l, he
wouldn't think of informing you about matters of which he'd assume that
you, as the superior beings, would be fully cognizant."

"You might have told us there were fish on this planet, Mr. Pitt."

"Dear lady, there is something I feel I should tell you. I am not--"

"They're here on the other side of the ridge," Greenfield called,
bending over and peering through the foliage. "The fish, I mean."

"The pools look shallow," Bernardi said, also bending over. "The fish
should be easy enough to catch. Might even be able to get them in our
hands." He reached out to demonstrate, proving the error of both his
theses, for the fish slipped right through his fingers and, as he
grabbed for them, he lost his balance, toppled over the side of the
ridge into the mud and water below and began to disappear, showing
beyond a doubt that the pools were deeper than he had thought.

"Carl, what are you doing?" Mrs. Bernardi peered into the murky depths
where her husband was threshing about. "Why don't you come out of that
filthy mud?"

His voice, though muffled, was still acid. "It isn't mud, my dear. It's
quicksand!"

"Rope!" the captain exclaimed, grabbing a coil.

"Hold on, chaps!" cried a squeaky voice. "I'm coming to the rescue!" A
stout twelve-foot vine plunged out of the shadows and wrapped one end of
itself around a tree--disregarding the latter's violent objections--and
the other end around Professor Bernardi's thorax, which was just
disappearing into the mud. "Now if one or two of you would haul away,
we'll soon have him out all shipshape and proper. Heave ho! Don't be
afraid of hurting me; my strength is as the strength of ten because my
heart is pure."

"It's that vine!" Dfar-Lll exclaimed. "So that's what has been following
us all along!"

* * * * *

"I can accept the idea of a vegetable thinking," Professor Bernardi
gasped as he was pulled out of the quicksand, "although with the utmost
reluctance." He shook himself like a dog. "But how can it be mobile?"

"You chaps can move around," the vine explained, "so I said to myself:
'Dammit, I'll have a shot at doing that, too.' Hard going at first, when
you're using suckers, but I persevered and I made it. Look, I can talk,
too. Never heard of a vine doing that before, did you? Fact is, I hadn't
thought of it before, but then I never had anyone to communicate with.
All those other vines are so stupid; you have absolutely no idea! Hop