Yes, a million dollars, maybe even more, and all for one little bear!

Johnny sighed shakily at the thought and hugged his bear to him.

"What's the matter, Johnny?" Baba clicked, waving his claws to dry them, like a lady getting ready for a party.

"You know," Johnny said, "I was just wishing for the good old days when you had your baby black nails and your pretty squeaky voice, and we didn't have to be afraid of anything."

"I'm sorry," Baba clicked. "I couldn't help it. I just grew." Baba looked so sorrowfully down his nose that Johnny laughed, swung the little bear up above his head and sat him down on a branch.

"You're a silly," Johnny said. "I know you couldn't help it. I was just wishing."

Most of all he was wishing that bouncing bears didn't have jewels for claws at all. But he knew that was a silly wish, too.

Grabbing a branch, Johnny swung himself back to a spot where he could see the hunters. As he watched, more were arriving. About a mile away a battered hunting tank came lumbering through the sliding doors of the fifty-foot high concrete wall surrounding the colony. Outside those walls, Johnny knew, lay the murderous animal life of the jungle planet.

Every living thing on Venus attacked men. Not just the huge rhinosaurs and the horned river snakes, but even tiny scarlet apes and pigmy antelope. Johnny knew the colonists and hunters would never have come to such a savage place at all without the lure of tremendous wealth to be made from bouncing bears' claws.

Harder than diamonds and just as clear, these magical jewels shone soft blue in the night and were blindingly bright in the sun. But that wasn't the only reason claws were valuable. A tiny piece of claw, or even of the duller teeth, melted in thousands of tons of plastic, made that plastic tough enough to be used for the hulls of rocket ships. Men called it marvaplast.

With such a treasure beckoning, man could not stay away from Venus. Rockets came hurtling across space filled with hunters. Traders followed. After the traders came the colonists, led by Johnny's father and mother.

Johnny sighed again.

"Don't be so sad," Baba clicked. "We've been real lucky so far."

"I suppose so." Johnny had to admit they'd both been lucky. Baba had been lucky not to be killed as his mother and brother had been. And Johnny had been lucky to get Baba at all. If there had been any other way of raising the bear until his black baby claws turned blue, Johnny never would have gotten him. All other young marva that had been captured had died. They refused to eat or drink. They simply squatted down and whimpered piteously until they died of what seemed to be loneliness and heartbreak.

When Baba had been captured, Mrs. Watson brought him home, hoping to save his life. Two-year-old Virgil Dare, as Johnny was called then, was fascinated.

"Ba-ba," he had cried, trying to say bear, and had thrown his arms around it. Surprisingly, the little bear had stopped whimpering and had hugged Johnny back. A few minutes later it had eaten some diamond-wood nuts.

After a week, the colonists had decided that the little bear would live and he was taken away and put in a small diamond-wood cage for safe keeping. The little bear promptly refused to eat and almost died, whimpering over and over a sound that was just like "Johnny, Johnny, Johnny." It was the only sound he could make beside the clicking noise. He had to be sent back to the little boy. From then on Virgil Dare was called Johnny.

He and Baba went everywhere together, even to school. As the years went by they became closer than brothers and it was easier and easier to forget that the blue cub was really colony property.

Then, Baba's voice had deepened; the black nails had gradually loosened; and, all in one Venus night, during Baba's long sleep through five earth days of darkness, the new nails had come in. Johnny had a mixture of india ink and nail polish all ready. It had worked for two months now. But the polish did chip off and the claws had to be painted over and over.

"Oh, Baba, why can't you be a sensible little bear and stay home where people can't see you," Johnny said.

"You know why, Johnny," Baba clicked. "You're my kikac." This was a word in the clicking language that meant friend, pet and brother, all in one. Baba said kikacs should never be parted.

That was the reason Johnny could not go to see the rocket come. If he went, Baba was sure to follow. Everyone, colonists and hunters, was going to be at the field, and if one of them caught sight of a flash of blue from Baba's claws, it would mean the end of Baba. The colonists liked the little bear but the colony was very poor. They wouldn't think long about killing him for his jewel claws. The hunters wouldn't think at all. They would steal him as quick as the flight of an arrow-bird.

