of various arrangements of dots and straight lines. Apparently this was for his amusement only, for he would always crumple the sheets and toss them into the waste-basket.

And whether he could see or not, he had an excellent sense of perception, for he never missed the basket. Captain Healey envied his accuracy.

But Healey discovered one thing: the Zytztzes were not artisans.

One day Mr. Zytztz was using a mechanical pencil and it ran out of lead, and he worked at it for an hour without discovering what was wrong or even how to take it apart. He just stood there turning it over with the tips of his leaves and examining it aimlessly, touching it here and there or pulling on it gently, but obviously as helpless as a baby. He finally gave it to Healey to fix, and the captain decided Mr. Z. wouldn't be much good on an atomic toaster.

It was when Healey gave the pencil back to him with a new lead that he discovered Mr. Zytztz could talk.

A rustling came from somewhere within his leaves and it said "Thank you" very clearly. Healey had become so used to him that he said, "You're welcome," before he realized what had happened, and then stared at the plant with his eyes wide open and blurted out:

"You can talk!"

Mr. Zytztz's leaves nodded—rather complacently, Healey thought, and the rustling came again, and Healey distinguished more words.

They sounded like, "I'm glad you understand. Our enunciation isn't very good, but I will try to do better."

Healey's mouth was open. Yes, Mr. Zytztz could talk. His words were accompanied by that rustling that made the sounds fuzzy and not too distinct, but by listening carefully, as one would when hearing a foreigner speak an unfamiliar language, one could understand.

Healey was quite unable to see where the sound originated, but the thing that dumfounded him was that, without coaching or teaching, Mr. Zytztz had learned to speak the so-called English language with grammatical perfection in a few months—and not just stock phrases either; like "Give me a ham-on-rye" or "How about a shot in the arm, Buddy, to sweep the cobwebs out of my brain?" but abstract concepts.

"My enunciation isn't very good," Mr. Zytztz had said!

CHAPTER V

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