“I take it you are here on official but confidential business.” Syaloch got out a big-bowled pipe. Martians have happily adopted tobacco, though in their atmosphere it must include potassium permanganate. Gregg was thankful he didn’t have to breathe the blue fog.

He started. “How the hell do you know that?”

“Elementary, my dear fellow. Your manner is most agitated, and I know nothing but a crisis in your profession would cause that in a good stolid bachelor. Yet you come to me rather than the Homeostatic Corps…so it must be a delicate affair.”

Gregg laughed wryly. He himself could not read any Martian’s expression—what corresponds to a smile or a snarl on a totally nonhuman face? But this overgrown stork—

No. To compare the species of different planets is merely to betray the limitations of language. Syaloch was a seven-foot biped of vaguely storklike appearance. But the lean, crested, red-beaked head at the end of the sinuous neck was too large, the yellow eyes too deep; the white feathers were more like a penguin’s than a flying bird’s, save at the blue-plumed tail; instead of wings there were skinny red arms ending in four-fingered hands. And the overall posture was too erect for a bird.

Gregg jerked back to awareness. God in Heaven! The city lay gray and quiet; the sun was slipping westward over the farmlands of Sinus Sabaeus and the desert of the Aeria; he could just make out the rumble of a treadmill cart passing beneath the windows—and he sat here with a story which could blow the Solar System apart!

His hands, gloved against the chill, twisted together. “Yes, it’s confidential, all right. If you can solve this case, you can just about name your own fee.” The gleam in Syaloch’s eyes made him regret that, but he stumbled on: “One thing, though. Just how do you feel about us Earthlings?”

“I have no prejudices. It is the brain that counts, not whether it is covered by feathers or hair or bony plates.”

“No, I realize that. But some Martians resent us. We do disrupt an old way of life—we can’t help it, if we’re to trade with you—”

“K’teh. The trade is on the whole beneficial. Your fuel and machinery—and tobacco, yesss—for our kantz and snull. Also, we were getting too…stale. And of course space travel has added a whole new dimension to criminology. Yes, I favor Earth.”

“Then you’ll help us? And keep quiet about something which could provoke your planetary federation into kicking us off Phobos?”

The third eyelids dosed, making the long-beaked face a mask. “I make no promises yet, Gregg.”

“Well…damn it, all right, I’ll have to take the chance.” The policeman swallowed hard. “You know about your crown jewels, of course.”

“They were lent to Earth for exhibit and scientific study.”

“After years of negotiation. There’s no more priceless relic on all Mars—and you were an old civilization when we were hunting mammoths. All right. They’ve been stolen.”

Syaloch opened his eyes, but his only other movement was to nod.