"Well," Carver said, "it must all be residual in the sersee. The Lorayan birth-rate is practically nonexistent, you know. Even with the sersee's healing powers, the race should have died out long ago. Unless the serum had another purpose as well--the ability to change lower animal forms into the Lorayan form." "That's a wild guess!" "A working hypothesis based upon Deg's statement that sersee is the mother of the Lorayan people. I'm afraid that is the true meaning of the beast cults and the reason they are taboo. The various beasts must be the origins of certain portions of the Lorayan people, perhaps all the Lorayan people. Even the topic is taboo; there clearly is a deep-seated sense of inferiority about their recent step up from bestiality." Carver rubbed his forehead wearily. "The sersee juice has," he continued, "we may hazard, a role-sharing in terms of the life of the race. We may theorize--" "To hell with theory," Fred said, and was horrified to find that his voice had grown thick and guttural, like a Lorayan voice. "Professor, do something!" "There's nothing I can do." "Maybe Terran science--" "No, Fred," Carver said quietly. "_What?_" "Fred, please try to understand. I can't bring you back to Earth." "What do you mean? You must be crazy!" "Not at all. How can I bring you back with such a fantastic story? They would consider the whole thing a gigantic hoax." "But--" "Listen to me. No one would believe! They would consider, rather, that you were an unusually intelligent Lorayan. Your very presence, Fred, would undermine the whole thesis of my book!" "You can't leave me," Fred said. "You just can't do that." Professor Carver still had both revolvers. He stuck one in his belt and leveled the other. "I am not going to endanger the work of a lifetime. Get out, Fred." "No!" "I mean it. Get out, Fred." "I won't! You'll have to shoot me!" "I will if I must," Carver assured him. "I'll shoot you and throw you out." He took aim. Fred backed to the port, undogged it, opened it. The villagers were waiting quietly outside. "What will they do to me?" "I'm really sorry, Fred," Carver said. "I won't go!" Fred shrieked, gripping the edges of the port with both hands. Carver shoved him into the waiting hands of the crowd and threw the remaining tubes of sersee after him. Then, quickly, not wishing to see what was going to happen, he sealed the port. Within an hour, he was leaving the planet's atmospheric limits. * * * * * When he returned to Earth, his book, _Underlying Causes of the Implicit Inferiority of Non-Terran Peoples_, was hailed as a milestone in comparative anthropology. But he ran into some difficulty almost at once. A space captain named Jones returned to Earth and maintained that, on the planet Loray, he had discovered a native who was in every significant way the equal of a Terran. And he had tape recordings and motion pictures to prove it.