By the time Baba and Johnny had gone fifty feet up the cliff, Johnny felt as if his arms were about to be pulled from his shoulders. The boy helped push with his feet, but that took only a little weight from his arms. Below him there was nothing but boulders and sharp jagged rocks. In spite of that danger, he felt that he could hardly keep hold of the harness. Sweat poured down into his eyes.

"Hurry, Baba," he said through clenched teeth.

"Ledge soon," the little bear clicked. As he speeded up his climb he slapped his claws deep into the rock, making sharp clapping noises that echoed among the boulders below. He stopped short and Johnny saw a place where the rock jutted out a few inches. Gratefully he felt something solid beneath his feet. He couldn't put his whole foot down, but he could rest his arms a little.

"Whew," Johnny said, "doesn't the ledge get wider?"

"In a minute," Baba answered. Crabwise, with Johnny still hanging on, Baba worked along the ledge, which slowly widened until Johnny could stand alone. They were now on the jungle side of the rock.

A few feet farther on, there was a narrow slit in the rock face that widened into a small cave. Deep in the cave's darkness Johnny heard the squeaking of young arrow-birds. As he crept inside he whipped his flashlight from his belt. Purple eyes glittered at him in the circle of its light. There was a flutter of wings. Johnny and Baba started to click at the same time. The fluttering stopped and the birds' heads disappeared into their nests. The cave ended in a pile of large stones. Johnny sat down.

"Boy, do my arms ache!" Johnny said. "How about you, Baba?"

"I can climb," Baba answered. "But can you hold on? We have far to go."

"Aren't there any more ledges?" Johnny asked.

"Small ones," Baba answered. "None are wide like this one. Do you still want to go up?"

"Maybe we could tie me on some way," Johnny said. "Mountain climbers do it that way."

In a moment the boy and the bear were trying to see what they could work out. Finally Johnny had Baba use the razor sharp point of one of his claws to cut a pair of long thin straps from the wide ones on the harness. These they tied to Johnny's belt and then to Baba's harness again.

When the straps were finished, Johnny felt rested and they started out of the cave. They were stopped by the sight below them.

At the foot of the rock there was a wide space of cleared ground, and then the jungle stretched out. About a half mile away some large greyish beasts were breaking out of the undergrowth.

"Rhinosaurs!" Johnny shouted, pointing. "Golly, a whole herd of them!" There were more than thirty of the huge grey-blue saurians. Even at that distance they could hear the low thunder of the gigantic hooves. The beasts stayed close to the brush, knocking down small trees as they came. Johnny knew that heavy ato-tubes were trained on the rhinosaurs from the guard towers. The guards in the gate towers would have a full view of them. Johnny also knew that unless the beasts began to charge the walls, the guards would not fire. If they did, the whole herd might charge. Topped as they were with electric wires, the heavy fifty-foot high walls would be hard to breach. But rhinosaurs had smashed those walls once—before they were thickened and electrified.

"Remember when they attacked and killed a lot of colonists?"

"I remember," Baba clicked. "Your people killed them, too. These straps...."

Johnny nodded. Because it was made of the skin of an animal the colonists had killed, he had had a hard time getting Baba to wear that harness.

"Let's go!" Johnny said.

This time the going was not so hard for Johnny, though they climbed much farther before he and Baba could rest. The next ledge they reached was not large enough to let them sit. Baba had to hang to the rock, but it didn't seem to tire him.

Three more rests, and slowly but surely they were reaching the top. At the last rest Baba clicked to Johnny in warning.

"The rock is getting softer. If my claws tear away from the rock, just relax and fall with me. I'll grab again further down."

"All right," he said.

Johnny didn't dare look down. He had been climbing with Baba since he was three, but never this high before.

They had gone up only a few more feet when Baba's claws began to slip. Johnny let himself go limp just in case anything happened. Very slowly Baba's claws slipped down the rock. Then they caught hold again.

"We will have to move to the side," Baba clicked.

Johnny didn't answer. It was up to Baba. The little bear scuttled crabwise along the side until he found rock that didn't scale off. Then up they went again. Finally there was a ledge. The two scrambled onto it. Above the ledge was a gap in the rock, some boulders—and they were on the top!

A faint wind was blowing, and Johnny could hear it sing through the top of the stunted diamond-wood tree growing on the summit.

The top of New Plymouth Rock was flat, a hundred feet or more wide, but with many jutting boulders. Here and there grew small bushes and patches of grass. The diamond-wood tree sprang directly from the bare rock.

With shaking fingers Johnny untied the straps and threw himself down on a patch of green. As he lay there, his breath rustling the grass, he heard Baba pattering about and wondered how the little bear had so much energy left.

"Johnny," Baba clicked, "do you want some berries?" Johnny looked up to see the little bear holding some clear, almost transparent red berries in his paw. The colonists called them antelope berries because they grew mainly in antelope country. At that moment Johnny realized he was very thirsty.

"Thanks, Baba!" He crushed the berries with his teeth and felt the sour-sweet juice trickle down his throat. He suddenly felt thrilled with triumph. He was now where no other human had ever been before!

Johnny was just raising his head to look around when he heard the patter of tiny hooves behind him.

"Look, Johnny!" Baba clicked.

Johnny turned. Running toward them was a herd of the tiniest antelope he had ever seen. They were barely six inches high, their curled horns almost as tiny as needles. Head down, they charged directly at him. Johnny jumped to his feet.

