They hold elaborate contests to determine who is the best tribal dancer. He's the chief, the big shot, the boss. They hold contests between tribes, everybody gets drunk, everybody dances. Personally, I'll say one thing for the Venusians, it always seemed to me that dancing contests were a better way to settle personal and tribal problems than war, but the Venusians are just benighted, ignorant natives with no knowledge of the finer things of life. This doesn't mean they can't and won't fight--they fight alligators and flying snakes and blue tigers--but they just don't fight each other. Any personal or private quarrels they settle by dancing it out. I've heard learned professors from Earth lecture on the vast satisfaction to be derived from expressing the kinesthetic sense, the rapture that goes with movements of the body, the sweet pure flame of mood expressed by body movement and gesture. All of this may mean something, to the professors. So far as I'm concerned, the Venusians just like to dance. If you want to start a ruckus--and but good--just suggest to one of the males that things would be a lot better around the home place if he spent more of his time working and less dancing. If you want to start a real fracas, just come between a Venusian and his dancing. Hell hath no fury-- I know, this is not the way it is written up in the books. The authors usually speak of the "quaint" Venusian dancing customs, but this is the way it is. Shad Brisbee might be a tame Venusian to the publicity department, but when we landed right in the middle of his tribe's dancing ground, you could guarantee he would revert to the wild state. With Wilkerson stamping the ground ahead of us, we moved toward the ship. _Whuuuuuup!_ An arrow eight feet long came out of the jungle behind us, passed between us, whammed into the open lock of the ship ahead of us. It beat us to our destination, but it didn't beat us much. I don't know who led the way but it was my opinion that Wilkerson damned near beat that arrow into the ship. Jumping into the ship, we slammed the lock. "Whew!" Wilkerson said, mopping sweat from his face. "Just an arrow," Molock said. "Heck, they're nothing. Shad Brisbee and his boys will never get anywhere with arrows. And they haven't got any weapons except spears, clubs, knives." He sounded very comfortable about the situation. "But we haven't even got a gun, except for your spring pistol!" Wilkerson said. For several minutes, he spoke freely and movingly about George Cooper. It had been Cooper's idea that we go unarmed. "Treat these natives with friendliness and they'll treat you with friendliness. No guns!" Cooper had decreed. "Wait until I get that damned Cooper on the radio!" Wilkerson said, stalking into the control cabin. "There won't be anything to this," Molock said. "Cooper will send out a couple of ships and blow these idiots to hell and gone. Or scare 'em to death. Let's go into the galley and have a beer."