He only looked at me for another dull instant and then his eyes slowly closed and his hands folded together in his lap. Being caught in a lie only bores a Martian. I got up and went out of the tent. * * * * * The woman never heard me approach. Her eyes were toward the flaming circle and the dancers within, and, too, I suppose, to her small son who was somewhere in that circle with them, whistling. She leaned against the bole of a _belu_ tree with her arms down and slightly curled backward around it. "That's considered bad luck," I said. Her head jerked around with my words, reflected flames from the circle fire still flickering in her eyes. "That's a _belu_ tree," I said. "Embracing it like that is like looking for a ladder to walk under. Or didn't you know?" "Would it make any difference?" She spoke softly, but the words came to me above the drums and the shouts of the dancers. "How much bad luck can you have in one lifetime, anyway?" I ignored that. "Why did you pull out of that shack? I told you you had nothing to fear from me." She didn't answer. "I'm looking for the man you saw me talking with this morning," I went on. "Lady, he's wanted. And this thing, on my lapel is an Authority Card. Assuming you know what it means, I'm asking you where he is." "What man?" Her words were flat. "His name is Harry Smythe." If that meant anything to her, I couldn't tell. In the flickering light from the fires, subtle changes in expression weren't easily detected. "Why should I care about an Earthman? My husband was a Martian. And he's dead, see? Dead. Just a Martian. Not fit for anything, like all Martians. Just a bum who fell in love with an Earthwoman and had the guts to marry her. Do you understand? So somebody murdered him for it. Ain't that pretty? Ain't that something to make you throw back your head and be proud about? Well, ain't it? And let me tell you, Mister, whoever it was, I'll get him. _I'll get him!_" I could see her face now, all right. It was a twisted, tortured thing that writhed at me in its agony. It was small yellow teeth that bared at me in viciousness. It was eyes that brimmed with boiling, bubbling hate like a ladle of molten steel splashing down on bare, white flesh. Or, simply, it was the face of a woman who wanted to kill the killer of her man. And then, suddenly, it wasn't. Even though the noise of the dance and the dancers was loud enough to command the attention and the senses. I could still hear her quiet sobbing, and I could see the heaving of the small, thin shoulders. And I knew then the reason for old Wahanhk's bitterness when he had said to me, "But not for the murder of a Martian, eh? Martians are not that important any more."