he answered, and he was already sure that he knew why the little
animal had spoken to him.

Barber came up and saw the six chipmunk-bears. "Six of them!" he
exclaimed. "There's one in the next cave--the damned thing spoke to me!"

"I thought so," he replied. "You told it we'd have it for supper and
then it said, 'You think you'll do what?' didn't it?"

Barber's face showed surprise. "How did you know that?"

"They're telepathic between one another," he said. "The yellow one there
repeated what the one you spoke to heard you say and it repeated what
the yellow one heard me say. It has to be telepathy between them."

"Telepathy----" Barber stared at the six little animals, who stared back
with their fascinated curiosity undiminished. "But why should they want
to repeat aloud what they receive telepathically?"

"I don't know. Maybe at some stage in their evolution only part of them
were telepaths and the telepaths broadcasted danger warnings to the
others that way. So far as that goes, why does a parrot repeat what it
hears?"

There was a scurry of movement behind Barber and another of the little
animals, a white one, hurried past them. It went to the yellow one and
they stood close together as they stared up. Apparently they were
mates....

"That's the other one--those are the two that mocked us," Barber said,
and thereby gave them the name by which they would be known: mockers.

* * * * *

The mockers were fresh meat--but they accepted the humans with such
friendliness and trust that Barber lost all his desire to have one for
supper or for any other time. They had a limited supply of dried meat
and there would be plenty of orange corn. They would not go hungry.

They discovered that the mockers had living quarters in both the cool
caves and the ones warmed by the hot springs. There was evidence that
they hibernated during the winters in the warm caves.

There were no minerals in the mockers' valley and they set out to
continue their circuit of the chasm. They did not get far until the heat
had become so great that the chasm's tributaries began going dry. They
turned back then, to wait in the little valley until the fall rains
came.

* * * * *

When the long summer was ended by the first rain they resumed their
journey. They took a supply of the orange corn and two of the mockers;
the yellow one and its mate. The other mockers watched them leave