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 gate to the landing field, I saw them. At least a dozen of the Capella IV octopoids were spread eagled, their tentacles out flat on the hot cement of the runway. Their eye stared unblinking into the sun. Over their spread of tentacles, like inverted hibiscus blossoms, they wore their mother hubbards. Behind them, over at the far edge of the field, was an exact duplicate of our own space yacht. I wondered, rather hysterically perhaps, if each of them on Capella IV now had one. I suspected the yacht was simply there for show, that they hadn't needed it, not any more than they needed the mother hubbards. There was the hiss of another scooter, and I turned around to see Aunt Mattie come to a stop. She stepped out and came over to me. "Our social call on Capella IV is being returned," I said with a grin and twinkle at her. She took in the sight with only one blink. "Very well," she answered. "I shall receive them, of course." Somebody once said that the most snobbish thing about the whole tribe of Tombs was that they'd never learned the meaning of the word, or had to. But I did wonder what the servants would think when the creatures started slithering into our drawing room. There was a gasp and a low rumble of protesting voices from the gardeners as Aunt Mattie opened the gate and walked through it. I followed, of course. We walked up to the nearest monster and came to stop at the edge of its skirt.