 Why was Kapper in such a state of disbelief when Bucky and Jig found him?
The Blue Behemoth By LEIGH BRACKETT Shannon's Imperial Circus was a jinxed space-carny leased for a mysterious tour of the inner worlds. It made a one-night pitch on a Venusian swamp-town—to find that death stalked it from the jungle in a tiny ball of flame. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories May 1943. With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in Space, plastered so thick with attachments...." I've wet-nursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for eleven years, and I know. In short, it stinks!" Nobody insults Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus to Buckhalter Shannon's face unless he's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame. I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be. He closed his eyes and smiled pleasantly and said, very gently: "Would you be collecting for the feed bill, or the fuel?" The little guy looked at Shannon with pale blue eyes like a baby, and his voice was softer than Bucky's. Bucky Shannon sighed, and let his fist start traveling, a long, deceptive arc. It knocked him sideways and down, and the little dark men jumped up, quivering and showing their teeth. Mistaken identity." It was the most complete dead-pan I ever met, and you couldn't see into those innocent blue eyes any more than you could see through sheet metal. It has always been my desire to lighten the burden of life for those less fortunate...." He went on, quietly, "I have always held that entertainment, of the right sort, is the most valuable aid humanity can have in its search for the alleviation of toil and boredom...." "There are many towns along the Venusian frontiers where no entertainment of the— proper sort has been available. It was Gow, our zoo-man—a big, ugly son-of-a-gun from a Terran colony on Mercury. His hands, holding the curtains apart, had thick black hair on them and were not much larger than the hams of a Venusian swamp-rhino. Beamish cleared his throat and said, rather stiffly, "Gertrude?" A real blue-swamp Venusian cansin . The only other one on the Triangle belongs to Savitt Brothers, and she's much smaller than Gertrude." The extreme rarity of the animal...."
 He was being poisoned.
 He was frantically searching for the male Cansin he had found  He had lost all his animals and was desperate to find them  He had been attacked by the Vapor snakes  He was being poisoned.