"Check. I'm too busy to record, anyway--I'll log this stuff up tonight," and thoughts flew. "Check me, Jim," Garlock flashed. "Telepathy, very good. On Gunther, the guy was right--no signs at all of any First activity, and very few Seconds." "Check," James agreed. "And Lola, those 'Guardians' out there. I thought they were the same as the Arpalone we talked to. They aren't. Not even telepathic. Same color scheme, is all." "Right. Much more brutish. Much flatter cranium. Long, tearing canine teeth. Carnivorous. I'll call them just 'guardians' until we find out what they really are." * * * The press car arrived and the Tellurians disembarked--and, accidentally or not, it was Belle's green slipper that first touched ground. There was a terrific babel of thought, worse, even, than voices in similar case, in being so much faster. The reporters, all of them, wanted to know everything at once. How, what, where, when, and why. Also who. And all about Tellus and the Tellurian solar system. How did the visitors like Hodell? And all about Belle's green hair. And the photographers were prodigal of film, shooting everything from all possible angles. "Hold it!" Garlock loosed a blast of thought that "silenced" almost the whole field. "We will have order, please. Lola Montandon, our anthropologist, will take charge. Keep it orderly, Lola, if you have to throw half of them off the field. I'm going over to Administration and check in. One of you reporters can come with me, if you like." The man in the purple shirt got his bid in first. As the two men walked away together, Garlock noted that the man was in fact a Second--his flow of lucid, cogent thought did not interfere at all with the steady stream of speech going into his portable recorder. Garlock also noticed that in any group of more than a dozen people there was always at least one guardian. They paid no attention whatever to the people, who in turn ignored them completely. Garlock wondered briefly. Guardians? The Arpalones, out in space, yes. But these creatures, naked and unarmed on the ground? The Arpalones were non-human people. These things were--what? At the door of the Field Office the reporter, after turning Garlock over to a startlingly beautiful, leggy, breasty, blonde receptionist-usherette, hurried away. * * * He flecked a feeler at her mind and stiffened. How could a Two--a high Two, at that--be working as an usher? And with her guard down clear to the floor? He probed--and saw. "Lola!" He flashed a tight-beamed thought. "You aren't putting out anything about our sexual customs, family life, and so on." "Of course not. We must know their mores first." "Good girl. Keep your shield up."