It was a very dangerous situation. But if he could keep from going to the rocket field, Johnny had a plan. The plan depended on Johnny's third secret.

Draped over his branch, Johnny kept his eye on the hunters. They just seemed to be strolling about the settlement now—getting used to the fact that they were out of the dangerous jungle where they lived in concrete forts. When the door of the settlement headquarters opened again, Johnny pulled his head back in among the leaves.

A grey haired man with heavy eyebrows stepped out of the door. It was Jeb, the old hunter, one of the first men to come to Venus hunting marva. Now he was one of the colony guards, and a very good friend of Baba and Johnny.

When the old man came close enough for him to hear, Johnny crawled out where he could be seen, called down to him, and waved.

"Hi, Jeb—whatcha doing?"

The old man stopped in his tracks, looked carefully around him, then cocked an eye up into the tree. He frowned, his grey eyebrows making a V over his deep-set eyes. He shook his head in disapproval, but said nothing until he was directly under the tree.

"What I'm doin' isn't important," Jeb said in a gruff voice, looking up at Johnny. "But what are you a-doin' up that tree when you're supposed to be doin' book work?"

"Aw," Johnny started, "I just...."

"You just made your paw boiling mad, that's what," Jeb interrupted, "locking the teacher in that way." He snorted.

"Did Dad say anything about keeping me away from the rocket landing?" Johnny demanded anxiously.

"Nup," answered Jeb. "Cap'n Thompson wanted him to, but he says no, that you worked real hard all year. But I'm warning you. You better get on inside that school house, unless you want a good tannin'. Your ma's out lookin' for you with fire in her eye." He started to walk away.

"Hey, wait a minute Jeb," Johnny called.

"Well?"

"I was watching those hunters. They're sure interested in the stockade. You better tell Cap'n Thompson."

"We know they're interested. I don't think they'll do anything. That old reprobate of a Trader Harkness'll keep 'em in line. You'd better watch out, though. I might tell Cap'n Thompson where he could find him a hooky-player." With a fierce snort the old man was on his way.

Johnny smiled. He knew Jeb would never tell where he was hiding, in spite of the gruff warnings. Jeb was a nice old fellow. He'd shot his marva years before, gone down to earth, spent his millions in a few wild years and returned to Venus dead broke. In twenty years hunting he had never made another kill. Marva were as hard to find as they were valuable.

"Guess you just weren't quite bad enough!" Baba clicked to Johnny. "My claws are dry. Let's go before your mother finds us."

Johnny crawled down to the little bear.

"We gotta think of something else bad to do. It's that or just plain refuse to go. But then they'd think something was funny, sure as shooting!"

"There's lots of ripe meat fruit in the tree," Baba clicked, and grinned. "Maybe you could drop one on Captain Thompson!"

"Oh boy!" Johnny exclaimed in excitement. Then he frowned. "Aw, he probably won't come by here again."

"Somebody will!" Baba said. "Let's keep an eye out."

The two of them posted themselves in different parts of the tree and watched for possible targets for ripe meat fruit. No one seemed to want to walk under the tree. Finally Johnny caught sight of a short fat bald-headed man and a tall redhaired man leaving the Hunters Hotel together. One was Trader Harkness, who all but ran the colony, and the other, his bodyguard, Rick Saunders. They seemed to be headed for the trading post and would have to pass directly under Johnny's tree to get there. Baba saw them at the same time.

"How about Trader Harkness?" the little bear clicked. "Do you think he'd be a good target?"

"A kind of dangerous one," Johnny clicked back, his heart racing. "But where's that meat fruit?"

There wasn't any question about his getting into enough trouble this time. He just hoped he wouldn't get into too much trouble!

Trader Harkness was a very important man, but Johnny didn't like him. He had started as a hunter and then had turned trader. By killing off most of his opposition, he had become the only important trader on Venus. If he hadn't wanted a walled settlement to protect his goods, the colony might have failed. A hunter would stop at nothing to get what he needed and the colony had had more than one of its tanks ambushed and stolen to hunt marva.