"Ostrich feathers!" Bezdek roared at the dead-panned intruder. "You may not be aware of it but there are severe penalties for holding up a train on this—in this country. You can't go around slugging people either. Look at Ty out there."

"Your servant will be all right," said the intruder, "as will the others aboard this train. I can release them whenever you agree that my mission is to be taken seriously."

"All right," said Bezdek, whose mind was nothing if not acrobatic. "Suppose you are from Mars. Tell me why your people object to our movies. Surely they aren't seeing them on Mars?"

"No. But your Earthmen will reach our planet soon and your opinion of us will be shaped in some degree by these movies they have seen. And since the relationships of the near-future are of vital import to us now we must not be represented as other than we are. Such misconceptions could breed interplanetary war." He shuddered.

"I think you're crazy!" said Bezdek. He turned to the banker, who was again staring out the window.

"There's something out there—look," said Dorwin.

"That is our ship," the intruder told them blandly. "That is why we stopped the train here. It is the only flat area sufficiently unsettled for our landing and departure without detection. We must return at once or lose perihelion."

"Let me see," said Bezdek. He peered through the window. There was something out there—something black and vague and shaped like an immense turtle with jagged projections. He tried to tell himself he was seeing things, failed.

"Amazing!" said E. Carter Dorwin. "It's utterly amazing!"

"Incredible is the word for it," Bezdek said wearily. He faced the intruder, said bluntly, "Very well, you say you're from Mars. And I say to your face that you aren't!"

"You seem remarkably sure, Mr. Bezdek."

"And why not?" The movie-maker was in his element now, delivering the clincher in an argument. "Our scientists have proved conclusively that Earthmen cannot exist on Mars without space-suits. You say you're a Martian. Yet you look like one of us. So if you can live on Mars, how can you live in our atmosphere without a space-suit of some sort? There's one for you to answer!" He chortled.

"But I am wearing protection—a protective suit arranged to give the 

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