bounded from one branch to another as if engaged in complicated games of tag. He wondered if the games were as serious as the one he had been playing with Malevski, with himself as It.

There were no ground animals in sight. If any showed up later, they couldn't be too dangerous, not with the natives living here in such apparent peace and contentment. There probably wouldn't be anything that his pocket gun, which he had taken the precaution to remove from the lifeboat before that shattered, wouldn't be able to handle.

Near him was a strange spring, or little river, or whatever you might call it. It broke from the ground, ran along the hard rocky surface for a dozen feet, and then plunged underground again. There were other springs of a similar nature scattered here and there, and now he realized that their combined murmuring was the noise he had mistaken, on first removing his helmet, for the rustle of the wind in the woods.

He would have enough to drink. The natives would bring him food. What else could any reasonable man want?

It wasn't the kind of life he had dreamed of. No Martian whiskey, no drugs, no night spots, no bigtime gamblers slapping him on the back and calling him "pal," no brassy blondes giving him the eye. Still, it was better than the life he had actually lived, much better. It would do, it would have to do.

From what he had seen of the natives, he liked them—and feared them. For all their mistaken faith in him, they seemed to be no fools. How many times before had men from some supposedly superior civilization dropped in upon the people of a new world and made that first impression of divinity, only to have the original attitude of worship by the natives give way to disillusion and contempt? Who was that fellow they told about in the history books he had read as a kid? Cortez, way back on Earth, when that planet itself had offered unexplored territory. And later on it had happened on one of the moons of Jupiter, and on several planets outside the System. The explorers had been gods, until they had been found out. Then they had been savage murderers, plunderers, devils.

It would be too bad if he were found out. He was one against them all, he would never be able to fight off so many enemies. More than that, he was a stranger here, he needed friends. No, he mustn't be found out.

"Better put on your helmet, dope," he told himself savagely. "They'll be coming back soon, and if they find you without it—" He put on his helmet, still muttering to himself. It wouldn't make any difference if he were overheard. They didn't know Earth language and would take his words for oracular utterances. He could talk to himself all he wanted, and from the looks of things, there would be no one to understand him. He hoped he didn't grow crazy and eccentric, like those hermits who had been lost alone in space for too many years.

The helmet was the first nuisance. There would be others too. He couldn't even talk in what had become his natural manner, with a whine in every word, a whine that came from being treated with contempt by police and fellow-criminals alike. A god had to speak with slow gravity, with dignity. A god had to walk like a god. A god had endless responsibilities here, it seemed.

He thought again of his mother. Ever since he could remember, it had been, "Georgie, wipe your nose!" and, "Georgie, keep your fingers out of the cake!" and Georgie do this and don't do that. A fine way to speak to a god. Even after he had grown up, his mother had continued to treat him like a baby. She had never got over examining his face and his ears and his fingernails to make sure that he had cleaned them properly. He couldn't so much as comb his hair to suit her; all through his abortive attempt at college, and later at a job, she had done it for him.

But she had been a lioness in his defense later on, when he had given way to that first irresistible impulse to dip his fingers in the till and get away with what he