“Doesn’t anyone talk as they do on the radio?” he lamented. “How do they understand their own programmes if they all speak like this?”

“I think we must have landed in the wrong place,” said Crysteel, even his optimism beginning to fail. It sagged still further when he had been mistaken, in swift succession, for a Gallup Poll investigator, the prospective Conservative candidate, a vacuum-cleaner salesman, and a dealer from the local black market.

At the sixth or seventh attempt they ran out of housewives. The door was opened by a gangling youth who clutched in one clammy paw an object which at once hypnotized the visitors. It was a magazine whose cover displayed a giant rocket climbing upward from a crater-studded planet which, whatever it might be, was obviously not the Earth. Across the background were the words: “Staggering Stories of Pseudo-Science. Price 25 cents.”

Crysteel looked at Danstor with a “Do you think what I think?” expression which the other returned. Here at last, surely, was someone who could understand them. His spirits mounting, Danstor addressed the youngster.

“I think you can help us,” he said politely. “We find it very difficult to make ourselves understood here. You see, we’ve just landed on this planet from space and we want to get in touch with your government.”

“Oh,” said Jimmy Williams, not yet fully returned to Earth from his vicarious adventures among the outer moons of Saturn. “Where’s your spaceship?”

“It’s up in the hills; we didn’t want to frighten anyone.”

“Is it a rocket?”

“Good gracious no. They’ve been obsolete for thousands of years.”

“Then how does it work? Does it use atomic power?”

“I suppose so,” said Danstor, who was pretty shaky on physics. “Is there any other kind of power?”