"I like her,"
he admitted. "She wants to call me husband like Sue calls you."

Bailey smiled. "It seems there is a new fad among the natives. Something
like monogamy, I understand."

I said, "What do you think of the idea, Joe?"

He thought it over. "I have not made up my mind."

Sue pressed him, "Why not marry Harmony, Joe?"

In the blunt manner in which he so often made his curious revelations,
Joe blurted out, "Because I am in much demand among all the females. It
is--very pleasant."

Bailey's eyes widened. He ordered, "Bend over, Joe."

Joe obliged so we could all examine his back. There were two brown
stains on his shoulder blades as there should be, but Bailey was not
satisfied. He poked a finger into them and examined the skin under the
hair. "Mango pitch!" he announced. "Stained clean down to the skin. Did
you do that, Joe?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I knew you would force me to go into the ship with the others if I
didn't have the stain."

Benson looked up, shocked. "Then you--you knew what we were trying to
do?"

"Yes. You and Samrogers spoke of it outside the hut one day. You thought
I was asleep. Some of your words puzzled me, so I stayed away from the
ship. Then I found out what they meant."

"But you helped us get the others to go into the ship!"

"It was what you wanted," Joe said simply. "Later, when we went south,
the females saw that only Joe's favorites continued to have babies. So
Joe became very--popular."

I said, "You mean they figured it out?"

Joe smiled. "Did you think we do not know about--" he paused to dredge
among his amazing store of human idioms, "--the facts of life?"

Bailey shook his head. "What a man! What a race! Think what they would
be if they had a human's survival instinct!"

"And thumbs," I added.

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