"There's no need to be redundant!" said the Martian. "To what?" she cried, standing back from the cage to glare at him the better, with arms akimbo. The Martian took this golden opportunity to let the cage drop suddenly back out of our ken. The shimmering blur of metallic luster was once more at our feet. "Oh!" she cried, stepping forward and staring down. "Ted! Teddy!" "Jery, Jery, Jery," Snow murmured tearfully, turning about and burrowing her nose into my chest, while I held her helplessly. "He looked s-so hungry!" I decided to let her sob. Neither I nor the Martian, no matter what our brain power, could drive this fixed notion out of her pretty little head. "Now that you have seen them," said the Martian, "perhaps we can get to the business at hand?" I seemed to be out of dilatory alibis. "Okay," I said. "What do you want from me?" "We want you to destroy Philip Baxter," said the Martian. 16 "Destroy Baxter?" I echoed stupidly. "I was dragged all the way from Earth to do that?" "Since we are here, and you were there," said the Martian, condescendingly, "what other choice did we have?" "You could have sent a letter," I muttered. "Hardly," the Martian said, unperturbed. "Since physical contact between our two dimensions is impossible." "It is?" I said, surprised. "Of course!" the Martian snapped. "If it were not, we'd have destroyed Baxter ourselves." "Why didn't you use the sugarfeet?" I asked, bewildered. "Clatclit seems to have shown no ineptness in disintegrating other Earthmen." "For the simple reason," said the Martian, with cold anger, "that on your wretchedly humid planet, a sugarfoot would be corroded to death before it could locate him. If, of course, it had already overcome the other obvious difficulties such as getting there, since Earth does not permit immigration of alien species." Like a hot spark flaring where only ice had been before, a tiny light of hope began to burn in my heart. The Martians, for all their four-dimensional superiority, didn't know that Baxter was on Mars! Hell, why should they? I knew Baxter personally, and I didn't know he was on Mars until he was good and ready to let me know it. "Jery--" said Snow, about to spill the beans. "Ixnay, lover!" I growled. "Unless you want these guys tossing in the hand, and switching to Plan C! Remember?" I hoped she'd recall what had happened to those would-be rebels once the Ancients no longer had a use for them. I could tell, a second later, by her involuntary gasp, that she did. "What was the import of that exchange?" the Martian asked, fairly smoldering with suspicion. "Your idioms were elusive." "My woman was about to beg me not to do your will," I lied carefully. "I merely pointed out to her that if I refused, you would simply obliterate us and utilize some other scheme."