I was kneeling on the mattress, cuffing and roughing the male as one might a puppy dog, when one of the females playfully climbed up my back. I reached around and brought her over my shoulder and sat her down. I stroked the soft fur on her head and said, "Hello, pretty one. Hello." The male watched me, grinning. He said, "'Ello, 'ello." * * * * * As I walked into the kitchen, giddy with this enormous joke, my wife said, "Guy and Em are flying up for dinner. That rocket of Guy's they launched in the desert yesterday was a success. It pulled Guy up to Cloud Nine and he wants to celebrate." I danced a little jig the way old Nijinsky might do it. "Oh, great! Oh, wonderful! Good old Guy! Everybody's a success. It's great. It's wonderful. Success on success!" I danced into the kitchen table and tipped over a basket of green corn. The maid promptly left the kitchen for some other place. My wife just stared at me. "Have you been drinking the lab alcohol?" "I've been drinking the nectar of the gods. My Hera, you're properly married to Zeus. I've my own little Greeks descended from Icarus." She pretended a hopeless sag of her pretty shoulders. "Wouldn't you just settle for a worldly martini?" "I will, yes. But first a divine kiss." I sipped at my martini and lounged in a terrace chair watching the golden evening slant across the beautiful hills of our ranch. I dreamed. I would invent a euphonious set of words to match the Basic English vocabulary and teach it to them as their language. They would have their own crafts and live in small tree houses. I would teach them legends: that they had come from the stars, that they had subsequently watched the first red men and then the first white men enter these hills. When they were able to take care of themselves, I would turn them loose. There would be volpla colonies all up and down the Coast before anyone suspected. One day, somebody would see a volpla. The newspapers would laugh. Then someone authoritative would find a colony and observe them. He would conclude, "I am convinced that they have a language and speak it intelligently." The government would issue denials. Reporters would "expose the truth" and ask, "Where have these aliens come from?" The government would reluctantly admit the facts. Linguists would observe at close quarters and learn the simple volpla language. Then would come the legends. Volpla wisdom would become a cult--and of all forms of comedy, cults, I think, are the funniest. * * * * * "Darling, are you listening to me?" my wife asked with impatient patience. "What? Sure. Certainly." "You didn't hear a word. You just sit there and grin into space." She got up and poured me another martini. "Here, maybe this will sober you up." I pointed. "That's probably Guy and Em."