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germane or just incidental. Something enormous could be hidden under the surface without our being able to detect it.
    MICHELIS: Agronski, stop sounding like a Sunday supplement. You underestimate your own intelligence. What kind of enormous secret could that be? That the Lithians eat people? That they're cattle for unknown gods that live in the jungle? That they're actually mind-wrenching, soul-twisting, heart-stopping, blood-freezing, bowel-moving superbeings in disguise? The moment you state any such proposition, you'll deflate it yourself; it's only in the abstract that it's able to scare you. I wouldn't even take the trouble of examining it, or discussing how we might meet it if it were true.
    AORONSKI: All right, all right. I'll reserve judgment for the time being, anyhow. If everything turns out to be all right here, with the Father and Cleaver I mean, I'll probably go along with you. I don't have any reason I could defend for voting against the planet, I admit that.
    MICHELIS: Good for you. I'm sure Ramon is for opening it up, so that should make it unanimous. I can't see why Cleaver would object.
    (Cleaver was testifying before a packed court convened in the UN General Assembly chambers in New York, with one finger pointed dramatically, but less in triumph than in sorrow, at Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez, S. J. At the sound of his name the dream collapsed, and he realized that the room had grown a little lighter. Dawn-or the dripping, wool-gray travesty of it which prevailed on Lithia-was on its way. He wondered what he had just said to the court. It had been conclusive, damning, good enough to be used when he awoke; but he could not remember a word of it. All that remained of it was a sensation, almost the taste of the words, but nothing of their substance.)
    AGRONSKI: It's getting light. I suppose we'd better knock off.
    MICHELIS: Did you stake down the 'copter? The winds down here are higher than they are up north, I seem to remember.
    AGRONSKI: Yes. And covered it with the tarp. Nothing left to do now but sling our hammocks-
    (A sound)
    MICHELIS: Shhh. What's that?
    AGRONSKI: Eh?
    MICHELIS: Listen.
    (Footsteps. Faint ones, but Cleaver knew them. He forced his eyes to open a little, but there was nothing to see but the ceiling. Its even color, and its smooth, ever-changing slope into a dome of nowhereness, drew him almost immediately upward into the mists of trance once more.)
    AGRONSKI: Somebody's coming.
    (Footsteps.)
    AGRONSKI: It's the Father, Mike-look out here and you can see him. He seems to be all right. Dragging his feet a bit, but who wouldn't after being out helling all night?
    MICHELIS: Maybe you'd better meet him at the door. It'd probably be better than our springing out at him after he gets inside. After all he doesn't expect us. I'll get to unpacking the hammocks.
    AGRONSKI: Sure thing, Mike.
    (Footsteps, going away from Cleaver. A grating sound of stone on stone: the door wheel being turned.)
    AGRONSKI: Welcome home, Father! We just got in a little while ago and-My God, what's wrong? Are you ill too? Is there something that-Mike! Mike!
    (Somebody was running. Cleaver willed his neck muscles to lift his head, but they refused to obey. Instead, the back of his head seemed to force itself deeper into the stiff pillow of the hammock. After a momentary and endless agony, he cried out)
    CLEAVER: Mike!
    AGRONSKI: Mike!
    (With a gasp, Cleaver lost the long battle at last. He was asleep.)

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IV
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    As the door of Chtexa's house closed behind him, Ruiz-Sanchez looked about the gently glowing foyer with a feeling of almost unbearable anticipation, although he could hardly have said what it was that he hoped to see. Actually, it looked exactly like his own quarters, which was all he could in justice have expected-all the furniture at "home" Was Lithian, except of course for the lab equipment and a few other terrestrial trappings.
    "We have cut up several of the metal meteors from our museums, and hammered them as