ad a busy day.
Our nerve-energy was burned out.

Hopelessness warped all of my thoughts. I must have slipped into the
coma of exhaustion. I had jangled dreams about Alice and the kids and
home, and almost imagined I was there.

Half awake again, I had a cursing spree, calling myself fifty kinds of
a numbskull. Be passive before the people of other worlds! Reassure
them! How did we ever think up that one? We'd been crazy. Why didn't
we at least use our guns when we'd had the chance? It wouldn't have
made any difference to be killed right away.

Now we were sacrificial lambs on the altar of a featherbrained idea
that the inhabitants of worlds that had always been separate from the
beginning should become friends, learn to swap and to benefit from the
diverse phases of each other's cultures. How could Martians who
hatched out of lumps of mud be like humans at all?

Klein, Craig, Miller and I were alone in that room. There were
crystal-glazed spy-windows in the walls. Perhaps we were still being
observed.

* * * * *

While I was sleeping, the exit had been sealed with a circular piece
of glassy stuff. Near the floor there were vents through which air was
being forced into the room. Hidden pumps, which must have been hastily
rigged for our reception, throbbed steadily.

Miller, beside me, had removed his oxygen helmet. His grin was
slightly warped as he said to me: "Well, Nolan, here's another
parallel with what we've known before. We had to keep Etl alive in a
cage. Now the same thing is being done to us."

This could be regarded as a service, a favor. Yet I was more inclined
to feel that I was like something locked up in a zoo. Maybe Etl's
case was a little different. For the first thing he had known in life
was his cage.

I removed my oxygen helmet, too, mainly to conserve its air-purifier
unit, which I hoped I might need sometime soon--in an escape.

"Don't look so glum, Nolan," Miller told me. "Here we have just what
we need, a chance to observe and learn and know the Martians better.
And it's the same for them in relation to us. It's the best situation
possible for both worlds."

I was thinking mostly--belatedly--of my wife and kids. Right then,
Miller was a crackpot to me, a monomaniac, a guy whose philosophical
viewpoint went way beyond the healthy norm. And I soon found that
Craig and Klein agreed with me now. Something in our attitude had
shifted.

I don't know how lo