Jim Ronson and Sam Crick had grown up together as boys on Earth. Ronson had gone into a laboratory, Crick had hopped a freighter bound for Mars. Ronson had not seen his old friend in many years, but he had heard from him and about him. A feeling of deep warmth came up inside the scientist at the sight of the tanned face grinning at him. "Then you did get my space radio?" Ronson said. "I couldn't locate you in Mars Port and I was never sure." Relief at finding Crick here was a surging feeling deep within him. With Crick here, he not only had a man experienced in Martian ways and customs to help him, but what was more important, he had a friend. Crick's face lost its smile. Wrinkles showed on his forehead. "What space radio, Jim?" "The one I sent you, asking you to meet me here. Quit kidding me. If you didn't get my space radio, how does it happen that you're here? Don't tell me this is a coincidence." Crick shook his head. A doleful expression appeared on his face. "I sure didn't get it, Jim. As to what I'm doing here, I'm chaperoning our lady authoress. Meet my boss." He nodded to Jennie Ware. Ronson turned startled eyes toward the girl. "I caught him flat broke in Mars Port just before you arrived," she answered. "Since he was broke, I took advantage of him and hired him as my bodyguard. Not that I would really need a bodyguard, but in case I fell and broke a leg, he might be handy. But his being here wasn't a coincidence." "Eh?" Ronson said. It was difficult to follow her thinking. She seemed to say a lot, or nothing, all with the same words, the only difference being the voice tone she used. If she chose, she had all the gifts of a man in concealing her true feelings and real opinions. Her voice was calm, her face expressionless. "The grapevine in Mars Port said the Earth's top-flight bio-physicist was coming here, that old Les Ro was thought to have something that human scientists were all hotted up about, and that you were coming here to investigate, and to chisel Les Ro out of a piece of it, if he would stand still for such treatment." Ronson blinked at her. She had delivered a bombshell and she had done it as if she thought what she said was of no importance: "I'm not trying to chisel Les Ro or anybody out of anything." His calm matched her aplomb. "That's not the way the grapevine had it." "I don't care how the grapevine had it. I know my own motives and my purpose in coming here." An edge crept into his voice as he realized one possible result of what she was saying. "That may be true. But do the Martians know them?" Ronson was silent, his thinking perturbed. "So I hired Sam and came here," Jennie Ware continued. "If Les Ro was big enough to attract you, he was also big enough to provide me with copy for my next book." "So you could find copy for a damned book, you risked my neck!" Ronson said, his voice hot.