task.

Nixon, as he listened, could identify the Gorts, here among the groups of tiny figures within the miniature railed enclosures on the spaceship floor. A hundred or more of them had come up from underneath now, reassured that the giant was helpless. There was one area down beyond Nixon's feet where a group of some thirty of them were bending over a long trough that was high as their knees. They seemed to be eating. They were about Tork's six-inch size, these Gorts. But broader, more squarely solid-looking. Their heads were round, shining like polished leaden balls, with grey-blue faces, square-cut in a grotesque human mould. Their garments, some grey, others of a brownish-black, seemed stiff and jointed like a coat of mail.

"Well, you've got me," Nixon said. "You're taking me now to your world?"

"Yes, that is it," Tork agreed.

"Why? What for? And you talk English—how is that?"

It was only what to them could be called a few years ago, that the Orites had been able to build a spaceship. An expedition had come to Earth. It was a spaceship built for their own size—a cylindrical ship perhaps the size of Nixon's arm. A group of them, including this Tork, had come, landed and stayed for a time. So small, coming during Earth's night, remaining hidden, then moving to other places again during night, it had been easy for them to avoid discovery by the Earth giants.

"We found that your world, it is very beautiful," Tork was saying. "Much better than our own—that you shall see. And perhaps our mind is different from yours. You do not learn strange language by listening, and remembering?"

"Well, yes, but not exactly that." Nixon said. "Children do, I suppose. So you're taking me back to your world? You say you didn't want to kill me. Why should you? What do you want of me?"

He saw Tork turn and gaze at the smaller woman-creature beside him, as though Tork wasn't sure how he should answer that question. They were standing now so that as Nixon had relaxed, prone, with his face turned sidewise, they were only a foot or so away. He could see them more clearly than before. Their garments were of some flexible, metallic fabric—a sort of square-cut tunic and trousers on Tork; and on Nona more of a drape, belted tight at the waist.

Tork's head was round and shining, like a Gort; hers had a little growth of white and gleaming hair on it. And 

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