When he returned, his visitor was standing shakily on his feet, watching him stilt across the plain toward him. Peetn emptied his pockets of the succulent merrl he had gathered and faced the stranger with a whistle of greeting, extending a friendly tentacle. It was grasped by the prehensile tip of the creature's queer tentacle and gently oscillated up and down. Peetn interpreted the gesture as meaning friendship and enthusiastically entered into the spirit of it, pumping the thick arm up and down until the being cried out. The Martian, noticing that his companion's eyes were fastened on the merrl root which he had brought, snatched up one of the tubers and offered it to him.
They broke their fast in genial camaraderie, this decadent Martian and his un-Martian visitant, so utterly divergent in form, so different in many ways. But such is the yearning of loneliness and bewilderment that all this was forgotten.
Peetn was about to leave on his daily inspection when a gentle hand restrained him. The stranger was making sounds at him, meaningless and unfamiliar, but it was apparent that he wanted Peetn to stay and listen. So the Martian stayed and listened solemnly, strange thoughts milling through his head.
"I know you're not going to understand a word of this," his companion was saying, "But I'm going to tell it to you, anyway—just for luck. My name is Harrison Clark, late of San Francisco, U.S.A., Earth. I cracked up, like a damn fool, in the first rocket to reach Mars about two hundred miles out there in the desert. My food and water gave out, and the air inside my ship was getting bad, so I crawled into my can and started out, looking for God knows what! I was about done when you must have found me, for I don't remember anything for a long time back. You saved my life, and now I want to do something for you. Got any lawns you want mowed, or houses I can haunt? I'll bet I'm quite a fright in these parts!" He grinned broadly.
Peetn listened gravely to this address, and when it was over, he extended a tentacle and shook hands.
"I get it, pal!" laughed Harry Clark. "We're friends no matter what I look like. You'd be a sixteen cylinder haunt back on Earth yourself!"
Peetn disengaged his tentacle-tip and strode off down the slope to the subterranean entrance of the pump room. Clark hesitated a moment and then followed, more slowly because of his wasted strength, Peetn turned and waited for him at the head of the steps, and they entered the cavern together.
Clark could not see for a few minutes in the gloom, and he stood still, while Peetn, with his more adaptable sight organs, moved about with ease in the familiar surroundings. The multiple noises which rebounded in the enclosed space beat through the Earthman's open faceplate, betraying the secret of the darkly looming masses.
"Machinery," he said softly.
Peetn went through his customary routine, conscious of the stranger's eyes watching his every move, and conscious also of a pitying wonder in them. They quit the underground room, Peetn gently tugging Clark away from the four gauges which measured the water-flow through the monster pipes, and entered the valve-house.