"Yes." Caine wiped a hand at the sweat on his forehead. The woman was working at the cats, her eyes shifting to look at her husband with every word, to see how he was reacting. So far he had done nothing, said nothing, only sat there and drank. However, the cats were not the reason the couple were in the Venusian jungle. Hunting animals was a dead sport for them, something done in the past and something which had become boring. They were looking for bigger game now. The Screece gem. And they had flown all the way from Earth to Mars, from Mars to Venus, to find it. The Screece gem was a myth, Caine was certain, a bit of fantasy out of ancient Venusian lore. But they paid him well for the trip, and he would ask no questions. The woman stayed with the cats. "How big are these grith cats, Mr. Caine?" "Eight to ten feet long," Caine said. "About like a large horse." "Only they're cats, with the claws and the fangs and all." "Essentially." Caine felt himself tightening inside a little. The woman was trying to break through her husband's armor, because somewhere, sometime, he must have had trouble hunting a cat-like animal. Tiger. Or panther. The Martian frynx, perhaps. But she had not found her target, yet. The man raised his head and spoke for the first time since they had landed. "How far away is this temple, would you say, Mr. Caine?" "Fifty miles," Caine said. "How close to it can we land?" "Eight or ten miles, I imagine." "Can't we get closer than that?" the man asked. "I don't think so," Caine said. "The temple is on top of a fairly sheer rise of land, and I can't put the ship down there. The nearest clearing we'll find will be about eight or ten miles away." Mrs. Fairchild walked to her chair and sat down. "That means, then, that we'll have to go through that much country where the cats are?" Caine didn't answer, and the man returned to gazing at his knees. Time moved slowly in the thick wet jungle. "Show Mr. Caine your scar, Charles," the woman said, her voice sudden out of the silence. Fairchild picked up his glass from the arm of his chair and held it tightly in front of his waist. The muscles along his bare forearms were ridged and his knuckles paled as he held the glass. "Don't be bashful," the woman said, smiling. "I'm sure Mr. Caine would like to see what a cat can do." She looked at Caine as though she were about to tell him a delightfully domestic story that had been, until now, nurtured between just her husband and her. "This was a leopard, Mr. Caine. A long vicious leopard. Mr. Fairchild, you see, didn't hit him right, and so he got Charles from about here," she tapped herself just below the neck, "to here." She touched her waist. "It's a long scar, Mr. Caine. Isn't it, Charles? About three inches wide, and...." The man brought his glass down against the arm of the chair. "Shut up, Janet. I'll tell you nicely. Just shut up!"