"The girl," said Max.

Disbro snorted and skinned his teeth in scorn.

"How," he demanded of the misty skies, "do I get mixed up with minus quantities like this? A girl, the man says! Here on Venus!"

"A girl," repeated Max firmly.

Disbro wheeled upon him.

"Come off of that!" he commanded sharply. "Planter's gone. Dead. You're all I have to associate with. You'll act sane, whether you are or not."

Max's big, pained eyes faltered before the glittering accusation of Disbro's gaze. "All right," he conceded.

"There wasn't any girl there, you idiot!"

Max nodded. "I saw—"

"Shut up!" Disbro cut him off. "No girl, I said!"

"No girl," repeated Max obediently.

Rain began to fall, fat drops the size of marbles.

"Back inside," commanded Disbro. "There'll be lots of this kind of weather. We'll have something to eat, then study another way to reach the trees yonder."

"No girl," said Max. "But I saw."

The rain that drove Disbro and Max back into their shelter filtered through layers of leafage, beginning to wash the mud from Planter's clothing. He stared again at his rescuer.

"I seem to have understood what you said," he managed at last.

"Isn't so strange, that?" she flung back, in words somehow run together. "E'en though you're mad enow to sport with yonder muck-worm," and her wide, bright blue eyes flicked toward the danger he had lately avoided, "you'll have the tongue of mankind. Art no man?"

"Man enough, young woman," rejoined Planter, a little nettled. "I suppose it's like the fantasies—we can read each other's minds, or something."

"Something," she echoed, as if humoring a child.

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