of the casing, but he could make nothing of the machinery inside; he could not even comprehend

the motive force; it was something utterly and completely new to him, when he became too
interested and started poking about inside, it slowly uncoiled one of its tentacles, pushed him gently
aside and replaced its cover itself. as for me, I didnt attempt to understand it. i just accepted it as a
puzzle, and though it took me longer than it did him to lose my fear of it, i found myself after a few
days thinking of it as what
shall i say? perhaps as a sort of large dog a very intelligent large dog -- froud, unable to restrain
himself, interrupted her for the first time; what did your father think it was? he quite soon began to
think,
as he still thinks, that it was a kind of remote control mechanism operated and powered from its
place of
origin. it had several of the senses. it could see, it seemed to hear, it certainly had a tactile sense.
and the noises which came from its diaphragm must have been speech of a kind, though we could
make nothing
of it. he got it into his head that it had been sent to establish communication between us and its
makers, and, in effect, was a kind of transmitting and receiving station made self portable. he
evolved the idea that
perhaps the conditions on earth were unsuitable for the race that had built it, although they had
found a way
of crossing space, and so they had constructed this ingenious way of getting round the difficulty. on
that theory he
started working to develop two way communication. when we found that the vocal language was
hopeless, we began on diagrams
and signs. we established to our satisfaction that its place of origin was mars, but it was less easy to
understand what kind of space ship had brought it. later on, we began to be able to translate slowly
and
with a lot of difficulty its written language. it left quite a lot of that behind. but just as we
were hoping that communication would soon be fluent, it destroyed itself, as you heard. joan
stopped speaking,and through a
period of increasing discomfort each of the men waited for another to speak. she loked from face to
face, her
own expression quite inscrutable. it was dale who broke the spell. hie tone was coldly
contemptuous. and so you re
no proof of a single word of all this except these? he pointed to the photographs. none, she told him
calmly. well, i ve heard a few fairy tales in my time, but this he left the sentence uncompleted. when
he went on, it was in a different tone: come on, you re here now and you can t be

sent back, why not tell me the truth? who put you up to this game? movie company, news agency,
what
was it? nobody "put me up to it". i wanted to came, and i came. nobody knew anything about it
except the man who helped me. i didn t even tell my father i left a letter for him. now,
look here, i won t take it out on you, but i just want to know who s behind it,
that s all. and i tell you there s no one. for a moment she glared at him. then, deliberately
controlling her rising anger, she went on. i ll tell you why i m here. it s because i intend
to clear my father and myself. we were branded as a pair of liars. he was thrown out of his
job. we had to change our names and go to live in a place where no one knew us. for
the last four years we ve been exiled to a miserable village in the welsh mountains. scarcely anyone
we knew
in the old days will speak to us now if we happen to meet them. either they think we re
swindlers, or else they smirk when they fancy we re not looking and tap their heads. when the
chance came
to prove that we were right, do you think i was going to let it slip? i m going to
see for myself that we were right, and i m going to tell the world about it when we get
back. good girl, said frond approvingly. dale rounded on him. good god! you don t mean to say that
you
belive this crazy yarn? of all the damned thin tales i ever heard why, i could think up a better
one myself in ten minutes. quite. so could I. so could miss shirning. so could anybody. and that s one
pretty good reason for believing it. dale grunted with devastating contempt. and i suppose that the
sight of a badly
built house convinces you that the builder s materials are first class? he said. a poor analogy. i know
what
s getting you down and so do you, only you won t admit it. it s the thought so that
if you believe miss shining, you ve got to admit that something else has crossed space in the
opposite direction,
and that your gloria mundi won t be the first across after all. indeed? now, let me tell you
something.
the reason why you re believing this rubbish is because you ve spent so much of your life writing
romantic
vomit for morons that the mushy bit of brain you did have has gone rancid. you can go to hell.
i m sick of this twaddle. he crossed the floor and pulled himself through the trapdoor, closing it
behind him.

froud looked across at joan, and grinned. one in the eye for me. what will he do? what can he
do except cool off after a bit? now, just to clinch things, what about giving me my first lesson in
literary martian? the occupants of the gloria mundi settled down into a routine. from custom they
split up their