tricky."

Rickey pricked up his ears. That sounded like his name. Joe paced up and down.

"They're too darned literal to be tricky!"

Rickey was sure he heard his name. He stood up, his tail wagging. He pawed at Joe's foot. Joe stopped short. He stared down at the ship's mascot, then spoke feverishly.

"But they won't expect us to be tricky either! Look, Dick! They saw you grinning at Rickey and I told 'em he'd killed four men. With no sense of humor they aren't capable of understanding. They simply can't conceive of anything but coldbloodedness. They haven't any weaknesses, and that's one terrible weakness! Now listen!"

It was very, very simple. Less than an hour after Ychan told him of his situation, Joe Peabody went out of the airlock again onto the yielding, intermatted roots which were the solid ground of Ganymede. Inside the ship, Dick Harkness painstakingly finished the fitting of a pressure-fuse into a small smoke-bomb made in the shape of a padlock. And that was all.

Joe scowled, outside the airlock, which to the Ganymedians meant tranquil and untroubled meditation. A Ganymedian looked at him blankly.

"Tell Ychan I talk," said Joe curtly.

He squatted down. Only minutes later Ychan waddled up and plumped down in a heap that looked like a glistening anthill. Joe spoke without preliminaries.

Because of the utterly literal minds of Ganymedians, and their scorn for indirection of any sort, it was necessary to phrase things especially for their comprehension. Scowling, Joe talked in the monotonous tone and idiom used for the strictly business-like conversation of Ychan's kind.

Earthmen, said Joe, were prepared against the Martian weapon. He had passed his time inside the ship simply in setting up detectors for the detonation-beam in case the Martians were fools enough to try it. If they did, with Ganymedian assistance, Joe and the Winship would prove to them how completely foolish it was. If the Martians were fools enough to make war on Earth, they would be wiped out. And their friends. And their friends!

Joe paused to let that sink in. Ychan had listened without emotion. Now he said tonelessly.

"How?"

Joe said shortly that if the 

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