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it. It lowered him gently, butt first, until he
sat on the ground, in a welter of dead leaves; for as soon as he picked it up,
the streamlined end pieces had begun to blast again.
     
    “That’s the silliest thing I ever
saw. Here—let me see it.” It was hovering about waist-high. He leaned over one
of the ends. It had a fine round grille over it. He put out a hand. Mewhu
reached out and caught his wrist, shaking his head. Apparently it was dangerous
to go too near those ends. Garry suddenly saw why. They were tiny, powerful jet
motors of some kind. If the jet was powerful enough to support a man’s weight,
the intake must be drawing like mad—probably enough to snap a hole through a
man’s hand like a giant ticket-puncher.
     
    But what controlled it? How was
the jet strength adjusted to the weight borne by the device, and to the
altitude? He remembered without pleasure that when he had fallen with it from
the treetop, he had dropped quite fast, and that he went slower and slower as
he approached the ground. And yet when Mewhu had held it over his head, it had
borne his weight instantly and lowered him very slowly. And besides—how was it
so stable? Why didn’t it turn upside down and blast itself and passenger down
to earth?
     
    He looked at Mewhu with some
increase of awe. Obviously he came from a place where the science was really
advanced. He wondered if he would ever be able to get any technical information
from his visitor—and if he would be able to understand it. Of course, Molly
seemed to be able to—
     
    “He wants you to take it back and
try it on the roof,” said Molly.
     
    “How can that refugee from a
Kuttner opus help me?”
     
    Immediately Mewhu took the rod,
lifted it, ducked under it, and slipped his arms through the two rings, so that
it crossed his back like a water-bucket yoke. Peering around, he turned to face
a clearing in the trees, and before their startled eyes, he leaped thirty feet
in the air, drifted away in a great arc, and came gently to rest twenty yards
away.
     
    Molly jumped up and down and
clapped her hands, speechless with delight. The only words Garry could find
were a reiterated, “Ah, no!” ‘
     
    Mewhu stood where he was, smiling
his engaging smile, waiting for them. They walked toward him, and when they
were close, he leaped again and soared out toward the road.
     
    “What do you do with a thing like
this?” breathed Jack. “Who do you go to, and what do you say to him?”
     
    “Le’s just keep him for a pet,
Daddy.”
     
    Jack took her hand, and they
followed the bounding, soaring silver man. A pet! A member of some alien race,
from some unthinkable civilization—and obviously a highly trained individual,
too, for no “man in the street” would have made such a trip. What was his
story? Was he an advance guard? Or-—was he the sole survivor of his people? How
far had he come? Mars? Venus?
     
    They caught up with him at the
house. He was standing by the ladder. His strange rod was lying quiet on the
ground. He was fascinatedly operating Molly’s yo-yo. When he saw them, he threw
down the yo-yo, picked up his device, and slipping it across his shoulders,
sprang high in the air and drifted down to the roof. “Eee-yu!” he said, with
emphasis, and jumped off backward. So stable was the rod that, as he sank
through the air, his long body swung to and fro.
     
    “Very nice,” said Jack. “Also
spectacular. And I have to go back to work.” He went to the ladder.
     
    Mewhu bounded over to him, caught
his arm, whimpering and whistling in his peculiar speech. He took the rod and
extended it toward Jack.
     
    “He wants you to use it,” said
Molly.
     
    “No, thanks,” said Jack, a trace
of his tree-climbing vertigo returning to him. “I’d just as soon use the
ladder.” And he put his hand out to it.
     
    Mewhu, hopping with frustration;
reached past him and toppled the ladder. It levered over a box as it fell and
struck Jack painfully on the