The water between the reddish-brown reeds was thick with huge frogs, all blinking and croaking like mad.
I remember thinking then that you couldn't really blame a man for jumping ship in a hole like that. It was bad enough to be stuck thirty-odd million miles from home, so far that light itself needed three minutes to—
"Hey, wait up!" I said to the little guy, who was sneering at himself in the mirror again. "If you went A.W.O.L. up there, then how the hell did you get back here?"
I didn't find out.
The guy was gone. He had been standing there so close I could have touched him, but now he was gone. I looked around quick. Nobody else seemed to have noticed. All eyes were on the TV screen.
Then I saw it. On the floor. Two wet marks—right where the guy should have been, where he was. Two wet marks that had a funny shape to them—web-like.
I felt my throat tighten at the thought. I shook my head. What was going through it was fantastic, impossible and downright lunacy. There was an intelligent life-form on Mars—beings that looked like frogs and could teleport. Could they also mimic human shape temporarily? Especially if they got hold of one for a model—say a missing crewman....
"Hey! Where are you going? Don't you want to see the Marscast?"
I was walking to the door. I looked back at the barkeep. "I've seen enough, Larry, I got things to do."
He shrugged. "Yeh, what?"