Mick's perplexity over the degree of trust to be placed in Ghor wavered as the conversation continued through the day. Ghor's actions did not appear suspicious. Ghor himself, pale and weak and a product of zero gravity, was hardly to be feared, except through trickery. But there were words, sentences and phrases dropped by the exile from time to time that indicated deep mystery and hidden horror. There were certain unanswered questions that were clues to questions that were not asked. Behind this mystery, Mick noted a beseeching look that appeared from time to time on Ghor's pinched face. It was the air of a man asking pardon for a crime. Yet, what crime had been committed? Ghor's experiments were contribution to universal knowledge. On earth they would be hailed as discoveries and Ghor would be honored and rewarded for his work. Surely Ghor had committed no crime in his development of alien plants into terrestrial forms. Ghor's work had been done in the same manner that an experienced airplane pilot flies blind in a fog. He had never seen corn and potatoes, yet he had created them. His sole guides were books in the library and sound motion pictures bearing on botany that had been left behind by Ghor's nameless father. Ghor was more than a Robinson Crusoe; he was a Tarzan in the jungle of space. The only unseemly exhibit in this island of the sky was the frozen body of Ghor's father on the ledge above the buried space ship. This, however, could be considered in the light of environment. On an airless bit of rock, where nothing decayed, burial in the ground was like offering the human body as food for the roots of millions of obscene plants. Burial seemed more of a sacrilege than the placing of the body on a rock as a flesh and blood monument. After a rest during the short, five-hour night, Ghor offered to take the spacemen back to their ship to make repairs. "It isn't that I wish to hurry your departure," he said, "but I realize that my life here is very dull. Except to tell you of my work, I have nothing to offer in the way of entertainment." "Wouldn't you want to go back to Terra with us?" Mick asked. Again that cunning, deceptive expression crossed Ghor's face. "No," he said. He did not elaborate. * * * * * Ghor's method of avoiding the radioactive pellets cast from the buds of the weird plants of the asteroid, was akin to the degaussing process used by ships in mine-infested waters. The plants sensed their enemies through the minute electrical currents that are present in all living organisms, Ghor explained. They cast their pellets at all alien organisms that came near. "You mean grow near?" "There are a few mobile plants on Dead Man's planet." Ghor explained. They had emerged from the locks of the ship and they were moving down the gulley. Ghor walked in his usual stiff-legged stride and clad as he was in a spacesuit, he appeared to be some sort of mechanical monster.