eads and feet and hands,
either bare or covered. Ditto for legs up to there, backs, arms, necks
and shoulders down to here, and torsos clear down to there. We'll not
violate any conventions by going out as we are. Not even you, Belle. You
first, Chief. Yours the high honor of setting first foot--the biggest
foot we've got, too--on alien soil."

"To hell with that. We'll go out together."

"Wait a minute," Lola went on. "There's a funny-looking automobile just
coming through the gate. The Press. Three men and two women. Two
cameras, one walkie-talkie, and two microphones. The photog in the
purple shirt is really a sharpie at lepping. Class Three, at
least--possibly a Two."

"How about screens down enough to lep, boss?" Belle suggested. "Faster.
We may need it."

"Check. I'm too busy to record, anyway--I'll log this stuff up tonight,"
and thoughts flew.

"Check me, Jim," Garlock flashed. "Telepathy, very good. On Gunther, the
guy was right--no signs at all of any First activity, and very few
Seconds."

"Check," James agreed.

"And Lola, those 'Guardians' out there. I thought they were the same as
the Arpalone we talked to. They aren't. Not even telepathic. Same color
scheme, is all."

"Right. Much more brutish. Much flatter cranium. Long, tearing canine
teeth. Carnivorous. I'll call them just 'guardians' until we find out
what they really are."

* * *

The press car arrived and the Tellurians disembarked--and, accidentally
or not, it was Belle's green slipper that first touched ground. There
was a terrific babel of thought, worse, even, than voices in similar
case, in being so much faster. The reporters, all of them, wanted to
know everything at once. How, what, where, when, and why. Also who. And
all about Tellus and the Tellurian solar system. How did the visitors
like Hodell? And all about Belle's green hair. And the photographers
were prodigal of film, shooting everything from all possible angles.

"Hold it!" Garlock loosed a blast of thought that "silenced" almost the
whole field. "We will have order, please. Lola Montandon, our
anthropologist, will take charge. Keep it orderly, Lola, if you have to
throw half of them off the field. I'm going over to Administration and
check in. One of you reporters can come with me, if you like."

The man in the purple shirt got his bid in first. As the two men walked
away together, Garlock noted that the man was in fact a Second--his flow