Jarl Gare's ray gun swept the circle again. "I wish I could see them," he said. "I'd like to know what they looked like if I met them face to face." Waltk's eyes turned to one of the waiting figures. "They are as tall as you. Their heads are conical, set on sloping shoulders without much neck. Their bodies are mottled green and red and brown. They carry two-pronged spears. Their feet are webbed." "I have seen pictures of them," Jarl Gare said. "But they weren't colored. I remember reading that they can change the colors of their skin to blend with surroundings." "They blend well," Waltk said. "It was difficult for me to see them at first after I had sensed them." Waltk slung Jarl Gare on his back. A tensing of his mighty thews and one leap took them to a tree thirty feet away. Then they were swinging swiftly through the upper reaches of the forest, propelled by the Jovian's strength, made even more powerful by the lesser gravitational pull of Venus. A mile away Waltk halted, while Jarl Gare swept the forest behind him with the infra-red ray. He laughed. "They're still sitting there, waiting for us." "Good," said Waltk. "It is easier to travel in the trees." He resumed the role of carrier, and went plunging on. * * * * * The hours of flight through the trees seemed hardly to touch the reserves of the Jovian's strength. But suddenly, abruptly, he halted. "We cannot go further through the trees," he said to a puzzled Jarl Gare. "The end of the forest ahead?" Jarl Gare asked. "That means we're less than a hundred Earth miles from the beds." "No," Waltk said. "Not the end of the forest. There is something I don't understand. I feel a pressure ahead of us ... as if some horrible fate awaits us." Jarl Gare's first reaction was to brush away Waltk's fears as if merely caused by not understanding what lay ahead. It was like Waltk's fear of the water beasts. But then he remembered the intuitive sense the Jovians had. "We'd better go down, then," Jarl Gare decided. "No," said Waltk. "It is the same there." "Then we'll go around it. Come on." An ironic smile blossomed on Waltk's moon face. "It is the same everywhere," he said. "To either side, above, below, ahead and behind us." Jarl Gare, whose fierce desire for a Venusian pearl had lifted him above panic, felt only a twinge of exasperation. "I feel nothing," he said, irritated. "Why can't we keep going?" The Jovian shrugged. "I feel we can't." "Hell," said Jarl Gare, "I'll go down and show you." Jarl Gare's wiry, whip-scarred body slid down the limb on which they stood until it reached the crotch of the huge tree. He started down the trunk. Waltk watched him quietly. Jarl Gare stopped suddenly. Then, slowly, he inched his way back up the trunk to the limb where the Jovian stood. "I see what you mean," he said. "This was something I hadn't figured on." He sat down on the limb, letting his legs dangle.