rk
struggled, his green skin paling to a yellowish tinge at the touch of
the bitter and unexpected cold._]

"Help Dunark back in, Mart," he directed crisply. "Hop in, girls--we've
got to take these folks back up where they can live."

Seaton shut the door, and as everyone lay flat in the seats Crane, who
had taken the controls, applied one notch of power and the huge vessel
leaped upward. Miles of altitude were gained before Crane brought the
cruiser to a stop and locked her in place with an anchoring attractor.

"There," he remarked calmly, "gravitation here is approximately the same
as it is upon Osnome."

"Yes," put in Seaton, standing up and shedding clothing in all
directions, "and I rise to remark that we'd better undress as far as the
law allows--perhaps farther. I never did like Osnomian ideas of
comfortable warmth, but we can endure it by peeling down to
bedrock----"

* * * * *

Sitar jumped up happily, completely restored, and the three women threw
their arms around each other.

"What a horrible, terrible, frightful world!" exclaimed Sitar, her eyes
widening as she thought of her first experience with our earth. "Much as
I love you, I shall never dare try to visit you again. I have never been
able to understand why you Terrestrials wear what you call 'clothes,'
nor why you are so terribly, brutally strong. Now I really know--I will
feel the utterly cold and savage embrace of that awful earth of yours as
long as I live!"

"Oh, it's not so bad, Sitar." Seaton, who was shaking both of Dunark's
hands vigorously, assured her over his shoulder. "All depends on where
you were raised. We like it that way, and Osnome gives us the pip. But
you poor fish," turning again to Dunark, "with all my brains inside your
skull, you should have known what you were letting yourself in for."

"That's true, after a fashion," Dunark admitted, "but your brain told me
that Washington was _hot_. If I'd have thought to recalculate your
actual Fahrenheit degrees into our loro ... but that figures only
forty-seven and, while very cold, we could have endured it--wait a
minute, I'm getting it. You have what you call 'seasons.' This, then,
must be your 'winter.' Right?"

"Right the first time. That's the way your brain works behind my pan,
too. I could figure anything out all right after it happened, but hardly
ever beforehand--so I guess I can't blame you much, at that. But what I
want to know is, h