ir surmise was accurate. Some millions, many
millions of years ago, the planet had lost the last of its ocean
water. Apparently, as they failed to adapt to the increasing salinity
of the little left, one by one the original life forms died out.
Something in the octopoid metabolism (or mentality?) allowed them to
survive, to become land instead of water animals. Something in their
metabolism (or mentality?) allowed them to subsist on the air and
sunlight. (Really now? Did they even need these?) That was as far as
the reports went.

They did not draw the picture of highly developed mentalities who lay
there for millions of years and thought about the nature of being.
Such things as how mental manipulation of force fields can provide
each of them with a cigarette lighter that burns without any fluid in
it and any oxygen around its wick, or such things as mother hubbards
which had caught their fancy, or perhaps gave them some kind of
sensual kick caused by heat filtering through red cloth.

But mostly I just sat.

I went to see Aunt Mattie when she came back from the convention, of
course. She had the west wing where her sitting room looked out upon
her flora collection--and the gardeners who were supposed to keep
busy. Our greeting was fond, but brief. She did look at me rather
quizzically, rather shrewdly, but she made no comment. She did not
return my visit.

This was not unusual. She never visited my suite. When I was
twenty-one she took me into the south wing and said, "Choose your own
suite, Hapland. You are a man now, and I understand about young men."
If she had in mind what I thought she had it was a mighty big
concession to reality, although, of course, she was five years late in
coming around to it.

This older generation--so wise, so naive. She probably resolutely
refrained from imagining far worse things than really went on.

About two weeks after she'd come back from the convention, a month
since we returned from Capella IV, there was an interruption, an
excited one. For once in his life the butler forgot to touch my door
with feather fingertips and cough discreetly. Instead he knocked two
sharp raps, and opened the door without invitation.

"Come quickly, Master Hapland," he chittered urgently. "There are
creatures on our private landing field."

There were, too.

When I got there in my garden scooter, and pushed my way through the
crowd of gardeners who were clustered on the path and around the g