ke a spear, but he always ended in the sand at my side.

"So the two of us plugged along across the Mare Chronium. Same sort of
place as this--same crazy plants and same little green biopods growing
in the sand, or crawling out of your way. We talked--not that we
understood each other, you know, but just for company. I sang songs, and
I suspect Tweel did too; at least, some of his trillings and twitterings
had a subtle sort of rhythm.

"Then, for variety, Tweel would display his smattering of English words.
He'd point to an outcropping and say 'rock,' and point to a pebble and
say it again; or he'd touch my arm and say 'Tick,' and then repeat it.
He seemed terrifically amused that the same word meant the same thing
twice in succession, or that the same word could apply to two different
objects. It set me wondering if perhaps his language wasn't like the
primitive speech of some earth people--you know, Captain, like the
Negritoes, for instance, who haven't any generic words. No word for food
or water or man--words for good food and bad food, or rain water and sea
water, or strong man and weak man--but no names for general classes.
They're too primitive to understand that rain water and sea water are
just different aspects of the same thing. But that wasn't the case with
Tweel; it was just that we were somehow mysteriously different--our
minds were alien to each other. And yet--we _liked_ each other!"

"Looney, that's all," remarked Harrison. "That's why you two were so
fond of each other."

"Well, I like _you_!" countered Jarvis wickedly. "Anyway," he resumed,
"don't get the idea that there was anything screwy about Tweel. In fact,
I'm not so sure but that he couldn't teach our highly praised human
intelligence a trick or two. Oh, he wasn't an intellectual superman, I
guess; but don't overlook the point that he managed to understand a
little of my mental workings, and I never even got a glimmering of his."

"Because he didn't have any!" suggested the captain, while Putz and
Leroy blinked attentively.

"You can judge of that when I'm through," said Jarvis. "Well, we plugged
along across the Mare Chronium all that day, and all the next. Mare
Chronium--Sea of Time! Say, I was willing to agree with Schiaparelli's
name by the end of that march! Just that grey, endless plain of weird
plants, and never a sign of any other life. It was so monotonous that I
was even glad to see the desert of Xanthus toward the evening of the