Around midday, 600 o’clock, he reached the outskirts of the town of Lai. One of the first houses was the villa of a very intimate friend of his and Lilla’s. There it stood, set in a clearing, surrounded by thick woods, a little way to the right of the road, at the end of a flower-flanked path. The architecture was typically Cupian, white stucco with steep red-tilted roof, ornamented with turrets, towers and minarets. Just as Cabot was about to turn in at the gate, a Formian appeared at the door. This was unexpected. His friend had never before been known to entertain ant men. Ant men were the last creatures on the planet whom Myles desired to see at that moment, so he hastily passed by. At last he topped a rise, from which he could see the whole of Lai stretched beneath him. And what a sight met his eyes. Not a Cupian stirring in the usually bustling little village, but instead all the streets patrolled by ant men. There would be no haven here. So Myles sadly circled the town, rejoined the road at the other side, and resumed his journey northward. Day after day he trudged on, avoiding the towns, which he rightly assumed were policed by ant men as Lai had been, and hiding whenever a kerkool approached or an airplane motor sounded in the sky. True, the kerkool might bear friends, but he was taking no chances. His sustenance was root-crops stolen from the fields, edible twig-knobs plucked in the woods, green milk drawn from the grazing aphids, and even lobsterlike parasites plucked from the sides of these creatures. Once he was about to extract a bullet from one of his cartridges and discharge the blank into a pile of dried leaves to start a fire and roast some of these parasites; but, realizing that his ammunition was now limited to four rounds, he decided to forego the experiment. His hair and beard grew long and unkempt, so that now there was no possible hope of escaping unrecognized, if ever he should be seen. For in the whole history of the planet Poros, there had never been but one person with long hair and beard, and that one person was Myles Cabot, the earthman. Cupians cannot grow beards, and the hair on their heads remains a fixed length, never requiring cutting. As he plodded along, day after day, he did a great deal of thinking. Most of it was useless recrimination: “Why wasn’t I a bit quicker on the draw, that fatal morning in the stadium? Why did I ever leave Lilla alone at Lake Luno, even at the behest of her father, the king? Was I not influenced by my conceited desire to pose as a popular hero on the anniversary of the beginning of my great victory over Formia, and by my wish to star as a pistol shot, rather than by deference to the king?” And so on. And so on.