It was rocket day on Venus!—the day the yearly rocket from Earth arrived, and it was like Christmas, Fourth of July and your birthday all rolled into one!

In the windowless, one-room New Plymouth school, Johnny Watson, a stocky twelve-year-old, sat toward the back of the room, a big Venus geography propped up in front of him. Johnny was supposed to be studying. Every time Mrs. Hadley, the teacher, glanced his way, a page of the book slowly turned. The teacher was much too busy with the half dozen squirming, excited first graders to notice that a small black paw fastened to a furry blue arm was really turning the pages.

On Johnny's lap sat Baba, a perky-faced little blue bear with stand-up ears and bright blue eyes. To fool the teacher, the little bear, his eyes twinkling, flipped the pages one by one.

"We gotta do something quick, Baba!" Johnny whispered to his bouncing, jewel bear cub in a tight worried voice. "It's only two hours till school's out."

The little bear peered over at the clock on the wall. He lay a tiny black paw on his blue button nose and cocked his head as if he were trying to tell the time.

When school was out everyone would go to the rocket field. Johnny knew that above all, he and his bouncing bear must not be there! Why Johnny and Baba dared not go was one of Johnny's three secrets.

There was only one thing to do, Johnny thought. He would have to behave so badly that as punishment he would be forbidden to go.

"Nudge me when Mrs. Hadley turns around," Johnny whispered. "We're gonna get out of here!"

The little bear shoved his furry blue snout around the geography and peered from behind it. His bright eyes followed every move the teacher made.

The instant Mrs. Hadley turned to write on the blackboard Baba gave the boy a kick. Johnny slipped down on to his hands and knees in the aisle and Baba hopped upon his back. Rapidly and silently Johnny crawled toward the armor room. Behind him a little girl kindergartner began to giggle.

"Look at the horsie!" she yelled.

Johnny heard the teacher call, "Quiet, children!" The little girl giggled louder. But he hadn't been seen! He scurried into the armor room.

As Johnny jumped to his feet and grabbed for his suit of rhinosaur-hide armor, Baba leaped toward the wall and hooked his claws into the concrete. Then he scurried straight up the wall like a fly and snatched up Johnny's headglobe in his tiny black paws. While Johnny wriggled into the armor Baba fitted the headglobe over the boy's tow head.

Without waiting to zip up, Johnny started toward the door. Baba jumped from the headglobe shelf and landed on his shoulder with a smack. The boy's hand was scarcely on the latch when the teacher turned around, her mouth making an O of surprise. Quickly, Johnny jerked open the door and dashed through, slamming it closed. There was a space of a few feet and then another door. Holding the second door open, Johnny snapped tight his headglobe, while Baba's small fingers pushed and pulled at the zippers fastening the armor. Both of them scanned the sky.

No arrow-birds.

Johnny grabbed a stone from beside the step and wedged it in the outer door so it could not close. To keep out these murderous flying lizards, all buildings were windowless and had double doors. When one door was open the other automatically locked.

"Johnny, Johnny! You come right back in here!" a muffled voice called. Johnny sighed regretfully as he slipped out of the schoolhouse into the pearly green light of Venus.

Baba on his shoulder, he started out at a dead run through the collection of windowless buildings that made up colony headquarters. The two had barely made it to the foot of a tall heavily leafed tree when the door of the main headquarters building began to open.

"Up the meat tree!" Johnny yelled.

Baba leaped from Johnny's shoulder and rolled himself into a furry blue ball as he fell. The little bear smacked the ground with the sound of a bouncing basketball and bounced high into the air! At the top of his bounce his arms and legs shot out; he hooked his claws into the trunk half way up the meat tree. Baba wasn't called a bouncing bear for nothing!

Johnny jumped for the nearest branch. Weighed down by his arrow-bird armor, he was slow pulling himself up—too slow. Baba scurried down the trunk like a squirrel, his claws scattering bits of bark on Johnny. Hanging on with three paws he reached out and hooked his claws into Johnny's armor. One pull from that tiny but powerful arm and Johnny was sitting on the branch. From there up it was easy. The branches made a perfect ladder. Soon they were entirely surrounded by green shadowy leaves.

