"What is crazy?"

"His reasoning faculties do not function properly."

She seemed to be reading my thoughts carefully, trying to understand better what I meant. After a minute she smiled and her teeth showed white and even against her tan. "Isn’t it possible that his mind works too swiftly for you to follow, and the only way you can explain your lack of understanding is to say that he is insane?"

So that was why she feared Kohnke. To her he was a brilliant intellect. So great that she could neither understand nor influence him as she did the others of us. His aborted reasoning, his sudden shifts of interest, his small concern with a situation that aroused our distress, were all evidence of that superior intellect. I did not try to disabuse her of the belief. It fitted well with my semi-formed plan.

"He is like the Masters," the anamorph interrupted my thoughts.

I quickly took up the diversion she offered: I did not want her to see what lay in my thoughts. Also she had aroused my curiosity. "Who are the Masters?" I asked.

"I’m not certain. I think…​." Her voice trailed off. "I’m never too sure that what I’m thinking are my own thoughts, or what I’m reading in your mind, or have read in others," she said. "Perhaps if I looked away from you…​.

"Many years ago the Masters landed on this small world to make repairs on the meteor shield of their space ship," she began again in a low voice. "They were passing through this part of the Galaxy on their way home from a distant planet. I belonged to one of them. For some reason they left me behind when they went away." She stopped talking, saddened by the recollection of her desertion.

I saw her in a new light then. She had been a pet, a plaything, who perhaps had strayed just before ship leaving time.

She nodded, smiling brightly. "A pet," she exclaimed, clapping her hands. "That is right." I realized then, with mild astonishment, that she was not very intelligent. Her apparent wit and sharpness before had been only reflections of what she read in our minds.

"Are you all Kohnke’s pets?" she caught me unprepared.

I coughed uncomfortably, and shook my head.

Her mood changed. "I’ve been so lonesome, Bill. When I do not belong to someone I am so unhappy. But I won’t be unhappy anymore." For the first time I felt sorry for her.

"Bill?" Her voice was timid. "Do you believe I will be punished for leaving the Masters? I did not mean to."

"Who would punish you now?" I asked.

"The Masters' God. They always told me he would punish me if I were bad. And he is such a terrible God." Her expression became bright with hope. "Is your God terrible, Bill?"

I tried to reassure her, to pacify this naive creature with her own private terrors, but she must have read in my mind how our Christian God could also be terrible in his wrath and justice, for she gave a small cry and pulled herself close to me.

Several minutes went by while she trembled in my arms and wept disconsolately. Finally she quieted and in a young girl’s voice asked, "May I use your hanky, daddy?"

In surprise I held her out from me and saw that now she was my daughter, Joanie, with her newly bobbed hair, and her sweet face still wet with tears.

Of course. While I held her I had been thinking of her as a child. As my child, Joanie.

I wiped away her tears and blew her nose.

I thought swiftly. Perhaps this was my opportunity. Speaking as I would have to Joanie I asked gently, "Won’t you help us get the fuel we need, honey?"

"I can’t." Her childish wistfulness was replaced by the stubbornness I had encountered before.

I was careful to restrain my impatience. "You could come with us to Earth," I argued, without raising my voice. "You wouldn’t be lonesome there."