither can anyone else. Jones asked me what the hell I kept writing
in the diary for, did I want to make it a gift to Martian archeologists?
But I said where there's life there's hope, and now he won't talk to me.
I congratulated Kroger on the lichen I'd seen, but he just said a short
and unscientific word and went to sleep.

There's a Martian guarding the entrance to our cave. I don't know what
they intend to do with us. Feed us, I hope. So far, they've just left us
here, and we're out of rations.

Kroger tried talking to the guard once, but he (or it) made a whistling
kind of sound and flashed a mouthful of teeth. Kroger says the teeth are
in multiple rows, like a tiger shark's. I'd rather he hadn't told me.

* * * * *

_June 23, 1961, I think_

We're either in a docket or a zoo. I can't tell which. There's a rather
square platform surrounded on all four sides by running water, maybe
twenty feet across, and we're on it. Martians keep coming to the far
edge of the water and looking at us and whistling at each other. A
little Martian came near the edge of the water and a larger Martian
whistled like crazy and dragged it away.

"Water must be dangerous to them," said Kroger.

"We shoulda brought water pistols," Jones muttered.

Pat said maybe we can swim to safety. Kroger told Pat he was crazy, that
the little island we're on here underground is bordered by a fast river
that goes into the planet. We'd end up drowned in some grotto in the
heart of the planet, says Kroger.