ivity," his daughter said crisply.

"So's ritual bathing before mass murder," his wife added.

"Please! Still, as I was about to say, we do have the moral duty to
succor him if, as you all too reasonably suggest, he has been
incapacitated by a germ or virus or, more likely, by some simple
environmental factor such as Earth's greater gravity."

"Tell you what, Pop--I can look in the bathroom window and see what he's
doing. All I have to do is crawl out my bedroom window and along the
gutter a little ways. It's safe as houses."

* * * * *

The Professor's question beginning with, "Son, how do you know--" died
unuttered and he refused to notice the words his daughter was voicing
silently at her brother. He glanced at his wife's sardonically composed
face, thought once more of the Fire Department and of other and larger
and even more jealous--or would it be skeptical?--government agencies,
and clutched at the straw offered him.

Ten minutes later, he was quite unnecessarily assisting his son back
through the bedroom window.

"Gee, Pop, I couldn't see a sign of him. That's why I took so long. Hey,
Pop, don't look so scared. He's in there, sure enough. It's just that
the bathtub's under the window and you have to get real close up to see
into it."

"The Martian's taking a bath?"

"Yep. Got it full up and just the end of his little old schnozzle
sticking out. Your suit, Pop, was hanging on the door."

The one word the Professor's Wife spoke was like a death knell.

"_Drowned!_"

"No, Ma, I don't think so. His schnozzle was opening and closing regular
like."

"Maybe he's a shape-changer," the Professor's Coltish Daughter said in a
burst of evil fantasy. "Maybe he softens in water and thins out after a
while until he's like an eel and then he'll go exploring through the
sewer pipes. Wouldn't it be funny if he went under the street and
knocked on the stopper from underneath and crawled into the bathtub with
President Rexford, or Mrs. President Rexford, or maybe right into the
middle of one of Janey Rexford's Oh-I'm-so-sexy bubble baths?"

"Please!" The Professor put his hand to his eyebrows and kept it there,
cuddling the elbow in his other hand.

"Well, have you thought of something?" the Professor's Wife asked him
after a bit. "What are you going to do?"

The Professor dropped his hand and blinked his eyes hard and took a deep
breath.

"Telegraph Fenchurch and Ackerly-Ramsbot