couldn't stand listening any longer to the old man's babbling. He rolled aimlessly, up one street and down another. And he thought of how they would receive his answer when he went back to Gfun.

Was it him or the planet that they would consider mad? Almost certainly, they wouldn't believe him. He could imagine the exchange of wondering glances, the first delicate hints that the long trip had deranged him, the not so delicate hints later on when he persisted in sticking to his story. He remembered the high hopes with which he had departed, the messages with which he had been entrusted by the Chief of Planetary Affairs, the Head of the Scientific Bureau, the Director of Economic Affairs, and countless others. And he could imagine the reception he would find when he reported that he had been unable to deliver a single message.

How long he rolled in this aimless fashion he did not know. After a time he seemed to come to his senses. It was no use trying to run away from reality, as he was doing. He had to go back to the ship and return to Gfun. Let them believe him or not, his report would tell the truth. And the pictorial and auditory records would confirm his story.

What a planet, he thought again. Of all its hundreds of millions, its billions of inhabitants, not one had the curiosity, the ordinary intellectual decency, to be interested in him. Not one had the imagination, the awareness—

"Pardon me," said a shrill voice, "Excuse me for reading thoughts, but I could not help overhearing—I am a visitor here myself."

He swung around. The figure before him was strange, but an aura of friendliness came from it and he knew there was nothing to fear. Nothing to fear—and much to be thankful for.

With a heartfelt double sigh, while disinterested passersby spared them not even a glance, pink tentacles and green streamers clasped in a gesture of friendship that spanned the millions of miles of interplanetary space.

 Prev. P 8/8