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"I yelled 'Tweel! but he just stared, and then I realized that he wasn't Tweel, but another Martian of his sort. Tweel's feathery appendages were more orange hued and he stood several inches taller than this one. Leroy was sputtering in excitement, and the Martian kept his vicious beak directed at us, so I stepped forward as peace-maker.
But I have an odd hunch that if we knew the secret of the little cape-clothed imp, we'd know the mystery of the vast abandoned city and of the decay of Martian culture. "Well, Tweel quieted down after a while and led us completely around that tremendous hall.
I said 'Tweel? very questioningly, but there was no result. I tried it a dozen times, and we finally had to give it up; we couldn't connect. "Leroy and I walked toward the huts, and the Martian followed us. Twice he was joined by others, and each time I tried yelling 'Tweel' at them but they just stared at us.
If the three-eyed creature were still there, it must have slunk away with the others. "Tweel led us along the wall; his light showed a series of little alcoves, and in the first of these we ran into a puzzling thing a very weird thing. As the light flashed into the alcove, I saw first just an empty space, and then, squatting on the floor, I saw it!
Tweel set up a twittering and chirping like a farm in summer and went sailing up and coming down on his beak, and I would have grabbed his hands, only he wouldn't keep still long enough. "The other Martians and Leroy just stared, and after a while, Tweel stopped bouncing, and there we were.
So we ambled on with the three trailing us, and then it suddenly occurred to me that my Martian accent might be at fault. I faced the group and tried trilling it out the way Tweel himself did: 'T-r-r-rwee-r-rl! Like that. "And that worked!
Tweel fumed and whistled in wrath, picked up the volume and slammed it into place on a shelf full of others. Leroy and I stared dumbfounded at each other. "Had the little thing with the fiendish face been reading? Or was it simply eating the pages, getting physical nourishment rather than mental? Or had the whole thing been accidental?
I fought for sanity; I kept telling myself to stop, and all the time I was rushing headlong into the snare! "Then something tripped me. Tweel! He had come leaping from behind; as I crashed down I saw him flash over me straight toward toward what I'd been running to, with his vicious beak pointed right at her heart!" "Oh!" nodded the captain. "Her heart!" "Never mind that.
And then " Jarvis paused and shuddered "then I took a notion to have a look at that valley we'd spotted from the rocket. I don't know why. But when we tried to steer Tweel in that direction, he set up such a squawking and screeching that I thought he'd gone batty." "If possible!" jeered Harrison. "So we started over there without him; he kept wailing and screaming, 'No-no-no!
"It was a big cousin of the biopods," continued Jarvis. "Leroy was quite excited; he figures that all Martian life is of that sort neither plant nor animal. Life here never differentiated, he says; everything has both natures in it, even the barrel-creatures even Tweel! I think he's right, especially when I recall how Tweel rested, sticking his beak in the ground and staying that way all night.
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