ground below, as seen through the snooperscope, was utterly featureless save for some hundreds of thousands of identical clumps of gannygrass. That was Ganymede—gannygrass and swamp.

"Remember the recruiting posters we saw, last time on Earth?" growled Dick Harkness to Joe. "'Deep Space is calling you! Ride a Comet and see the Worlds!' There oughta be a law! Look below! Who wants to see this?"

Joe Peabody watched his instruments, scratching Rickey's head absently. He'd picked out a patch of gannygrass to land on, and the snakeye corrected course if the little ship swerved by a hairsbreadth. But he watched, anyway.

"Things could be worse," he said. "They've got to recruit spacemen somehow. If glamor-posters make 'em join up, why not?"

"Glamor!" said Dick. "Look below! They ought to put a Ganymedian on the recruiting board. He'd fix those posters! 'Be a Destroyer Spaceman! Spend your time running errands! Visit Ganymede and See the Swamps! Learn to Salute!' That's the way a Ganymedian would make the posters read!"

The Winship swung ever so slightly and settled toward the chosen grass patch. Joe nodded in satisfaction. Dick Harkness grumbled again.

"Look at the doggone place! Venus is bad enough, with an aerosol for an atmosphere, and Mercury is worse! But at least the natives are human, after a fashion! Shut your eyes and listen to a Mercurian trying to bargain you out of your back teeth and you feel almost chummy. Hold your nose and watch a Venus-girl dance and you almost get sentimental! But these Ganymedians, with the way they—"

"Yeah," said Joe. He pushed the landing-cushion button. There was a tiny impact, and an infinitesimal movement in the gannygrass began directly below them. The bending spread out like a wave.

"Have to warn the crew again, Dick. Tell 'em to remember all over again that Ganymedians talk like paymasters figure. Specific. Exact. They don't understand exaggeration and they don't understand jokes. If you tell them something that isn't literally true, they think you're crazy."

"They're not human," said Dick gloomily. "They never lie and they make you mad. Huh! They send word by space-radio to a passing freighter that this chief Yloop wants a swamp-car. Then they wait for it. We'll deliver it and they'll look at it and say, 'Yes. This it.' Or else they'll say, 'This not right.' And that's all! Then they'll go off with the swamp-car."

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