By a curious coincidence, Hsoj arrived at this point, carrying a tray full of things and stuff. "Artifacts!" he shouted. "Nice artifacts! Who wants to buy artifacts?" * * * * * All the tourists did. They were pretty good artifacts, if I do say so myself. I'd made them out of the junk I rescued from our dustbins before the disintegration unit got to work. Honestly, I can't understand how the old ones can complain about our being wasteful and then go and throw away all sorts of perfectly useful things. "You must pay the natives in metal," the guide explained. "They accept only coins." "Why?" the stout female wanted to know. "Do they really eat metal?" "I doubt it. One of them ate a couple of pounds of Earth candy a tourist gave him last time and he seemed to enjoy it without ill effects." "Without ill effects!" Ppon excogitated. "You should have seen Ztul afterward, boy!" "Look, Mac." A short fat human offered Hsoj a small silver coin and then five larger brown ones. "Which would you rather have?" "Them." Hsoj pointed unhesitatingly to the brown coins. A smile rippled covertly through the tourists. "They're a simple and child-like people, but really so good-natured," Sam footnoted. All of us gave simple good-natured smiles as Hsoj accepted the gift of the brown coins. "Keep up the good work," I projected. "We can use all the copper we can get." "You like metal, dear?" a female asked Hsoj. She unfastened a belt from around her waist. "Would you take this in exchange for some of your pretty things?" "Say 'yes,'" I conceptualized. "That's steel. Old and worthless to her, but not to us." "I know, I know," Hsoj ideated impatiently. "What makes you think you're the only one who knows anything?" Never had we got such a big haul before, because everybody seemed to have all sorts of metal stuff on him that he valued less than coins. Now came the sad part of the spiel. "Remember, folks, these simple, honest individuals you see before you are but the scanty remnants of a once-proud race who spanned the skies. For their ancestors must have been godlike indeed to have erected such edifices as that commanding structure over there." Sam pointed to the portable atmosphere machine which was set up several _yebil_ away to give our playground proper air. "Once glorious, now fallen into ruin and decay." "You're going to catch _muh_ from the old ones," Ppon ideated, "when they find out you haven't been keeping the machine clean." "Don't be a silly _oosh_," I thought back with a mental grin. "I'm using the atmosphere machine to create atmosphere." "You're getting to be as stupid as a human," he thought in disgust. "May we go inside?" the scientific passenger asked Sam. "No, indeed," I said hastily. "It is our temple, sacred to the gods. No unbeliever may set foot in it." "What are the basic tenets of your religion?" the scientist wanted to know.