The big man got to his feet and he was a head taller than Healey and twice as broad. Astonishingly enough, he didn't wobble when he stood.

"Look, Mister." He put a massive forefinger on Healey's chest, and if Healey hadn't been braced he would have been pushed over. "You been handed a dirty deal by the Air Marines, an' I for one am glad you showed 'em up. The dirty—"

He did not finish. Healey stepped back, calculated the range and the resistance, and let the big man have one on the button. It was a very solid punch—so solid, in fact, that the big man relaxed at full length on the floor.

"He insulted the Marines," Healey said ruefully when Pickens bailed him out that evening. "Can't they understand we're not sore at the Marines. We're trying to get back in the Marines."

Pickens sighed.

"People probably lack understanding more than anybody," he said.

CHAPTER IV

Mr. Zytztz Comes Aboard

A week later the World Council organized an Interplanetary Bureau, and one of its sub-divisions was the Classification Section. The Old Man was asked for a recommendation for membership in that section, and he recommended Healey.

"It's mostly an honor, more than anything else."

But at the first meeting Healey was elected chairman and then he suddenly discovered that the Classification Section had the task of determining whether non-terrestrial beings were anthropomorphic or, in other words, human.

They had Healey on the spot. He couldn't back down, so he suggested that no being should be called "human" unless it had eyes, and that rule passed unanimously.

Next day he read that the Ethics Section, to forestall trouble, had passed a rule that no non-terrestrial creature of any sort might be made the subject of a post-mortem examination for the next fifty years.

Apparently the entire population of the Earth was extremely conscious of the danger of offending unknown creatures, and pressure was brought everywhere to provide a set-up of laws that would absolutely preclude injury or offense to the Martians or any other inhabitant of a 

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