"Well, if you were only looking around," Ellery said, "why did each of you bring a weapon?"
The red-headed man glanced down at the axe he was carrying and frowned. "I'll be damned if I know," he said. "It just seemed like a good idea at the time. Well, councilor, me and the boys better be getting back to work. We'll be seeing you."
The councilors sat on their horses and watched the man march off toward the city with swinging strides. Then they rode silently along behind them.
Back in Earth City, the council members quartered their horses and went straight to the town hall, straight to the private room that served for their council meetings.
"What do you think happened?" Clyde Ellery asked slowly.
"Seems rather obvious," Courtland Stokes said, running a hand through his thinning hair. "They showed all the symptoms of having been hypnotized. Apparently, the minute they entered the forest with the intention of destruction, they were hypnotized and given a post hypnotic block which made them completely forget their original reactions."
"Clever, these—Venusians," said Wang Chin Kwang, privately amused at the new usage of an old expression.
"However," Clyde Ellery said slowly, "the action of these men does bring up something which we have pretty much ignored since we landed—the question of our hosts. I confess I'm not too satisfied with the explanation that they are merely a strange life form which doesn't show itself to us because we may be prejudiced."
"Have any of you thought about that fire last night?" David Hellman asked. "It looked as if some intelligence knew that some of us were planning to leave and so deliberately burned the space ships."
"Yes," Stokes said dryly, "it occurred to me that the fire might be evidence that our—hosts were determined that we stay on Venus."