I'll give Molock credit, he could do tricks I had never guessed he could do. He kept even with Shad. But within thirty minutes he was beginning to pant. Going round the circle, dancing every step of the way, he found wind to yell at Wilkerson, who was peering from the lock. "Any news ... from that damned Cooper?" "Operations contacted him ... in a bar!" Wilkerson yelled. "Cooper said you could dance your own way out of this ..." "The dirty dog!" Molock screamed. The next time he came around the circle, waving his hands and bending double as he imitated one of Shad Brisbee's more intricate steps, he whispered to me, "Bunt him...." Keeping the little spring gun out of sight in my hand, I waited until the Venusian's back was turned to me, and pressed the trigger. The spring clicked softly. I caught a glint of the needle as it went home in Shad's backside. He went right on dancing as if nothing had happened. The next time he came around the circle, Molock whispered, "Let him have another one...." As I started to pull the trigger, the sky seemed to fall down on top of me. A ham-sized Venusian hand smashed me downward. "No tricks!" a Venusian voice snarled into my ear. The gun was jerked away from me. About twenty-four eyes in my vicinity were concentrated on me, each one glaring in its own individual way. I was given to understand that if I attempted to take any further part in the proceedings, I would be fed to the nearest alligator. "What happened?" Molock yelled, as he danced by again. "They caught me. You'll have to out-dance him honestly." "But I can't go much farther--" He was covered with sweat and his chest was heaving. I felt like the lowest kind of a dog for having let him down. Molock might be an utter damned fool, but when the chips were down, he was in there trying for all of us. He had built all his hopes on this trick with the needle gun. Circling the dancing ground, he suddenly stopped, stood with his hands on his hips, chest heaving. "You give up?" Shad Brisbee shouted. "You quit?" "I do not--give up!" Molock wheezed. "But you have stop dancing." "I have danced your way--for two zonars. Turn about is fair play. Now you dance--my way." "Your way?" Astonishment showed in all of Shad Brisbee's six eyes. "You humans don't dance, you don't know how." "That's where you're wrong!" Molock answered. "We know how to dance in a new way--a way you stupid Venusians have never heard of." I didn't know whether Shad Brisbee and the others were more excited over the insult or the thought of a new way to dance. Dancing was the blood of life to them. "No way Venusians not know!" Shad Brisbee shouted. "We know _everything_ about dancing, all steps, all--" "Hell, you don't know this way," Molock interrupted. "I doubt if you could do it even if I taught it to you."