On every Earth-type planet that had ever been discovered, if there were intelligent life it had developed according to water-oxygen evolution; and the culture invariably parallelled _homo sapiens_. It was as if a busy and preoccupied nature had hit upon a pattern which worked and never bothered to change the mold. There were minor deviations, of course, biologically and structurally, but never culture-wise. The swift, but amazingly discerning survey, had revealed absolutely no evidence of any intelligence on the planet. There were no artifacts, dwellings, roads, dams, bridges--primitive or otherwise. Any stage of culture would have been observed by the cruiser immediately. The planet seemed ideally suited to colonization. Gallifa, the trained biologist, carefully studied the creatures. The dwarf-like gnomes, as Samuels had dubbed them, might be considered caricatures of humanity. They were about four feet high--bipeds, and covered with a soft, pinkish fur. They walked erect; normally so, Gallifa could tell, because their upper limbs were too short for knuckling and were not jointed correctly for moving on all fours. They had five digited limbs, both upper and lower, just as did all higher life forms ever discovered on any planet. Their features were without hair and of a fairy story-humanoid type. With their large, floppy ears, and round-solemn eyes they were very unusual gnomes indeed. Gallifa spoke to them quietly, trying a few standard low-order communication and classification tricks. The visitors--somehow he couldn't think of them as base animals--made no response. They didn't quite seem to fit any classification niche. The creatures faintly puzzled Gallifa. The best he could do was: Low order intelligence and probably harmless. Cultural development, nil. As if to prove his rationalizations, the creatures suddenly seemed to ignore the humans. They walked unconcernedly past the truck and attacked the vegetation on the edge of the clearing. Every so often one would overturn a small rock and grub for the exposed insects. Gallifa observed their broad, dull teeth. They weren't, he decided, omnivorous. Samuels interrupted his train of thought. "Do you think they will give us any trouble?" he asked. "No," Gallifa affirmed slowly. "Not materially, anyway. But it's going to be interesting, and a little difficult, to study this species. They don't seem to be ecologically feasible. Look at them. They are small and weak. They don't have claws, not even sheathed--and they are definitely too low in the evolutionary scale to know anything of weapons. Their feet obviously aren't constructed for climbing, and their limbs are too short and aren't planned right for running." He removed his hat and scratched his head. "In short," he finished, "they are an unprotected species, obviously _unable_ to protect themselves." "That's odd enough," Samuels agreed. "But maybe they don't need protection. Maybe they don't have any natural enemies."