Pussycats! Pussycats!
Rah! Rah! Rah!"
"Pussycats," the leader explained to Candy, "are honored animal on planet where Billbrad is head cheese."
"I'll bet you play baseball nicely," Candy said.
Woe broke forth on nine broad faces.
"Misfortunately not," confessed the captain. "Thirty-three teams in Quxa town. Pussycats in thirty-third place." He brightened. "Go ivory hunt now. Catch nine new Quxas. Teach 'em baseball. Then maybe we beat 'em and not be in cellar any more."
Together, the team bobbed politely to Candy and trotted down the road.
Happily, Candy went up the rise, then stopped in astonishment, looking at Quxa town.
Gone was the straggling, haphazard settlement, with the flimsy huts and untended starvation patches where individual Quxas tried to raise their own food. Instead, building sites were laid out in straight, broad rows, and Quxas were working, three and four in a group, raising substantial homes of timber. Others were surrounding the settlement with a wall of brambles, impenetrable to horals. Teams of men, two to a thrag, were plowing, preparing large fields for tillage. And down the side of the settlement, affectionately tended, ran a line of baseball fields.
Just off the road, a Quxa squatted, baseball cap on his head, watching a crude sun dial.