the bleak planet that he would name Johnny's
World. He should never have let Johnny go alone up the slope of the
honey-combed mountain--but Johnny had wanted to take the routine record
photographs of the black, tiger-like beasts which they had called cave
cats and the things had seemed harmless and shy, despite their ferocious
appearance.

"I'm taking them a sack of food that I think they might like," Johnny
had said. "I want to try to get some good close-up shots of them."

Ten minutes later he heard the distant snarl of Johnny's blaster. He ran
up the mountainside, knowing already that he was too late. He found two
of the cave cats lying where Johnny had killed them. Then he found
Johnny, at the foot of a high cliff. He was dead, his neck broken by the
fall. Scattered all around him from the torn sack was the food he had
wanted to give to the cats.

He buried Johnny the next day, while a cold wind moaned under a
lead-gray sky. He built a monument for him; a little mound of frosty
stones that only the wild animals would ever see--

* * * * *

A chime rang, high and clear, and the memories were shattered. The
orange light above the hyperspace communicator was flashing; the signal
that meant the Exploration Board was calling him from Earth.

He flipped the switch and said, "Paul Jameson, Exploration Ship One."

The familiar voice of Brender spoke:

"It's been some time since your preliminary report. Is everything all
right?"

"In a way," he answered. "I was going to give you the detailed report
tomorrow."

"Give me a brief sketch of it now."

"Except for their short brown fur, the natives are humanoid in
appearance. But there are basic differences. Their body temperature is
cool, like their climate. Their vision range is from just within the
visible red on into the infrared. They'll shade their eyes from the
light of anything as hot as boiling water but they'll look square into
the ship's floodlights and never see them."

"And their knowledge of science?" Brender asked.

"They have a good understanding of it, but along lines entirely
different from what our own were at their stage of development. For
example: they power their machines with chemicals but there is no steam,
heat, or exhaust."

"That's what we want to find--worlds where branches of research unknown
to our science are being explored. How about their language?"

"No progress with it yet." He told Brender of t