"If you're right in thinking that Terrans won't come to plunder Tharnar and the City," Vor-Dergal said, "then it would be interesting to know what those two find when they reach the center of the galaxy. If they don't get killed long before they reach it." "I think any hostile forms of life they encounter will find them hard to kill," Tal-Karanth said. "We paid a high price for their capture, remember? There were two Terran proverbs behind the name of their ship. It took me quite a while to understand the second one but when I did, I realized the true extent of Terran determination and self-confidence. "Their mission was to explore across the unknown regions of space. They knew it would be dangerous, very dangerous. So they named their ship '_The Cat_' partly because of an old Terran proverb: '_Curiosity killed a cat_.' But that was only half the reason behind the name. They intended to reach the center of the galaxy and they didn't intend to let anything stop them. So there was a second meaning behind the naming of their ship: "'_A cat has nine lives._'"