"Well," I said stubbornly, "it's the truth." Just then someone knocked at the door. Harry and I shared a small cabin in the Venus on the Half Shell stockade. It wasn't much of a cabin and it doubled as office and sleeping quarters. A knock on the door meant either the leader of the Venusians or Talbot Kramer, our has-been hunter who so far had been content to sit around drinking our whiskey. * * * * * I opened the door. It was Talbot Kramer, complete with week's growth of beard, red-rimmed eyes, mouldly, swamp-smelling clothing and a man-sized scowl. "Natives are through," he said, and laughed. It may have meant a lot to me and Harry, but it meant nothing to him. "Through?" I said. "What the hell did they quit for?" "Wompan," Kramer said. "Which?" Harry asked him. "Wompan," I repeated. I was excited. "Don't you know what a Wompan is?" "Not me," Harry said. "Guess I was too busy studying unpaid bills. What's a Wompan?" "I quit too," Talbot Kramer said suddenly. "You can't expect a hunter to hang around when the bearers have quit on you. Not anyways, with a Wompan around camp." "Will somebody please tell me," Harry begged, "what a Wompan is?" "I'll take the swamp-buggy," Kramer said, getting ready to go outside. "The hell you will," Harry and I both said together. "Listen. You guys owe me some wages. I know you don't have the cash, but I'm not complaining. I'll take the swamp-buggy. Hell, its the only way out of here anyways." "Some friend," said Harry. "We won't have any way out ourselves. We'll be trapped in this damn swamp." "Trapped?" Kramer said incredulously. "Did you say trapped? It's your place of business. There's all the food you need--in the swamp. What's your hurry to leave? Besides, Mr. Gil Roberts here told himself: one of these days you're going to get a lot of rich customers coming in with their own spaceships. Well, got to be going now." We went outside with him and over to the squat, ugly shape of the swamp-buggy. The treads were a foot deep in mud, a normal state of affairs for the swamp-buggy. It would run, though. It would take Talbot Kramer, ex big-game hunter with a reputation and not much else, back to an outpost of civilization. And leave us without a guide if we ever got any customers. "If you give us a little time," I said as Kramer climbed into the buggy through the roof hatch. "Sorry, boys," he said, smelling of our liquor. "There was a letter for me on this week's mail rocket. A job in Kenya." "Kenya, Africa, Earth?" I said, as if I were addressing a letter.