"Listen, Jerry," I said, "Have you ever heard of a Martian zloor?" His eyebrows went up. "Sure, what--" "Are they particularly fast?" "No, of course not. But--" "Are they dangerous?" He grinned, but he was still puzzled. "I'd say they were about the least dangerous animal I ever heard of. But, Nap--" "Just one more question, Jerry, I'm in a hurry. Do you think I could catch one?" "I can't think of anything you could catch easier." He started to give one of his short bursts of laughter. "But--" "Thanks, Jerry," I told him. "See you later." I snapped off the set and turned back to Westley Marks. "All right, answer just one question and I'll take up that bet of yours. What's secret about this?" "If I tell you, you'll take on the job?" "The job, _and_ the thousand credit bet," I grated. "Very well. It is suspected that the zloor is an alien life form." I stared at him. "Are you around the corner?" I demanded. "Of course it's an alien life form. Didn't you just say it's a Martian animal?" "Ummmm. But some authorities think it is alien to this solar system. At least they suspect so--that's why the government wants a specimen to dissect and thoroughly investigate. They haven't the facilities on Mars, of course, so it will be necessary to bring one back here." I still stared at him. "Alien to the solar system? Your roof _must_ be leaking. How would it get here?" A sudden suspicion hit me. "You mean it's intelligent? I thought there wasn't any intelligent life forms on Mars." He shook his head. "It's a stupid herbivorous animal." He shot a glance down at his watch. "The shuttle for the space station leaves in three hours. Can you make it?" I glared at him. "You give me plenty of time, don't you?--I'll make it all right. But first I want this bet down in writing." "Of course," he said smoothly. * * * * * I had to hustle plenty. The zloor wasn't any bigger than a rabbit, and I knew that life forms on Mars were in general small, so I took nothing larger than my little carbine size .22 Hornet, another gun that Westley Marks probably would have sneered at but which I wouldn't have traded for all the automatics you could shake a stick at. I didn't take much else; no clothes except the shorts I wore when I climbed into the shuttle rocket for the space station. When Marks said freight rates in space were high he just wasn't whistling, _Terra Forever_. I could buy clothes and any other equipment I needed a good deal cheaper on Mars than the cost of transporting them there would come to. For one thing, when anybody left the colony planet to come back to Terra, they invariably left behind everything in the way of clothing and personal equipment; for another, a certain amount of these things were being manufactured on Mars from native raw materials in an attempt to escape the murderous space rates.