ve got to learn to sleep anywhere if you expect to keep in...."
Costigan broke off as he opened the door and saw Clio's wan face. She
had evidently spent a sleepless and wracking eight hours. "Good Lord,
Clio, why didn't you call me?"

"Oh, I'm all right, except for being a little jittery. No need of asking
how _you_ feel, is there?"

"No--I feel hungry," he answered cheerfully. "I'm going to see what we
can do about it--or say, guess I'll see whether they're still
interfering on Samms' wave."

He took out the small, insulated case and touched the contact stud
lightly with his finger. His arm jerked away powerfully.

"Still at it," he gave the unnecessary explanation. "They don't seem to
want us to talk outside, but his interference is as good as my
talking--they can trace it, of course. Now I'll see what I can find out
about our breakfast."

He stepped over to the plate and shot its projector beam forward into
the control room, where he saw Nerado lying, doglike, at his instrument
panel. As Costigan's beam entered the room a blue light flashed on and
the Nevian turned an eye and an arm toward his own small observation
plate. Knowing that they were now in visual communication, Costigan
beckoned an invitation and pointed to his mouth in what he hoped was the
universal sign of hunger. The Nevian waved an arm and fingered controls,
and as he did so a wide section of the floor of Clio's room slid aside.
The opening thus made revealed a table which rose upon its low pedestal,
a table equipped with three softly-cushioned benches and spread with a
glittering array of silver and glassware.

Bowls and platters of a dazzlingly white metal, narrow-waisted goblets
of sheerest crystal; all were hexagonal, beautifully and intricately
carved or etched in apparently conventional marine designs. And the
table utensils of this strange race were peculiar indeed. There were
tearing forceps of sixteen needle-sharp curved teeth; there were
flexible spatulas; there were deep and shallow ladles with flexible
edges; there were many other peculiarly-curved instruments at whose uses
the Terrestrials could not even guess; all having delicately-fashioned
handles to fit the long slender fingers of the Nevians.

But if the table and its appointments were surprising to the
Terrestrials, revealing as they did a degree of culture which none of
them had expected to find in a race of beings so monstrous, the food was
even more surprising, although