"Sure. All the stf. fans have their little jokes, and they never miss a chance to use them on some dumb ninny. Once I saw the Misled Biped pull a joke on a guy and he nearly went into epileptic fits. Of course, it was a low-grade joke, or it would have laid him out cold as a mackeral. You better never meet up with a fan when he's in a joking mood, 'cause they don't have a bit of mercy and he'd probably play you till you busted wide open."

The goggling intruders had visions of their marvelous bodies, bloated till they were but horrible travesties of themselves, then to burst apart like rotten bladders. Their eyes tried to pierce the forbidding blackness of the suddenly-alive corners of the room and sandpaper tongues darted nervously across dry lips. This bland-faced boy seated in front of them was suddenly a repulsive gargoyle, squatting in his evil throne and reveling in his fiendish power.

Harl coughed and made a feeble effort to compose himself. He had been right—this was too big for them to cope with. They may as well return to Mars and forget their dream of conquest. The Grand Councilor was a fool for ever sending them on such a foolhardy expedition and he and Kir-Um were still bigger fools for accepting the task. Yet, how could they have known they would have to face a smoothly-geared organization consisting of bloodthirsty monsters and power-mad geniuses who dreamed up fantastic weapons just as an idle pastime? It was a plain case of underestimation of the foe, a miserable, stupid failure.

"Don't give up so easily, Harl," Kir-Um had intercepted Harl's unguarded thoughts and, realizing utter despair was rapidly pulling them down to the point of bolting for the door and making a frantic exit from this mad world, grimly purchased a new hold on his waning optimism.

"Don't forget," he added, carefully shielding his thoughts from the ugly Earth-creature, "once this force is in our hands, we will be as powerful as they. More so, in fact, by virtue of our superior intelligence and our ability to improve the Jokes and make of them weapons far surpassing the crude originals in performance. The mere mention of a Joke seems to cause a strange emotion in this youth; an odd, violent vibrating of the entire body, accompanied by spasmodic grunts and squeaks. Probably it is his passionate reaction to the thought of the magnitude of his terrible deed. It is like nothing a Martian has ever known. But it is proof this Earthling regards his own creation with apprehensive fear and is reverently aware of its immense potentialities. We must also realize only a portion of 

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