"It's a cajora. The Martians keep them as pets," she insisted.

Nick's scalp crawled as the big animal glided through the darkness and its coarse fur made sandpaper sounds against Susan's legs. He had seen the six-legged beasts on the surface, large as Earth tigers.

"Mel nikko twa Klev," Susan said soothingly. "Mel nikko twa Klev?"

The creature purred.

Nick kept his gun ready and swung toward the girl. She could feel him tense with suspicion. Indoctrination had impressed upon Nick's mind the story that Jackson Jones and his daughter had turned traitor to Earth, siding in with the dangerous and degenerate Marties.

"What'd you say?" he asked.

"That's Martian." Her answer was matter-of-fact. "I asked him where Klev is."

"Martian?" Nick was astonished. "Have they a real language? Then they're really intelligent?" He had suspected but hadn't known.

"Of course," she whispered. "Ssh! You're disturbing the cajora."

"What's Klev? What do you want?"

"He's a Martian. My friend," she answered, and talked to the cajora again as though it were a dog or cat.

"I think he understands," she said after a little. "Keep your hand on him and follow."

Nick was hesitant, but the only alternative was to remain in the pitch black, musty tunnel.

For hours they shuffled blindly along, their hands meeting in the loose fur of the beast's neck. The tunnel sloped downward, turning right and left so that within minutes Nick was hopelessly lost. Time and again his outstretched fingers, trailing along the wall, encountered the emptiness of side tunnels and branchings, but the cajora moved purposefully ahead. Several times Nick tried to talk, to ask the questions which were perplexing him, but each time the girl silenced him.

"You'll distract the cajora," she warned.

The animal stopped short as they rounded a turn and saw a glimmer of light ahead.

"They don't like light," she explained. "We'll have to go on alone."

The light came from a 

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