panel. On the screen before her, reproduced with excellent fidelity in spite of the transmitter's peanut size, appeared whatever Samson was seeing: at the moment, the interior of a bronze-green room and two of the roly-poly, stumpy-legged tentacled autochthons of Kenilworth IV. She could see Samson's hands, whenever he happened to raise them; she could not see his face.

On a smaller screen to the left was a view from a pickup in the ship's hull—a grassy plain, seen from above, with a huge, black, lozenge-shaped spaceship and a cluster of the little KenilFour air-cars.

Samson's voice remarked, "They say the Kassid is coming now."

Midge wanted to say something encouraging and affectionate, but her voice stuck in her throat.

After a moment, a doorway dilated at the end of the pictured room and something hopped in. For the benefit of the listening Harlow at H.Q., Midge began to describe it. "About a meter and a half tall—must be an oxygen breather, I can't see any mask—it's a uniped. Moves partly by hopping, partly by contracting its foot. Rather thick trunk and four limbs besides the foot, two at the very top, two where the trunk joins the leg. A lot of flabby fingers, can't tell how many. Three eyes in a horizontal line, vertical mouth under them. No clothes. Whole thing a dull tan color, with dark pa—"

A doorway dilated and something hopped in.

She broke off, as Samson began to speak. He was evidently replying to the Kassid's speech of welcome. "I'm very happy to be here. My people have heard great things of you from your pupil, David Jackson."

Another long pause, during which Midge said, "Dark patches, apparently at random—no pattern. I would guess the thing to be recently evolved from an undersea stage, tail altered to a foot. Don't know whether there are any exterior organs on the other side—there, it turned around for a minute. No organs. Now the KenilFours are leaving...."

Samson said, "That's why I came."

Another pause, and then, "Yes, thank you." Something that ran on a great many thin, twinkling legs brought in a low stool and ran out again. The interview went on, a meaningless sequence of short questions and comments by Samson, each followed by a long silence. "Yes, of course, that's true." ... "I see" ... "How clear that is now" ... "But in the case of war" ... After a while, Samson's speech began to grow a little 

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