 By what were Grannie Annie and Billy-boy being watched?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1944. ] I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the Spacemen's Club in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the shoulder. The Spacemen's was a sanctuary, a rest club where in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly enforced. There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning on her faded green umbrella. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions: "What the devil are you doing on Venus? Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what they are. But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's hat, as modern as an atomic motor. If she cooked up a feud between two expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto. Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly rolled herself a cigarette. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. A theater to the grizzled colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the muck, zilcon wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. It read: ONE NIGHT ONLY DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS NINE GENIUSES THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF THE SYSTEM As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a tinpan piano in the pit. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an Earthman operator. I will only say that on this stage are nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions. For every question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand planetoles . From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian cafes strove to stump the experts. They applauded as before but they did so only at the signal of Doctor Universe. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident occurred. Kagors, of course, had an unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of the Red Planet.
 Hunter-bird
 Ezra Karn, an old prospector  Hunter-bird  a drone  By Venusians