and I'm happy to say that I never saw it again. The gun was visible once more, still firmly clutched in my right hand. It was empty; my fingers were squeezing tightly on the trigger. Much good it had done me!

I passed quickly into the headquarters building, bringing with me a breath of poisonous outer air that set the men inside, except for Carter, to gasping and choking. Not even pausing to say hello, or to apologize for bringing in some of the outer atmosphere with me, I hurried over to the control panel and switched on the visual receptors that showed the outside of the lock. The men out there were fighting each other to get inside the building and kill me. As they managed to battle their way in through the lock, they looked bewildered for a moment, and then all of them, released from the frenzy of hate, collapsed into unconsciousness.

We were a bloody mess, every one of us, but not one of us was seriously hurt. The Aliens had outsmarted themselves. While I had looked like one of them, those parts of me—like my eye stalks—that had seemed to be most vulnerable, so that the Earthmen had gone after them, had turned out to be things like ears and noses. They hurt, but they didn't put me out of action when they were battered. That's all that had saved me from being killed. I didn't figure that out till later, I must admit.

I counted us. We were all safe inside. Then I used an amplifier, connected up to a loudspeaker outside, to call the Aliens. I called for several minutes, without receiving any response, before I realized that they spoke with their minds exclusively and couldn't penetrate into the headquarters where we were with their pseudo-voices.

I sighed and started to go outside, but Jones hauled me back and made me put on a protective suit. He said he couldn't stand another whiff of that atmosphere.

Once outside, I had no trouble communicating with the Aliens. They were very anxious to talk. Apparently they were convinced that, since they believed my mental powers were at least as strong as theirs, there were probably many more Earthmen like me that they wouldn't be able to tackle. I had no trouble at all making a lucrative trading deal with them for Jones' company, once I convinced them that I knew the location of their planets, and that it would be an easy matter to blast them from the face of the universe with primitive, uncivilized fusion bombs. They even promised to send back the men they had taken as pets.

After that, I staggered back inside the camp and 

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