d man nothing but water pumped from deep in the rock strata beneath the salt, and even that had to be treated to remove enough of the saline content to make it usable. At the time, I didn't know what the natives, outside our bubble, lived on. The decision to come had been a sudden one, and I hadn't had more than enough time to call the State Department to find out who the planet administrator might be.

I was first out of the yacht and down the landing steps to the salt covered ground. Aunt Mattie was still busy giving her ship captain his instructions, and possibly inspecting the crew's teeth to see if they'd brushed them this morning. The two members of her special committee of the D.T.'s who'd come along, a Miss Point and a Mrs. Waddle, naturally would be standing at her sides, and a half pace to the rear, to be of assistance should she need them in dealing with males.

There was a certain stiff formality in the way McCabe, flanked by his own two selected subordinates, approached the ship—until I turned around at the foot of the steps and he recognized me.

"Hap!" he yelled, then. "Happy Graves, you old son of a gun!" He broke into a run, dignity forgotten, and when he got to me he grabbed both my shoulders in his powerful hands to shake me as if he were some sort of terrier—and I a rat. His joy seemed all out of proportion until I remembered he probably hadn't seen anybody from school for a long time; and until I further remembered that he would have been alerted by the State Department to Aunt Mattie's visit and would have been looking forward to it with dread and misgivings.

To realize he had a friend at court must really have overjoyed him.

"Johnny," I said. "Long time." It had been. Five-six years anyway. I held out my hand in the old school gesture. He let loose my shoulders and grabbed it in the traditional manner. We went through the ritual, wh