e aware of this condition of things Costigan became
morose. He sat still, drooped, and pined away visibly. He refused to
eat, and of the worried specialist he demanded liberty. Then, failing in
that as he knew he would fail, he demanded something to _do_. They
pointed out to him, reasonably enough, that in such a civilization as
theirs there was nothing he _could_ do. They assured him that they would
do anything they could to alleviate his mental suffering, but that since
he was a museum piece he must see, himself, that he must be kept on
display for a short time. Wouldn't he please behave himself and eat, as
a reasoning being should? Costigan sulked a little longer, then wavered.
Finally he agreed to compromise. He would eat and exercise if they would
fit up a laboratory in his apartment, so that he could continue the
studies he had begun upon his own native planet. To this they agreed,
and thus it came about that one day the following conversation was held:

"Clio? Bradley? I've got something to tell you this time. Haven't said
anything before, for fear things might not work out, but they did. I
went on a hunger strike and made them give me a complete laboratory. As
a chemist I'm a darn good electrician; but luckily, with the sea-water
they've got here, it's a very simple thing to make...."

"Hold on!" snapped Bradley. "Somebody may be listening in on us!"

"They aren't. They can't, without my knowing it, and I'll cut off the
second anybody tries to synchronize with my beam. To resume--making
Vee-Two is a very simple process, and I've got everything around here
that's hollow clear full of it...."

"How come they let you?" asked Clio.

"Oh, they don't know what I'm doing. They watched me for a few days, and
all I did was make up and bottle the weirdest messes imaginable. Then I
finally managed to separate oxygen and nitrogen, after trying hard all
of one day; and when they thought they saw that I didn't know anything
about either one of them or what to do with them after I had them, they
gave me up in disgust as a plain dumb ape and haven't paid any attention
to me since. So I've got me plenty of kilograms of liquid Vee-Two, all
ready to touch off. I'm getting out of here in about three minutes and a
half, and I'm coming over after you folks, in a new, iron-powered
space-speedster that they don't know I know anything about. They've just
given it its final tests, and it's the slickest thing you ever saw."

"But Con