In a more primitive society he would have been considered a stooge but there appeared to be no such cultural concept in Tall-Thin's scale of values. He spoke with the utmost respect, as if anyone who agreed with him automatically became as exalted as himself. "The primitive who constructed this rocket had a remarkable mind," he said. "_We_ could not have constructed it for every culture, no matter how primitive, has resources peculiar to itself." "That is very true, Hilili!" Mary Anne tried to turn her head to look at Melvin but her neck felt as stiff as when she'd had the mumps and everyone had felt sorry for her. She was sure that the little men did not feel in the least sorry and all she could do was stare in helpless anger as they turned and scrambled into the rocket. Finally she did manage to turn her head, just far enough to see what Melvin was doing. Melvin wasn't moving at all. His head was lowered and he was thinking. She knew that he was thinking by the look in his eyes. Melvin was silently thinking and as she stared she ceased to be afraid. She sat very still, waiting for Melvin to speak to her. Suddenly he did, deep inside her head. The little men had come from far, far away. They had come from a big cloud of stars in the sky called the Great Nebula in Andromeda. Nearly everything in the universe curved and they had come spinning along the biggest curve of all in hundreds and hundreds of punched-out disks that glowed in the dark like Roman candles. The cow pasture Melvin and she played in was--she knew what it was but she waited for Melvin to say it--rocket proving-ground. It was their own secret playing place but daddy called it a rocket proving-ground. Daddy wouldn't send the rocket to the moon from his laboratory in the cellar. He'd take it out to the proving-ground and ask even the President of the United States to watch it start out for the Moon. The President would come because her daddy was a very important and wonderful man. He didn't have much money but he'd be rich and famous if the rocket reached the moon. Most men as wonderful as her daddy were poor until they did something to make people stand up and shout. The little men didn't want her daddy to become rich so that he could send Melvin through college and she could go to college too. The little men didn't want her to learn domestic housekeeping and make the handsomest man in all the world happy. The little men wouldn't--couldn't--take the rocket out to the proving-ground. It would start off blazing and go straight up through the roof into the sky. It would blow the cellar apart and the cottage would come tumbling down in ruins. Melvin would be killed and her daddy.... She had never been so terrified in all her life and if Melvin hadn't started thinking she would have burst out crying.