Johnny carefully pushed aside a green fruit the size of a cantaloup and looked out. Striding across the dusty road came a tall man in headglobe and black armor—Captain Thompson of the colony guard. The teacher must have phoned for help. The man's square face was set in anger as he kicked the rock away from the schoolhouse door. The teacher stepped out and Johnny could hear their angry voices.

After a moment Mrs. Hadley went back inside and the guard captain strode purposefully away toward Mayor Watson's office.

Sitting on a branch swinging his legs, Baba winked a shiny blue eye. He reached over and patted Johnny on the spot where the boy was likely to pay for his pranks.

"I think we've done it this time," Johnny whispered. "I hope it's not just another spanking." Johnny spoke with deep feeling. He had had three spankings in three days.

The little bear looked sadly down his blue muzzle and made an odd deep clicking noise in the back of his throat.

"Sure," Johnny said, as if answering the bear's clicks, "I want to go to the planet-fall, but we just can't."

The bear clicked again.

"I know," Johnny went on, "I know the earthies would give you chocolate. Besides I was going to have a job." Johnny's eyes began to shine with tears he wouldn't let come. For the first time he would have been working on the rocket field with the men instead of being on the sidelines watching with the women and little kids.

The little bear patted him on the shoulder and clicked in low tones.

"All right, I won't be sad if you won't." Johnny shook the tears away and tried to make a joke. "Gosh, Baba, you talk funny since you know what." Johnny screwed up his face. "You're such a mushmouth now I can hardly understand what you say."

Baba stuck out his long blue tongue.

This was Johnny's first secret. His little bear could talk!

Baba's clicks were really the words of his own language. Although he couldn't make the sounds of the human voice, he could understand people perfectly. Johnny could both understand what the bear said and speak in the same clicking language.

This hadn't started out to be a secret at all. As a little boy, Johnny thought everyone knew that those clicks were Baba's words. When Baba came to live with him, the little bear cub already knew his own language, but Johnny was just learning to talk. He learned human words and click words at the same time, and thought everyone understood them. When he was almost five, Johnny discovered to his amazement that no one understood Baba but him. He then went proudly spreading the news that he and his bear could talk together. When the first person laughed, Johnny didn't mind. But when everybody laughed at him he began to get a little mad. The crowning insult was being spanked for lying.

After that, Johnny decided if telling grownups that Baba could talk only got him licked and laughed at, it might as well be a secret. Besides, it was fun keeping it secret.

After a few minutes of waiting, Baba scurried along a branch and hung by his black claws while he thrust his blue button nose through the twigs and leaves. Johnny followed along another branch.

"Looks clear," Baba clicked. "Let's go!"

"Wait a minute." A quick movement in the distance caught Johnny's eye. Four men came out of a long grey building marked Hunters Hotel.

Johnny was instantly alert. Colonists always kept a sharp eye on such men. These were the dangerous marva hunters, whose only law was an ato-tube gun.

Johnny swung to a branch where he could see better.

"What's up?" Baba clicked.

"Hunters!" clicked Johnny. "They're watching the guard change at the old stockade."

"Oh."

The two looked at each other. Both knew what was in the stockade, locked away in the big safe. Marva teeth and claws. Jewel claws and teeth from grown-up bears just like the cub Baba!

"Come on, Baba." Johnny shinnied back to a place where branches forked from the trunk of the meat tree. "We'd better check your nails 'fore we go down."

After making sure no arrow-birds were feeding on the meat fruit, he undid one of his armor zippers and pulled a bottle of black liquid and a small brush from an inside pocket. Baba plopped down on his lap.

"Smile," Johnny commanded.

Baba pulled back his lips, showing black teeth. Johnny looked at them carefully, grunted, and then picked up one of the little bear's paws. All the nails seemed perfectly black, but on the tip of one of them there sparkled a point of bright blue.

"Dang it, we gotta find something better than this nail polish. A little climbing and it's all scraped off." Johnny scowled and dipped the little brush in the bottle of black liquid. Carefully he painted the tip of the claw. Looking over the little bear's paws he found four more claws that showed blue. He painted them, too.

"Now don't climb down when we go, Baba! When the polish is dry, jump."

The little bear nodded.

This was Johnny's second secret. Everyone thought Baba still had his valueless black baby claws and teeth. But, under the coating of black nail polish, each of Baba's claws was really a precious blue jewel.

Johnny Watson owned a million dollar pet!