As the cloud's thoughts impressed themselves on Captain Hawes' mind, it underwent a slow transformation. It dwindled in size and changed from turquoise to a beautiful olive shade. Its form swiftly became that of a human being. Then, before Hawes and Duerkes, stood a woman of dazzling beauty. She was dark complexioned. Her hair and eyes were dark. She was dressed in a cirrus mist of rainbow color. Captain Hawes' thoughts were akin to a gape. Dr. Duerkes looked with his mind stunned into a blank. "Poor men," she said. "I pity you. You thought you were the highest form of life on the face of the earth, yet you are no further advanced in comparison to the Green Clouds than fish are in comparison to you." She did not open her mouth but she spoke in waves of thought. Without her saying so, Captain Hawes knew her name was Loetta and somehow, as she spoke, Hawes perceived that in spite of this creature's claims to superiority, she needed man. Hawes and Duerkes had been brought here for a purpose. There was a problem to be solved and only man could solve it. "Our lives lie one step in evolution beyond yours," Loetta went on, as though she were trying to erase the thoughts that crept into Hawes' mind. "First life on earth was plant life. It lived on the inanimate elements in the sea and rocks. Then came animal life, living in the sea and devouring the plants. Larger animals came to eat the small ones and life emerged from the sea onto the land. Man developed to eat the animals. We, the Green Clouds, are the next stage. Our food is thought--the mental imagery of lowly man." The problem, at least, was down-to-earth. Even a creature that lived in the clouds had to have food. "I should have known," Dr. Duerkes' thoughts staggered from his confused brain. "It is perfectly plausible. Everything is plausible, if one studies it long enough. It is inevitable that life should move some day into the stratosphere, just as it once moved out of the sea onto the land." "Primitive thoughts," rebuked the woman. "We would not feed such slop to our half-wits." She turned to the aviator. "And what is the best you can do?" Hawes was feasting his eyes on the cloud woman. "If I weren't sure I was awake, I'd say you were a nightmare," he began. "But you can't be a nightmare--nightmares are hideous--" he stopped abruptly. Loetta smiled. "I liked that," said she. "What?" Captain Hawes blushed mentally. "What you did, just then. You pressed your lips against mine and made a loud smacking noise." The flustered captain stammered: "But I--I didn't. Not really." "In your mind you did," Loetta said. "It was a swell idea. A perfect feast." "You mean that's what you live on?"