"The trackers went back to their tribe." "Went back? What about your hunters? Are you boys the hunters too?" I couldn't tell him about Talbot Kramer walking out on us. If I told him that, I knew he would climb right back into his sportster and head on to Venus Joe's. Venus Joe's which had started with fifty times the capital Harry and I had had, was doing well enough. But if Spaceman's magazine gave them a plug and said nothing about us, we really were through. I knew it and Harry coming back from the tent platform knew it and we didn't have to say it out loud. "Yes," I told Mr. Stevenson. "We're the guides too." "Experienced?" "We know Venus as well as anyone," I said, which wasn't exactly a lie since no one, not even the Extra-terrestrial geographic Survey, had been able to draw an accurate map of Venus yet. * * * * * Mr. Stevenson seemed very doubtful. "Well, boys, I don't know. No hard feelings, you understand. If I was alone it might be different. But my daughter's here. She's not exactly a delicate item now, boys, but she's no big-game hunter, either. If it was a cabin instead of a tent and if you had bearers and trackers--" "You can have our cabin!" Harry cried desperately. "Well, I don't know, boys." I gave Harry one of those desperate stares. Harry returned it to me, saying without words that he had no further ideas either. I could see our last chance--a favorable write-up in Spaceman's magazine--going up in smoke. Mr. Stevenson started back toward his sportster and said, "I'll say I stopped here on the way to Venus Joe's, boys. I'll say the place looked--ah, primitive. How's that? Primitive, I'll say. For real outdoorsmen." "Damning with faint praise," Harry whispered to me fiercely. "Gil, you've got to do something." I nodded. My head was suddenly as empty of ideas as the space between galaxies is empty of stars. I followed Mr. Stevenson back to the sportster and watched him boost himself up toward the hatch athletically and lower his two-hundred pounds in with the grace of a cat. When his head had disappeared but before the hatch banged shut I said: "Wompan." The head re-appeared. "What did you say, boy?" "I said, Wompan." "Here? Wompan here?" "Yes, sir. Positively." "I never caught a Wompan," Mr. Stevenson said. "Only three men ever have." "That's right," I said. "If I could write it up for Spaceman's magazine--assuming I catch one--we'd increase our circulation half a million copies." "You'll catch one," I promised. Jason Woods Stevenson beamed on me. "Oh, to hell with Spaceman's. I want to catch one because I never have. I've caught everything on Earth that the law lets you catch, boys. I was up at Venus Joe's last year and took the legal limit of everything but Wompan. Never even saw a Wompan. Boys," he said, "you've got yourself a customer."