The scenery was worth the trip. Sitting comfortably on their rented airscooters, stripped to shorts and singlets, with the polarized sunscreens moderating the blazing heat of Gamma Tauri, Maxwell and the girl could look in any horizontal direction and see a thousand square miles of exuberant blue-green foliage. Two hundred feet below, the tops of gigantic tree-ferns waved spasmodically in the breeze. They were following a chain of low mountains that bisected this continent; the tree-tops sloped away abruptly on either side, showing an occasional glimpse of reddish-brown undergrowth, and merged into a sea of blue-green that became bluer and mistier toward the horizon. A flying thing moved lazily across the clear, cumulus-dotted sky, perhaps half a mile away. Maxwell trained his binoculars on it: it was an absurd lozenge with six pairs of wings--an insect, perhaps; he couldn't tell. He heard a raucous cry down below, not far away, and glanced down hoping to see one of the carnivores; but the rippling sea of foliage was unbroken. He watched Alice breathing deeply. Maxwell grinned. Her face was shiny with perspiration and pleasure. "Where to now?" he asked. The girl peered to the right, where a glint of silver shone on the horizon. "Is that the sea, over there?" she asked. "If it is, let's go look for a nice beach and have our lunch." There were no nice beaches; they were all covered with inch-thick pebbles instead of sand; but Alice kept wanting to try the next place. After each abortive approach, they went up to two thousand feet to survey the shore-line. Alice pointed and said, "There's a nice looking one. Oh! There's somebody on it." Maxwell looked, and saw a tiny figure moving along the shore. "Might be somebody I know," he said, and focused his binoculars. He saw a broad, naked back, dark against the silvery sea. The man was stooping, looking at something on the beach. The figure straightened, and Maxwell saw a blazing crest of blond hair, then a strongly modeled nose and chin as the man turned. "Oh-oh," he said, lowering the binoculars. Alice was staring intently through her binoculars. "Isn't he handsome," she breathed. "Do you know him?" "Yeah," said Maxwell. "That's the Beachcomber. I interviewed him a couple of times. We'd better leave him be." Alice kept staring. "Honestly," she said. "I never saw such a--. Look, Vernie, he's waving at us." Maxwell looked again. The Beachcomber's face was turned up directly toward them. As Maxwell watched, the man's lips moved unmistakably in the syllables of his name. Maxwell shortened the range, and saw that the Beachcomber was indeed waving. He also saw something he had missed before: the man was stark naked. "He's recognized me," he said, with mingled emotions. "Now we will have to go down." * * * * *