One of the men laughed bitterly, and then great racking sobs shook his stocky gray body.
"Children!" he cried. "All our children lie out there, unborn. Among us all there is only your woman."
Glade Masson swept his arm out toward the seething mob of the Butrads. "There are your children," he said. "The natives have daughters and sisters. Their blood is that of our own bodies. They will bear us children. We and our children will conquer and rule the water wastes of Venus." He paused for a long moment.
"To survive," he said flatly, "we must fight with all means at our command. We must steal, we must kill, and we must work. If we do not steal the females of the Butrads, Earth's culture and wisdom will shortly vanish. If we do not kill we will be killed."
The round dark eyes of the listening Earthmen brightened with new hope. Croaking sounds of approval issued from their ugly slashes of mouth. And hopeless sloping shoulders straightened.
So it was that they raided the villages of the Frogs again and again. The females of the surrounding uplands proved to be intelligent, and shortly most of them were happy in the safety and comfort of the building town of the Earthmen.
They mated with the men and learned the strange customs and speech of their captors.
But there was trouble looming ahead. As the months passed and the eggs of the females failed to hatch Masson and Ellis realized that their little colony was doomed to extinction.
"The women tell the same story, Glade," said Ellis, his nervous webbed fingers drumming at the table in his tiny office.