Oscar strolled in after Skip, a four-footed perambulating muff. He sat beside Skip, his green eyes on Provvorr. He purred like an outboard motor. I thought Provvorr would leap out through the window glass. “A cat,” he said. “You keep him for--what purpose?” I tried to be reassuring. “Just for his company and respectability. Of course, he catches mice.” “What are mice?” As I told him, his face grew tense and sick. “All are monsters,” he said. “Your world breeds a horrible variety of abnormal creatures. We thought you were like us--a single living species, subduing a planet to your will. These other things are--uncivilized.” I was quite sure the word didn’t mean exactly what he wanted it to mean. Skip and Oscar were civilized enough, if it came to that. I think he meant that they were uncanny, beyond those mechanisms of awareness he was accustomed to. “They won’t hurt you,” I assured him. “Watch while I feed them. You’ll see how friendly they are.” I took a plate of left-over pork roast from the refrigerator and with a sharp kitchen knife I shaved off scraps. Oscar and Skip accepted the repast with well-bred relish. “What are they eating?” Provvorr wanted to know. “Meat,” I said. “Animal food--pork.” “We make our food from the elements,” Provvorr said. “Synthetics,” I nodded, understandingly. “You’d have to, with no domestic food animals.” “From what animal does that food come?” I described a pig. Then in more colorful detail, a steer. He drummed his tapering fingers on the table. “Your world swarms with hideous life,” he repeated. “It all depends on how you look at it,” I said. “We’re used to it.” “I’m not.” “Therefore it gives you the creeps. The way I’d feel in a roomful of snakes.” “What are snakes?” I told him. He asked more questions, and I spoke of rabbits that scampered across fields; of fish swarming in streams, and lakes and oceans; of birds in the air; elephants and lions and tigers. He listened, in a silence that grew ever more ominous around him. “Your planet is infested,” he said. “This is terrible.” “Why terrible?” I asked, really wanting to know. He looked sidelong at Skip and Oscar, their sharp white teeth busy with the pork. “Monsters can’t be rationalized. I can’t read their minds. I can’t disappear from them. They are utterly new to my experience.” * * * * * _They really are terrifying to him_, I thought. _Like ghosts_.... “What are ghosts?” he demanded, instantly. “Strange, mysterious beings that ignorant people believe in,” I said. “Spirits of dead creatures, of evil intelligences, lurking and spying, ready to do harm.” “Are they animals,” said Provvorr. “No,” I told him. “Ghosts are imaginary. Animals are real.” “Animals,” he said, “are evil intelligences, lurking and spying, ready to do harm.” “Nonsense, Provvorr,” I tried to reassure him. “Animals know us for their masters. We’ve won mastery over them.”