Zytztz said promptly. "And we shall receive the usual rates of pay, I suppose."

The Old Man's eyes narrowed, "Yes," he said thoughtfully, "at least on this first trip. After that it will be up to the IWC."

"Thank you, sir." One leaf raised and dipped in a salute, and Mr. Zytztz shuffled out fast.

The Old Man growled at Healey. "For a plant that isn't human, your Martian friend learns fast."

Healey winced. He had already done a lot of thinking about that.

The Zytztzes made perfect workmen; they were competent, strong, and tireless. But some things they couldn't do—they had to have help for even a simple repair job, but otherwise they had good brains. They followed orders even better than the robots back on Earth.

On the trip home Healey discovered how they had learned the language. They, in effect, read the minds of men. When a man spoke, they got the mental picture from his mind. Healey remembered some of the choice remarks he had made in Mr. Zytztz's hearing before he had any idea about their understanding, and it was, to be conservative, disquieting. He remembered when he had first denied them the right to be classified as humans, and when they reached Havana again he called a meeting of the Classification Section and proposed that the Martians be re-classified. But the other members voted him down, quoting his own law, "They must have eyes."

Healey offered an amendment to repeal that law, but he found out that the bigger an organization is, the more ponderous it is. The section rejected his amendment coldly, and there was nothing else he could do but go down to the bar and initiate an extended research into the efficacy of atomic-busters. He would have given his unofficial rank in the Rocket Service to correct the injustice he had done the Zytztzes.

In the next few years a good many Zytztzes worked on spaceships, of which there got to be quite a number. The only catch with the Zytztzes was that they had to go back to Mars every six months or so to refresh themselves.

Otherwise they were perfect workmen. They never caused any trouble and they were never ill.

One summer the Phoebus was making a trajectory shot over the Sun when Healey spoke to the Old Man about the Zytztzes.

"There is no doubt in my mind that they are human," he 

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