"But," I protested, "Baxter, from my last contact with him, isn't the sort who'd care about the boys, right?" Nods. "Well, then, for pete's sake," I protested loudly, "over whose heads are the Ancients holding the safety of the boys?" Clatclit extended a ruddy talon directly at me, and then aimed it toward the corridor outside. "Me and Snow?" I cried, standing up. "They're trying to force me and Snow to do something for them, and making the boys' safety the price of it. Why, that's--that's criminal!" In my rage, I'd taken a step toward Clatclit, not even thinking of the fact that his crystalline constitution would be an easy match for my fists. Genially, though, Clatclit leaned back on the stool, widened his already wide eyes, and, pointing two index fingers at his chest, shook his head from side to side. "What?" I said, not getting it. Then, "Oh, I see. It's not your fault what the Ancients have done. Yeah, you're right. Sorry, Clatclit." He shrugged off the apology, and waited for more of my investigative monologue. I dropped back to sit on the edge of the cot, and let him wait a while, while I tried to figure the whole mess out. Then I remembered something, and looked up at him. "Clatclit, back in Marsport, when I first met you, I asked why I had been chosen, and you indicated that you'd tell me later. Why was I chosen?" Clatclit just stared, uncertainly. "You know what I mean. Why was I the one you didn't blast with that collapser? And why'd you go off without me the first time, but want to take me along the second?" A very disgusted stare. I slowed down and fed him questions one at a time. "Back at that bar, you blasted the other men, then left without me. Why?" Clatclit pointed to himself, then to his cranium, then to me, then made a palms-down hand-spreading gesture. "You ... thought ... I ... negation--You thought I'd been blasted, too! Except that I'd flattened out behind that wall, and you couldn't see me behind the remaining bottom section. You originally meant to get me out of there alive?" Nods, vigorous. "And you thought you'd goofed with the collapser, and gotten me, too!" Nods. "So what happened in the street? How'd you happen to stick around?" The talon went to his earhole, then he spread his hands wide, in a gesture of "many-ness," and waited hopefully. "You heard a lot of--what? Oh! You heard those men coming up the street, and stuck around to see what was up. But I didn't hear them, and I was closer. In fact, they were sneaking after me." Clatclit pointed to his ears and nodded, then indicated mine and shook his head. I got it then. Supersensitivity. It made sense. Just as man's ears, accustomed to use in air, are even more receptive to sounds in a denser medium, as, for instance, underwater, where sound waves are more powerful; so the sugarfeet's ears, built for use in the rarefied Martian atmosphere, could hear all the better in the heavier air of Marsport.