e under her bark.

Lingua Four was determined to be the first lady of Arbor, the capital
city of Mercury. To this end Lingua Four had labored unceasingly. She
was president of half the women's clubs of Arbor. She could always be
depended upon to furnish the best in new and diverting subjects.

She headed almost all committees for aid or research on any type of
problem. It was owing to Lingua Four being president of the Committee
for Undernourished Arborians that Probos Five was making this
ill-starred trip. His purpose was to capture a few of the upright,
divided trunk animals that inhabited the third planet.

They were to be transported to Mercury and given over to scientific
study as to their edible qualities. If it were found that the divided
trunk creatures were fit for Mercurian consumption, the problem of
undernourishment would no longer exist since the supply of divided
trunks was seemingly inexhaustible. Mercurians had made expeditions to
the third planet before and every report concluded with--"Divided trunk
creatures increasing in number."

Privately Probos Five doubted the possibility of using the divided
trunks for food, since the last expedition once again reported a
complete lack of captives due to the frail and tenuous bodies of the
divided trunks. Then, too, transportation and preservation posed a
tremendous problem, not to mention the difficulty of trying to eat
something that might vaporize on your fork. But then these questions may
never arise, he decided, for of all the reports perused by Probos Five
not one expedition had succeeded in bringing a divided trunk to Mercury.

All reports were read to the last letter by Probos Five before
assembling equipment for his own trip. In the reports he had noted many
of the difficulties of the earlier missions. Planet Three was impossible
for a Mercurian without a heated space suit. The temperature of Planet
Three was so low that it would literally freeze a Mercurian stiff in a
matter of seconds.

The casualties of the early expeditions had been numerous. Many
Mercurians had succumbed to the bitter cold due to flaws in space suits
and other accidents. A break in the suit meant instant death. The
victims of such mishaps were invariably buried in the isolated, sparsely
inhabited Polar regions to avoid alarming the divided trunk creatures.

It was strange, mused Probos Five, that the divided trunks were
seemingly unable to bear the slightest increase in temp