“What is ‘throw’?”

“My gosh, we haven’t used that word, have we? Well, I’ve seen you jump — no, by gosh, I haven’t either! — when you were up visiting at my shelter. Do you remember that word?”

“No.”

“Well, ‘throw’ is when you take some other object — pick it up — and push it hard away from you so that it travels some distance before striking the ground!”

“We don’t do that up in reasonable countries. There are lots of things we can do here which are either impossible or very dangerous there. If I were to ‘throw’ something at home, it might very well land on someone — probably me.”

“Come to think of it, that might be bad. Three G’s here at the equator is bad enough; you have nearly seven hundred at the poles. Still, if you could find something small enough so that your muscles could throw it, why couldn’t you catch it again, or at least resist its impact?”

“I find the situation hard to picture, but I think I know the answer. There isn’t time. If something is let go — thrown or not — it hits the ground before anything can be done about it. Picking up and carrying is one thing; crawling is one thing; throwing and — jumping? — are entirely different matters.”

“I see — I guess. We sort of took for granted that you’d have a reaction time commensurate with your gravity, but I can see that’s just man-centered thinking. I guess I get it.”

“What I could understand of your talk sounded reasonable. It is certainly evident that we are different; we will probably never fully realize just how different. At least we are enough alike to talk together — and make what I hope will be a mutually profitable agreement.”

“I am sure it will be. Incidentally, in furtherance of it you will have to give me an idea of the places you want to go, and I will have to point out on your maps the place where I want you to go. Could we look at that Bowl of yours now? There is light enough for this vision set.”