f that---let
alone wade through it. I'm going to faint or something, sure."

"As you were!" he snapped. "You aren't going to pass out now that it's
all over! It's a pretty ghastly mess, I know, but shut your eyes and
I'll carry you out of sight."

"Aren't we out of sight of that place yet?" she demanded after a time.

"I have been for quite a while," he confessed, "but you're sitting
pretty, aren't you? And you aren't very heavy--not here on Ganymede,
anyway!"

* * * * *

"Put me down!" she commanded. "After that crack I won't play with you
any more at all--I'll pick up my marbles and go home!"

He released her and they hurried hack toward their waterfall, keeping
wary eyes sharp-set for danger in any form, animal or vegetable. On the
way back across the foothills Stevens shot another hexaped, and upon the
plateau above the river Nadia bagged several birds and small animals,
but it was not until they were actually in their own little canyon that
their rapid pace slackened and their vigilance relaxed.

"After this, ace, we hunt together and we go back to wearing armor while
we're hunting. It scared me out of a year's growth when you checked
up missing."

"We sure do, Steve," she concurred emphatically. "I'm not going to get
more than a meter away from you from now on. What do you suppose those
horrible things are?"

"Which?"

"Both."

"Those flowers aren't like anything Tellus ever saw, so we have no basis
of comparison. They may be a development of a flycatching plant, or they
may be a link between the animal and the vegetable kingdom. However,
we don't intend to study 'em, so let's forget 'em. Those animals were
undoubtedly intelligent beings; they probably are a race of savages of
this satellite."

"Then the really civilized races are probably...."

"Not necessarily--there may well be different types, each struggling
toward civilization. They certainly are on Venus, and they once were on
Mars."

"Why haven't we seen anything like that before, in all these months?
Things have been so calm and peaceful that we thought we had the whole
world to ourselves, as far as danger or men were concerned."

"We never saw them before because we never went where they lived--you
were a long ways from your usual stamping-grounds, you know. That
animal-vegetable flower is probably a high-altitude organism, living
in the mountains and never coming as low as we are down here. As for
the