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His radiant smile made itclear that he shared my happiness over this reunion. After greetings were exchanged, he said, ?7As we were coming down a small part of this little ship broke, so | have been making a new one while waiting for you to ae 8 arrive.? | watched curiously as he emptied the contents of a small crucible onto the sand. ?The timing was perfect,? he said. ?1 was just completing the installation as you drove up.? It suddenly struck me that he was speaking English with only a slight trace of accent, whereas on our first meeting he seemed unable to speak our language at all. | hoped that he might explain this, but as he did not, | refrained from questioning. Instead, | stooped and cautiously touched what appeared to be a very small amount of molten metal which he had thrown out. Although still quite warm, it was not too hot to be handled, and | carefully wrapped it in my handkerchief, which | placed safely in an inner pocket of my coat. | still have this bit of metal in my possession. Although my companions were laughing at my antics, there was no trace of ridicule in their merriment. The Venusian asked, although he must have known ab wee AVAL. ee ee a ann the answer, ?Why do you want that?? | explained that | hoped it might furnish proof of the reality of their visit and told him that people usually demanded what they called ?concrete evidence? to prove that | was not just ?making itall up? when | told of my first meeting with him. Still smiling, he answered, ?Yes, and you are a race of souvenir hunters, aren?t you! However, you will find that this alloy contains the same metals found on your Earth, since they are much the same on all planets.? Here, | believe, is as good a moment as any to say to my readers that no names, as we know them, were given to me for any of the people | met from other worlds. The reason for this was explained to me but cannot be given here in full. Suffice it to state that there is no involved mystery connected with this but rather an entirely different concept of names as we use them. While this no-name state created no awkwardness in my actual encounters with these new friends, | realize that itcertainly would do so for the reader, especially in the latter part of this book as contacts mount. Therefore, since we of this world are dependent on our own kind of names for one another, | shall provide them. While | want to make it very clear that the names | am introducing for these new friends are not their correct names, | wish to add that | have my own good reasons for choosing them, and that they are not without meaning in relation to those who will bear them throughout these pages. The Martian | shall call Firkon. The Saturnian is Ramu. My name for the Venusian will be Orthon.