He knew more about Lad-nar than the creature could have told him, though, and that at least was a factor in his favor. He knew about its religion, its taboos, its—and here he felt his throat go dry again—eating habits, its level of intelligence and culture. The being had kept nothing back, and Kettridge had some astonishingly accurate data to draw upon.

Not quite what you signed up for, is it, Ben? Startled by his own mental speech, he answered himself wearily, No, not at all.

Kettridge wondered what Lad-nar would think were he to tell the Blestonian he wasn’t a blue-plate special, but a washed-out, run-down representative of a civilization that didn’t give one hoot about Lad-,nar or his religion.

He’ll probably chew me up and swallow me, thought Kettridge. A more bitterly ironic thought followed: which is exactly what he’ll do anyhow. It would take a powerful weapon to stop him.

It seemed so strange. Two days before he had been aboard the study-ship Jeremy Bentham, one year out of Capital City, and now he was the main course at a Blestonian aborigine’s feast.

The laughter wouldn’t come.

It wouldn’t come because Kettridge was old and tired, and knew how right it was that he should die here, with all hope cut off. Lad-nar was simply following his natural instincts. He was protecting himself. He was surviving.

Which is more than you’ve been doing for the last ten years, Ben, he told himself.

Benjamin Kettridge had long since stopped surviving. He knew it as clearly as he knew he would die here on this hot and steaming world far from the sight of men.

Think about it, Ben. Think it over. Now that it’s finished and you tumble out of things at sixty-six years of age. Think about the waste and the crying and the bit of conviction that could have saved you. Think about it all.

Then the story unfurled on a fleeting banner. It rolled out for Ben Kettridge there in a twilight universe. In the course of a few minutes he had found life in that shadowy mind-world preferable to his entire previous existence.