Except for Baba, all the animals on Venus were determined to kill Johnny's people. And he had just been making friends with some of those enemies. He felt strange, as if he were being a traitor to his own kind. Johnny didn't like that feeling. Suddenly he thought of Baba living among people and wondered if the little bear felt the same way.
Johnny turned away from the edge of the cliff and kicked a stone. He began to wander over the top of New Plymouth Rock, peering into bushes and piles of boulders. He passed near the antelopes grazing on some grass. They lifted their heads and whinnied, but went on grazing. Johnny liked that. Beside a pile of small boulders, he found some arrow-bird nests. He spoke to the birds and all was well.
"That's an odd pile of boulders," Johnny muttered to himself. It didn't look just right, somehow. He pushed one of the stones and it rolled down almost to his foot. There was a dark empty space beyond it. He took his flashlight from his belt and shined it down into the opening.
He almost dropped the flashlight.
The light revealed the shape of a bouncing bear, a marva, just like Baba!
"Baba!" Johnny turned and yelled, "Come here, quick!"
When he looked back, the bear in the opening had not moved. It was not blue, but the color of the rock. Johnny stopped shaking. The opening was the entrance into a cave, and on the wall of the cave was carved the figure of a bear he had thought was alive.
But he was sure that the bear had been blue!