With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped his murderous silence and cried: "What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that snake oil?" "That was not poison," Harvey contradicted quietly. "It was _La-anago Yergis_ extract, plus." "Plus what--arsenic?" "Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods--an entire case, mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course." "But why use it on me?" Joe demanded furiously. Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. "Did Johnson ask to taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce the same _medicine_ that we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a guinea pig for a splendid cause." "Okay, okay," Joe said. "But you shoulda charged him more." "Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he possesses. We could not be content with less." "Well, we're starting all right," admitted Joe. "How about that thing with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?" Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively. "I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity. Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him. At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the audio-visiphone. Then our triumph--we shall sell him at a stupendous figure to the zoo!" * * * * * Joe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at least as good as the first; he gagged. "That's the stuff, all right," he said, swallowing hard. He counted out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter, and asked: "You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now." Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry. "It's only water we were short of," Harvey said apprehensively. "We've got rations back at the ship."