"Friend-pets," Baba clicked gently, "bother us not." The tiny creatures wheeled about and started back in the direction from which they had come.

"Oh, Baba, don't send them away," Johnny said. Then, remembering his success with the arrow-birds, he himself clicked in a low tone, "Come here, friend-pets. Come here."

The antelope with the longest curled blue horns stopped, turned slowly around and pawed the ground, his long neck arched. It was just seven inches high. Johnny laughed. The regular antelope were seven feet high, but otherwise looked exactly the same as these.

Johnny squatted down and, as he moved, the herd turned and ran, making little whinnying noises. Then they wheeled and returned. The leader pranced closer and closer and came to a halt within a foot of Johnny. It was soft blue all over, marked with spots of deeper purple. Its tiny hooves were blue black, and its eyes glistened with deep purple highlights. Johnny reached out both his hands and laid them before the little creature.

"Come," Johnny clicked. Trembling, the little antelope pawed the grass. Then with mincing steps he came forward and placed his forefeet on one hand, his hind feet on the other. Very slowly Johnny raised him from the ground. The small hooves were sharp and dug into the palms of his hands. The little animal's eyes widened and it snorted in fear. Johnny, afraid it might fall, set his hands back on the ground.

"Go, friend-pet," he clicked. With a bound the creature returned to his herd. Together the antelope leaped high over a small boulder and were gone behind a clump of bushes.

Johnny looked up to see Baba watching him steadily. The little bear looked at Johnny the same way as when he had spoken to the arrow-birds.

"Friend-pet-brother Johnny," Baba clicked, "I am sure I am doing wrong. First the arrow-birds and now the antelopes are your friends. But they are your people's enemies."

"Not the antelopes!" Johnny said. "They fight us some, but we don't ever bother them except for meat."

"Your people kill them," Baba said, as if that settled matters. "Now you can't. You've said they were your friends."

"Is that some kind of rule?" Johnny asked.

"You said they were your friends," Baba repeated. "You help your friends and your friends help you. That is the law and will be the law as the trees stand. Between friend and friend there is no parting more than the fingers of a hand." Baba said this in a sort of sing-song of clicks, like the song of a bird. It was something like a poem.

"Baba," Johnny asked, "how do you know all this? You've never talked this way before." Johnny squatted down before the little bear, whose face was screwed up into a puzzled frown.

"I guess I've always known it," Baba clicked. "But it just came back to me. I don't remember much before I came to live with you, Johnny. But I do remember being in a high tree. There was one like me whom I loved very much, and she sang the song I just sang to you. I remember going to sleep while she sang it. It is a true song, too."

"Would you sing it again?" Johnny asked.

The little bear began again:

This time the little bear really sang, trilling the clicks to a tune like the roll of a mockingbird's song. Johnny felt very strange. He patted Baba on the head and then stood up.

"I think I understand," he said, and looked out over the surrounding countryside, thinking about the little antelope he had just held in his hands.

"I'm hungry," the little bear clicked. With a jump and a bounce he started for the stunted diamond-wood tree.

"Baba," Johnny called. The little bear bounced back. "Aren't there plenty of those nuts here for you to live on? I mean, enough to feed you regularly if you lived here all the time?"

The little bear nodded yes, but frowned.

"I want to live with you, Johnny," he clicked.

"I know, Baba. But you're in danger. I hoped that if I could show you I'd be able to visit you, maybe you'd stay."

At the unhappiness on the little bear's face, Johnny hurried on. "Look, Baba, I can't make you stay here. But somebody's going to find out about your nails if you stay with me. If you live here, I could come up and visit you when the nights come, and if we were lucky, I could see you most every wake-time down by the rocks...." Johnny's voice trailed off. Baba was looking unhappier and unhappier.

"I want to live with you," Baba repeated. "Remember what the song says about parting. You stay here with me."

It was Johnny's turn to look unhappy. He didn't want to leave his father and mother, any more than Baba wanted to leave him. The hard climb was all for nothing.

"I can't, Baba. You know that," he said sadly.

"I can't either," Baba said.

Johnny continued arguing for a long time but it did no good. Baba wanted to be with Johnny: there wasn't anything more to say.

"I'm still hungry!" clicked the little bear, plaintively. Then, with a bounce, Baba was up and away. The little bear was crazier about fresh diamond-wood nuts than anything else, even chocolate.

Johnny felt sad and confused. He got up. Below him stretched the sweet green lands of Venus. The hard angles of the walls and the squat grey buildings of the settlements were somehow out of keeping with the rest of the land.

There was an almost park-like look about the jungle from this height. In the distance the towering groves of diamond-wood trees, where the marva lived, shone blue green against the light green clouds that were the skies of Venus. Between the blue groves of diamond-wood were the meadow lands, soft and rolling. At the edges of the meadows were the lower and darker green meat trees, where the saber-tooth leopards stalked. The land was laced with rivers that shone in the green light.

It was all so beautiful, and so deadly. In a few hours evening would begin—almost three Earth days of twilight. Venus turned so slowly that there was a whole Earth week each of daylight and dark. But of course people had to sleep and work by Earth days. The thick permanent clouds surrounding Venus glowed with light hours after sundown, making the twilight last and last.

Beyond the marshes was the sea—filled, too, with savage life, flying crocodiles who made nests of the bones of their prey, great dinosaur-like monsters and shark-snakes. But none of these dared come onto the land, for the land animals fought them as fiercely as they fought man.

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!