's already gone."

"Two days ago. Your fine feathered friends shunned you when they
learned you were a tsith hound. But I stuck by you," Kueelo added
cunningly.

Latham sank heavily onto a clump of swamp grass. He stared at his
right hand. It had started trembling. He couldn't stop the trembling.
He wondered dully if he was frightened, or if that was a result of the
terrible craving that twisted and writhed within him. He stared up
into the Martian's face.

"Stranded," he said weakly. "But I'll get out of here. I'll hire out
on one of the freighters--"

"You won't." Kueelo's voice was matter-of-fact again. "Not when they
learn you're a tsith hound. And Penger will let them know, you can bet
on that. He's a devil, that Penger."

"But he's an Earthman, and I'm an Earthman!" Latham's voice was almost
a wail. His soul was withering within him.

"Tell Penger that and see what he answers you. You're on the beach, my
friend. You've been there before, but this is the final beach--the
swampside of Venus. And here you'll stay until Penger is ready to let
you go. I've been here five years."

Joel Latham put his head in his hands and tried to think. Kueelo's
voice droned on:

"You'll work for Penger. You'll work in the swamps. An Earthman, a
Martian, a Ganymedian can do ten times the work of one of these
gweels." He gestured at the pallid-faced low-Venusians who moved
listlessly through the mud, pulling up the draanga-weed. "You'll work
for the amount of tsith Penger portions out to you, and glad to get
it."

At the word _tsith_, Latham's head came up. The dawning fear was gone
from his eyes.

"All right! I'll do it, but only for a while, mind you! I'll find a
way out of this. I'm getting back to the iridium fields on Callisto."

He plunged wildly into the mud and sank to his waist. But it was the
thought of tsith that drove him on, not Callisto. Kueelo stood by and
watched, a thin, knowing smile creasing his leathery lips.

A sort of frenzy had come upon Joel Latham. He tore at the stubborn
draanga-weed and brought it up dripping, tossing the long lengths
across his shoulder. He knew of this stuff.

When properly synthesized draanga-weed had a medicinal value on the
various planets. Penger shipped it out four times a year, at a neat
little profit.

Latham moved on. A yellowish fog had come down, the dreaded igniis
fatui. Unless one kept moving, decomposition of the blood set in,
essential salts within the body