 By what were Grannie Annie and Billy-boy being watched?
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. 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 . Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in the visi sets. They applauded as before but they did so only at the signal of Doctor Universe. Kagors, of course, had an unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of the Red Planet. Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men rushed out and scattered the crowd. Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read THE JET. "Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?" I nodded. Like those set up by radium, they are electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of Beta or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons. "When any form of life is exposed to these Gamma rays from the Green Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude and lack of energy. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of intolerance.
 Hunter-bird
 Ezra Karn, an old prospector  Hunter-bird  a drone  By Venusians