How smoothly it flew! While Grg and Yrl and their people could bound about with a great agility in Phobos' light gravity, they could not fly.
"How wonderful it would be to fly," said Yrl.
"Perhaps," said Grg, "we have been found ready to be taught!"
Then Grg twitched as a plllnk bit him, just under the front left double-tentacle. He combed the light fur there, found the plllnk, and shredded it, casting the pieces round-about so that no two of them might combine to form another plllnk.
How wonderful it would be also if the God could tell them how to get rid of the itching, crawling, parasitic plllnk, whose bite, in sufficient numbers, was often fatal!...
The God began to land.
It shot red flame downward from its mouth, on the underside of its gleaming body. Red flickers and sharp-edged black shadows danced about the two who waited below. They shrank back, fearful that the display might be a disapproving communication—yet they held their ground, knowing they had lived good lives and deserved no condemnation on any score they could imagine.
The God lowered, on its belching tongue of flame—the flame that seemed a tiny part, a sliver, of the Universal Eye that Watched.
Strange marks were on the side of the God's body. They were: 1st MARS EXPEDITION—U. S. SPACE FORCE—PLANET-TO-SATELLITE CREWBOAT NO. 2.