Joe wanted to deny it, but a smile or a grin was to Ganymedians an expression of the ultimate in fury,—and if you said something they did not believe, they thought you lunatic. A very literal-minded folk, these people of Ganymede.

"Oh—dog bad," said Joe curtly. "Kill four men. You talk."

He waited. Ychan stared as blankly as before.

"I talk," he said without expression. "You think you leave Ganymede. Martians say no. I say maybe."

Joe Peabody blinked. Then he stiffened.

"Sit," he said shortly.

A great curved plate in the ship's side opened. The crew of the Winship was opening the destroyer's store-hatch to roll out the swamp-car. Ychan squatted on the ground, where he looked like a wetly glistening anthill. Other Ganymedians moved to watch the swamp-car roll out.

They would watch Yloop climb into it and finger its controls and then—amazingly, the Ganymedians had a knack for the machinery their minds found logical but some literal quality kept them from making—begin its operation with practically the skill of a human who had been carefully instructed in its use.

Joe also squatted, for formal conversation. He frowned, which was courtesy here, insofar as there was any courtesy at all. It was at least a sign of attention which they recognized.

"Talk," said Joe.

The Ganymedian spoke deliberately and without emotion. Like his fellows, he was cold-blooded in all his ways. He had very few words. He used those in their baldest sense. But he knew what he wanted to say. In five minutes Joe had the complete picture. He felt a little cold chill running down his backbone.

The swamp-car came out of the ship, with its huge, inflated tires that were wheels and floats in one. There was a seat modified for non-human use. A truck body and a tiny motor which would drive the unwieldy thing at twenty miles an hour through swamp and thirty or better on solid ground.

Yloop got into it. He tried it. He drove it experimentally on the relatively hard grass-root soil, drove it into the swamp, and made a single circuit of the gannygrass clump.

Then he stopped and beckoned. His mate waddled to the edge of the island and skittered out to it over the mud. Three of the incredible Ganymedian young skittered after her. They climbed 

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