The night rushed past my ears in a wild keening and it crossed my mind to wonder what Mr. Picks, my supervisor, would say if he saw me now. I had a sudden vision of Mr. Picks, even more neatly dressed than I always was, with middle-cost neck clasp and stud discreetly shining from a plain, square-edged bag shirt and dun suit. I pictured him opening a refined little box and holding it two feet under the customer's eyes with a gesture of faint, unconscious supplication. A comfortable, warm, happy picture in which my place, one counter behind Mr. Picks, was reassuringly assured. Then, out of nowhere, into the picture galloped a yellow-skinned monster astride a huge, white bird. It turned out to be me and I tumbled off the bird, crying, "Mr. Picks! I don't know what came over me!" But I was answered only by a multitude of squawks, rustles and scratchings. The bird was home. * * * * * I could almost see vague forms. The darkness was beginning to give a little. I was warm, itchy and uncomfortable under whatever it was that Rene had sprayed on me. Warm? Perfume trees? All I could smell were bird roosts. I stood up, finding my limbs weak, trembling and painful. First, I glanced at my watch. Five hours terran time since we left the ship. At fifty miles per hour, we'd have gone two hundred and fifty miles. If we'd gone due north, as the bird started out, we must be in the snow zone. And I was _warm_! I switched my flash around. All I could see were birds. There seemed to be hundreds of them. I couldn't tell which one was my bearer. "Where is the perfume?" I bawled. All I got was squawks. Some of the birds were, in fact, standing on one foot and tucking their heads away. It was growing lighter. The birds were going to bed. Feverishly, I pulled out Uncle Izzy's old volume of poetry. Brushing from my mind a vision of Mr. Picks in a state of shock and another picture of Uncle Isadore snickering triumphantly, I stood on that desert land enchanted--on that home by horror haunted, and solemnly read "The Dodo" to a colony of wingless birds. My dodo identified himself at the proper place, but I kept on, waiting for something to show me my inheritance. "Then methought the air grew denser," I read. "Perfume from an unseen censor!" a bird croaked from the back row. "Where?" I cried, pushing my way through the birds crowding around me in various stages of roost and curiosity. "Then," I repeated, "the air grew denser." "Perfume," the bird now in front of me said, "from an unseen censor." He began to scratch at the ground assiduously under one of four dim shapes about the level of my eyes. Then he yawned gapingly, gave up and went to sleep. I sat down to wait, because it was almost dawn and the last dodo had tucked his head into his feathers.