That old reckless grin lit the Earthman's face. "He was," he whispered happily. "And he will." Then his gray eyes became very sober. "I was sorry to do it, Barihorn. For it put us back in danger. And makes the quest for Verel and the Stone more difficult." His yellow head shook gravely. "But I could not let men believe that we were dead--for we are their only champions against the robots. And I wanted more of them to know of your miraculous return, Barihorn. We must keep hope alive, at whatever cost. Or men will yield to slavery and death, and our cause will be lost." "I see," I told him, "And now what?" His jaw set grimly. "Still," he said, "we must search for Verel and the Stone. Malgarth fears you and the Stone, Barihorn--else he would be less anxious for our death. And we know that all the rebellion of mankind will be crushed, as surely as steel is stronger than flesh--unless we have the aid of the Stone." "But how can we continue the search," I demanded somewhat apprehensively, "--now?" Kel Aran grinned. "We have a plan," he told me. And the _Barihorn_, I discovered had been rechristened the _Chimerian Bird_. Rogo Nug was already painting on the new name along with certain gaudy advertising legends and enough spots of rust to make the hull appear as if it had been in service almost as long as my old _Astronaut_. Jeron Roc showed me a luridly lettered poster: SEE! Naralek's SEE! Supreme! Colossal! Unrivaled! INTERSTELLAR SHOWS SEE The Weird Mermaid of Procyon II THE LIQUID MAN OF MOG! The Man-Eating Flowers of Koron And SETSI the SANDBAT ONLY EXISTING SILICIC BEING! Her Food is Flint! SHE READS YOUR MIND! and 1,000,000 Wonders! 1,000,000 Most of the exhibits, I suspected, were pretty bald frauds--but that was in an excellent tradition that another Earthman named Barnum had established well over a million years before. The cunning handiwork of Rogo Nug was evident in the pickled mermaid, which looked remarkably like certain creations that I had seen of fish-tails and seaweed and coconut husk. I doubted that the flower, a stunted, rubbery-looking bush, had actually caught many men. The "liquid man of Mog" looked weird enough--a trembling mass of luminescent purple jelly; but I had seen Jeron Roc busy in the galley, shaping it out of chemical precipitates, a few wires, and a pocket torch. In their years of stellar roving, however, the four had collected a good many genuine oddities. Setsi, the "sandbat," was one of these--and perhaps the most remarkable being I had ever seen. Her bodily chemistry was in fact based upon silicon instead of carbon; she really ate quartz.