time a newcomer was added to their ranks. I shook hands with some, but most were too hilarious to go through the ceremony.

Blackie Conover yelled, "I'll bet anybody two to one he brought a .22 Hornet to shoot himself a zloor. Two to one!"

"Do we look like suckers?" Mike yelled back at him.

I sank into a chair and took it for awhile. "I can wait," I growled at them. "Sooner or later somebody'll get around to telling me what goes on."

"He can wait, he says," Doughbelly fairly yelped in delight. "Brother, he ain't just a whistlin' Terra Forever, he can wait! Bring on the woji! Start the initiation!"

I woke up in the morning in Mike Holiday's apartment. I groaned and told myself that I was sworn off of woji for all time.—I didn't know then that Terra-side liquor sold for ten credits a bottle.

Mike was grinning down at me. "You'll get used to woji," he said.

"I should live so long," I moaned. Then I sat up suddenly in the bed. "You guys wouldn't tell me anything last night," I said. He was still grinning. "That's part of the initiation into the Zloor Club. What'd'ya want to know, Nap?"

I swung my feet over the side of the bed and came to a sitting position. I groaned and shook my head in an attempt to clear it.

"What are half the professional hunters I know doing on Mars?"

He spun a chair around so that the back faced me, and straddled it, his arms resting on the top rung. "Same thing you are, Nap. Being suckers for that makron Westley Marks."

I started to say something there but he interrupted me with a wave of a hand. "This is what it boils down to. Marks has a contract with some branch of the government to bring back one or more zloors. And don't ask me why he doesn't go out and catch one himself—he's tried."

"He has, eh?"

"Yeah, he has. Had a whole crew up here. What makes it nice for him is that he's on a cost plus basis. If he never succeeds, it'll still be money in his pocket; if he does, he gets a whopping big bonus. Every time he sends another man up here to take a crack at getting a zloor, he makes money. No doubt the way he told you the story, you'd think you were the only one trying."

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