"We can close the airlock," I said, "and they can't tell us from a rock." "I won't! I'm going to teach that girl a lesson she won't forget in a hurry! I've listened to myself being insulted for two hours--and she's still going strong. When she gets up here I'll show her whose eye she'll spit in!" * * * * * Ven was raging. I'd never seen her so emotional before. Her aura swelled and ebbed in ruddy shades as her breath came and went in short gasps. "And how do you propose to do that?" I asked. "I'll stat her!" Ven raged. "I'll stat every one of them!" I blinked. "I wouldn't do that," I said mildly. "What can we do with them? The two we have are bad enough. And if you stat them, we'll have to kill or condition them. We couldn't let them go home with a story like the one they'd tell." "I don't care," Ven said. "You can do what you like about the rest of them, but that Edith is going to learn a lesson." She was being emotional and quite unwilling to listen to reason--and she was larger and stronger than I. Despite my protests, she jerked a stat projector from the rack and strode toward the open airlock. "Thalassa!" she exclaimed. "They're coming through the gate! They'll be here in a minute." I could hear the roar of a protesting engine groaning up the trail to the lower meadow as I hurried after Ven. As I reached the airlock, the gray body of Donald's station wagon poked its nose around the trees below our ship. Ven stood rigidly in the airlock, waiting, her lips tight and her eyes narrow. She took a firmer grip on the stat as the car stopped and the giggling, half-sober humans tumbled out. I was in a quandary. I didn't want Ven to shoot, but I couldn't close the airlock with her inside it. So I stood, hesitating while the group of gaily dressed mammals came toward us through the trees, their high voices loud in the stillness. "Gotta find that li'l lizard an tell her to stop meddling with my life," Edith's voice came to my ears. Ven stiffened beside me as the group broke out of the trees in front of the ship. "Why, Edie, it's beautiful!" a voice said. "It's a fairy glen! No wonder you'd never tell us where you got that suntan! And that big rock--it's just like you said--And--uh!" The voice never finished as Ven pressed the trigger. I looked down at the six crumpled mammalian bodies and the lone standing figure that looked stupidly up at us. "Well," I said. "You've done it this time. Now are you satisfied? "No," Ven said. "Not half." Her voice was tight with anger. She looked down at Edith. "Come here!" she said. "Dowanna," Edith replied uncertainly. "You've made Don leave me. I don't like you." But habit was stronger than alcohol and under the furious lash of Ven's voice she came unsteadily forward.