came from her. "Do you want a cot?"

"I'll have a room this time," said Grant. "How much?"

"A buck," said Nellie's leaves. "Pay now."

She collected. He took his diving-suit to the room. He didn't like the
smell of cabbage and garlic, and the fumes of chlorine were so strong
he nearly choked. A Saturnian must be pickling insects somewhere up on
the second floor. He sat down. He was starved but he didn't want to go
outside until he had a chance to figure things out. He thought maybe
the first thing to do was to see Netse.

From the sounds he thought the two girls across the hall were getting
ready to go out. He lay down on the bed to rest.

At ten o'clock they left, jabbering. It was good to hear Earth-people
talk, even if it was French, which he didn't understand. As soon as
the front door closed after the girls he tiptoed across the hall and
tried the doorknob. It was locked. He opened it with his skeleton key.
The room was dark and he did not turn on a light. He opened the window
and dropped softly to the ground in a narrow space between two
buildings.

A grating voice said, "Where you going, punk?"

Grant froze. He wanted to run but couldn't. He turned. Back at the
alley, in the light, was a medium-size, solidly built man with black
hair and a long scar on his left cheek. Grant wheeled, but stopped
short. In front of him, at the street end, was a huge Neptunian. It
was ten feet high. Grant shuddered. He didn't want that thing too
close to him with its razor-sharp teeth and its fondness for blood. He
walked toward the Earthman.

* * * * *

They took him into a snow-joint over on Chloride Street. The man led,
the Neptunian followed. They went down many flights of stairs carved
in the solid purple lava and finally into an elevator. They went
farther down.

This, then, was Relegar's headquarters. The Uranian couldn't stand
radiation for any length of time. Out on Uranus they had almost none,
and so Venus, with its very heavy clouds that filtered the sunlight,
was one of the few planets where a Uranian could live. Even so, the
Uranians on Venus, having an instinctive dread of sunlight because
sunlight usually meant radiation, preferred to stay underground.
Perhaps it was more like their native world that way, for they lived
underground even on Uranus.

They got out of the elevator in a rock cavern and walked a hundred
feet. They passed two guards and went through a steel door.