"Then quit trying to and relax. We don't want to get out of here-not yet, anyway."
" 'Speak for yourself, John.' Why don't we?"
"That's what I've been trying to tell Tex. I won't say this is a pleasure resort but we are about eight hundred per cent better off than we were a couple of hours ago, in every way."
"How?"
"Have you got any idea of what it means to spend a night in the jungle here, with nothing at all to shut it out? When it gets dark and the slime worms come up and start : nibbling at your toes? Maybe we could live through a night of it, or even two nights, by being active and very, very lucky-but how about him?" Oscar gestured at Thurlow's still form. "That's why I made it our first business to find natives. We're safe, even if we are locked up."
Matt shivered. The slime worms have no teeth; instead they excrete an acid that dissolves what they wish to sample. They average about seven feet long. "You've sold me."
Tex said, "I wish my Uncle Bodie was here."
"So do I-he'd keep you shut up. I'm not anxious to get out of here until we've had something to eat and some sleep. Then maybe the boss will be back on his feet and will know what to do next."
"What makes you think they'll feed us?"
"I don't know that they will, but I think they will. If they are anything like the same breed of cat as the natives around the polar colonies, they'll feed us. To keep another creature shut up without feeding it is a degree of orneriness they just wouldn't think of." Oscar groped for words. "You have to know them to understand what I mean, but the Little People don't have the cussedness in them that humans have." , v .