Larkin was silent. They could remove him bodily from this place. He could not resist four men. "But what if the Martians refuse to trade with you when you take over?" he said quietly. "How can they refuse? They've got to have minerals. Without them, they starve." "They might choose to starve," Boyd Larkin said. "What?" the younger man gasped. "But that's silly. That's crazy. You don't know what the hell you're talking about. You're trying to pull a fast one." "They're a strange people," Boyd Larkin said, ignoring his son's outburst. "Sometimes they seem to do crazy things though I have usually found that back of their craziness is a vein of such hard common sense that it is bewildering to us humans." Roy Larkin was a little uncertain. "They've been dealing with you. They'll deal with us." "That does not necessarily follow. What you do not understand is that they have a certain test, and that I have passed it." "A test? Well, what is it. If you can pass it so can we. You haven't got anything that we haven't got." An involuntary shudder passed over Larkin. "Perhaps. But this test isn't exactly easy." A sound came to his ears. Over the city of Sudal was flooding the sound of temple bells. The shudder came over him again, grew stronger. His son's eyes were sharp on him. "What the hell are you shaking about?" "The temple bells--" "So what?" "That's the call to the testing. It's an emergency call. It means us." He saw unease appear momentarily on the face of his son and the men with him, then he saw it shrugged away. "If we have to pass some kind of a test to do business with these fools, all right. We'll pass it." "I hope," Boyd Larkin whispered. Already the elders had put in their appearance and were coming toward them. They carried with them the long metal rods like the one Malovar carried and which were the sign of their office. "They come to take us to the place of the testing," Larkin said. He straightened his shoulders. The Martian elders bowed politely and motioned him to precede them. Neither his son nor the men with him liked the idea. They did not know what was going to happen. They would have preferred to go elsewhere. But Larkin was going and they could hardly let him out-face them. Besides, they had _Kell_ guns. So what danger could they meet that they could not overcome? IV The place of the testing was a huge coliseum that had been centuries old when the human race was still in the barbaric stage of its development. It had been designed to hold tens of thousands of spectators and once unquestionably it had held them but the whole population of Sudal and the surrounding territory would now hardly fill the lower tiers. Looking out at the encroaching desert, where pathetic little patches of greenery tried to stem the tide of encroaching desolation, it was easy to see why this stadium could no longer be filled.