Meanwhile, Sam was immersed in his laboratory work, in the examination of the prism of blue metal, and in his curious pet. The plant creature still grew with remarkable speed, and always showed most remarkable intelligence. It was always with Sam, flapping along above him on broad green wings, or walking awkwardly upon its thickening red tentacles. Sam gazed at the flickering colors of the membranes about the head, with the light of strange understanding in his eyes, making strange gestures with his hands. Just to what extent they could communicate, I never knew. It always went with him, when he went to hunt for its meat. It was a voracious eater, requiring a kill a day. The great sloth-like animals were plentiful and sluggish; it was not difficult to stalk them. As soon as it was strong enough, the plant creature learned to carry Sam's rifle. Its extraordinary intelligence, or imitative instinct, is shown by the fact that one day it fired the gun itself, when it was flying with the weapon, and saw one of the sloths on the run. It showed a very real affection for Sam. Once, when they were out together, it saved his life. One of the tuskers had suddenly charged him from behind, and the creature flew at it and attacked it madly with its undeveloped claws. At the cost of considerable minor injury to itself, it held the beast off until Sam could get in a shot. It always showed an odd delight at his caresses, and seemed to take a peculiar joy in the music of his old phonograph. As I have said, it grew very quickly. At the time we stopped in the wood, it was somewhat smaller than a hawk. Perhaps two months later (time was rather meaningless to us during that one happy period of our adventures in that world of unending day) the creature had grown so large that once, in an apparently playful mood, it was able to lift Sam and fly with him on a circuit of a hundred yards, bringing him back to the machine and setting him down very softly. Then its armored brown body was as large as a man, and the green wings were like sails. That was near the end. During all that period, Sam devoted much time to the examination of that bar of strangely light, bright blue metal. He felt that in it he might find a solution to the mystery of the Lord of Flame. I assisted him as much as I could. The metal was evidently an alloy. Analysis showed that it consisted largely of aluminum. There was a trace of a heavy metal that we could not identify. And the bar was slightly, very slightly, radioactive--perhaps, Sam thought, merely because it had been exposed to intense radium emanations. The density of the bar was only half that of aluminum. For some time we could not understand that. Careful examination showed no break in the surface; and presently we sawed it in two, and then in many pieces, searching for the machinery that we half-expected to find. But, as far as we could determine, the bar was absolutely homogeneous.