his head: No!
that couldn't be. Mankind replaced by a thinking species of biped
felines--descended from a race of giant jungle cats. The development
was fantastic.

"Precaution?" Dollard repeated.

"You might have become violent, primate. Only a few anthropoids are
extant, now. And They are scraggly skulkers, hiding out in the brush
of the second planet--the world you knew as Venus. But even so, many
of them have been known to react quite viciously when captured."

"Then, there are humans left?"

"I see you recognize the difference between our race and yours at
once." Shir K'han stiffened with pride. "The gap is quite great."

Dollard noticed a very faint striped pattern could be traced in the
fuzzy growth on Shir K'han's bared arms.

"Yes, some members of the previous culture do survive," the feline
continued. "Puny specimens. We have been forced to hunt them down.
Unfortunately, they breed slowly."

"I claim no kinship with them," said Dollard. "If you're sniffing
around in an effort to find out my sentiments about that, you can stop
right now. As a man from the past, I'm strictly for myself." He
winked. "What's more, I never did believe that monkey business. You
know, about the human race being the only kind of life having souls or
intelligence."

"Strange words ... from a primate."

"That's what I say. You look good enough to me. You have an adequate
IQ--that's the only test you need to pass with me. Now, how about
getting these clamps off of me?"

Dollard's renewed request incited no action. The feline interpreter's
pointed features were impassive; only the pricked attitude of his
tufted ears indicated he was listening.

"Let's go," Dollard cajoled. "You've revived me--and I think I've
proved I'm not dangerous."

"You still do not seem to understand. Your animation from the frozen
sleep was undertaken solely because it was a challenge to our science
that we could not over-look."

"And a bang-up job you did of it. Followed my directions perfectly."

"We used our own methods," Shir K'han corrected.

"The idea was mine."

"True, but had you known it, there did exist a mathematical solution
to your problem of escaping from the fixed orbit your ship adopted.
Apparently, to your misfortune, your training failed to include a
knowledge of five-body equations ... so you never arrived at the
proper heading you needed to take."

"Naturally, not," the revived industrialist snapped in answer. "But
that c