AND HOW COME, Manship’s mind suddenly shrieked, THEY TALK ENGLISH?

“I can see that,” Councilor Glomg admitted with a blunt honesty that became him well. “It’s an accomplished fact, all right, Professor Lirld. Only, what precisely has it accomplished?”

Lirld raised some thirty or forty tentacles in what Manship realized fascinatedly was an elaborate and impatient shrug. “The teleportation of a living organism from astronomical unit 649-301-3 without the aid of transmitting apparatus on the planet of origin”

The Councilor swept his eyes back to Manship. “You call that living?” he inquired doubtfully.

“Oh, come now, Councilor,” Professor Lirld protested. “Let’s not have any flefnomorphism. It is obviously sentient, obviously motile, after a fashion—”

“All right. It’s alive. I’ll grant that. But sentient? It doesn’t even seem to pmbff from where I stand. And those horrible lonely eyes! Just two of them—and so flat! That dry, dry skin without a trace of slime. I’ll admit that—”

“You’re not exactly a thing of beauty and a joy forever yourself, you know,” Manship, deeply offended, couldn’t help throwing out indignantly.

“—I tend to flemomorphism in my evaluation of alien life-forms,” the other went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Well, I’m a flefnobe and proud of it. But after all, Professor Lirld, I have seen some impossible creatures from our neighboring planets that my son and other explorers have brought back. The very strangest of them, the most primitive ones, at least can pmbff! But this—this thing. Not the smallest, slightest trace of a pmb do I see on it! It’s eerie, that’s what it is—eerie!”

“Not at all,” Lirld assured him. “It’s merely a scientific anomaly. Possibly in the outer reaches of the galaxy where animals of this sort are frequent, possibly conditions are such that pmbffing is unnecessary. A careful examination should tell us a good deal very quickly. Meanwhile, we’ve proved that life exists in other areas of the galaxy than its sun-packed core. And when the time comes for us to conduct exploratory voyages to these areas, intrepid adventurers like your son will go equipped with information. They will know what to expect.”