elligent
forms, too, because they are wearing clothing.

"I think that collecting these specimens and setting them up here is
part of the religion of the Sun-tappers."

While Russ was talking, Burl thought of a way he might communicate with
the stick-men. He wanted to draw a diagram of the solar system on the
floor of his enclosure. He gestured futilely with his hand, but there
was nothing with which to make a marking. The stick-men outside watched
his hand, then one of them reached around to something hanging across
its back and withdrew a thin tablet and a wedge of red. Holding the
tablet up so that Burl could see, the creature quickly sketched a
recognizable map of the Sun and its planets!

Burl realized then that he was dealing with highly intelligent
beings--no savages, these, but the products of a high civilization. He
indicated the third world as his own. The stick-man drew back as if
surprised, then pointed upward.

They came from Neptune!

During the next few hours, a most curious three-way discussion went
on--Burl signaling to the Neptunians outside and describing his
discoveries to Russ over the phone of his space suit; Russ suggesting
answers to some of the more difficult diagrams. It was a curious
experience. Gradually, by means of simple drawings and gestures, and
even charadelike playlets acted out by the weird vegetable-crystal
beings, there emerged the general story of the Neptunians and the
invaders from Pluto.

On Neptune there had been a great civilization covering the entire
world, a hard surface lying deep beneath its thick methane atmosphere.
There were forests and there were animals and intelligent beings. They
did not breathe, but absorbed both their food and liquid gas through
rootlike feelers on which they stood and moved.

Then one day, about thirty years ago, they had been invaded by creatures
that came in dumbbell-shaped spaceships, and which had destroyed their
cities, and attempted to conquer the planet. They learned that these
ships had come from Triton, the strange new moon that Neptune had
acquired about a thousand years earlier, and from the new planet, Pluto,
their astronomers had observed at that time.

For thirty years the Neptunians had fought against the invaders. For a
while they almost succeeded, but then something new had developed. Their
world grew hotter. Great structures had been erected on the poles, the
areas first conquered by the Plutonians and still held by t