the way I remembered her when we left!"

"Now you're nuts, too!" observed the captain.

"Boy, I almost agreed with you! I stared and pinched myself and closed
my eyes and then stared again--and every time, there was Fancy Long
smiling and waving! Tweel saw something, too; he was trilling and
clucking away, but I scarcely heard him. I was bounding toward her over
the sand, too amazed even to ask myself questions.

"I wasn't twenty feet from her when Tweel caught me with one of his
flying leaps. He grabbed my arm, yelling, 'No--no--no!' in his squeaky
voice. I tried to shake him off--he was as light as if he were built of
bamboo--but he dug his claws in and yelled. And finally some sort of
sanity returned to me and I stopped less than ten feet from her. There
she stood, looking as solid as Putz's head!"

"Vot?" said the engineer.

"She smiled and waved, and waved and smiled, and I stood there dumb as
Leroy, while Tweel squeaked and chattered. I _knew_ it couldn't be real,
yet--there she was!

"Finally I said, 'Fancy! Fancy Long!' She just kept on smiling and
waving, but looking as real as if I hadn't left her thirty-seven million
miles away.

"Tweel had his glass pistol out, pointing it at her. I grabbed his arm,
but he tried to push me away. He pointed at her and said, 'No breet! No
breet!' and I understood that he meant that the Fancy Long thing wasn't
alive. Man, my head was whirling!

"Still, it gave me the jitters to see him pointing his weapon at her. I
don't know why I stood there watching him take careful aim, but I did.
Then he squeezed the handle of his weapon; there was a little puff of
steam, and Fancy Long was gone! And in her place was one of those
writhing, black, rope-armed horrors like the one I'd saved Tweel from!

"The dream-beast! I stood there dizzy, watching it die while Tweel
trilled and whistled. Finally he touched my arm, pointed at the twisting
thing, and said, 'You one-one-two, he one-one-two.' After he'd repeated
it eight or ten times, I got it. Do any of you?"

"_Oui!_" shrilled Leroy. "_Moi--je le comprends!_ He mean you think of
something, the beast he know, and you see it! _Un chien_--a hungry dog,
he would see the big bone with meat! Or smell it--not?"

"Right!" said Jarvis. "The dream-beast uses its victim's longings and
desires to trap its prey. The bird at nesting season would see its mate,
the fox, prowling for its own prey, would see a helpless rabbit!"

"How he do?" que