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teeth to communicate with, and vice versa, you can be sure.
"No, I'm sorry. Mr. Ainson. but your committees here are more bogged down than they care to admit,
simply because of bad field work on your part."
Ainson had grown very red. Something ghastly had happened in the room. The feeling had gone
against him. Everyone - he knew it without looking at them - everyone was sitting in silent approval of
what Lattimore said.
"Any idiot can be wise after the event," he said. "You seem to fail to realize how unprecedented it all
was. I -"
"I do realize how unprecedented it all was. I'm saying that it was unprecedented, and that therefore
you should have been more thorough. Believe me. Mr. Ainson, I've read photostats of the report on the
expedition and I've scrutinized the photographs that were taken, and I have the impression that the whole
thing was conducted more like a big game hunt than an official expedition paid for with public money."
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"I was not responsible for the shooting of the six ETA's. A patrol ran into them, coming back to the
ship late. It went to investigate the aliens, they attacked and were shot in self-defence. You should
re-read the reports."
"These hogs show no sign of being vicious. I don't believe that they attacked the patrol. I think they
were trying to run away."
Ainson looked about for help.
"I appeal to you, Mrs. Warhoon, is it reasonable to try and guess how these aliens behaved in their
free state from a glance at their apathetic behaviour in captivity?"
Mrs. Warboon had formed an immediate admiration for Bryant Lattimore; she liked a strong man.
"What other means have we for judging their behaviour?" she asked.
"You have the reports, that's what. There is a full account there for you to study."
Lattimore returned to the attack.
"What we have in the reports, Mr. Ainson, is a summary of what the leader of the patrol told you. Is
he a reliable man?"
"Reliable? Yes, he is reliable enough. There is a war on in this country, you know, Mr. Lattimore, and
we can't always choose the men we want"
"I see. And what was this man's name?"
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And indeed what was his name? Young, beefy, rather sullen. Not a bad fellow. Horton? Halter? In a
calmer atmosphere he would remember at once. Controlling his voice, Ainson said, "You will find his
name in the written report."
"All right, all right, Mr. Ainson. Obviously you have your answers. What I'm saying is that you should
have returned with a lot more answers. You see you are some-thing of a keyman here, aren't you?
You're the Master Explorer. You were trained up to just this situation. I'd say you have made it very
difficult for all of us by pro-ducing inadequate or even conflicting data."
Lattimore sat down, leaving Ainson standing.
"The nature of the data is to be conflicting," Ainson said. "Your job is to make sense of it, not to reject
it. Nobody is to blame. If you have any complaints, then they must be forwarded to Captain Bargerone.
Captain Bargerone was in charge of the whole thing, not I. Oh, and Quilter was the name of the fellow in
charge of the patrol. I've just remembered."
Gerald Bone spoke without rising.
"As you know, I'm a novelist, Mr. Ainson. Perhaps in this distinguished company I should say 'only a
novelist'. But one thing has worried me about your part in this.
"Mr. Lattimore says that you should have returned from Clementina with more answers than you did.
How-ever that may be, it does seem to me that you have returned with a few assumptions which,
because they have come from you, have been accepted all round without challenge as fact."
With dry mouth, Ainson waited for what was to come. Again he was aware that everyone was
listening with a sort of predatory eagerness.
"We know that these ETA's were found by a river on Clementina. Everyone also seems to accept that
they are not natives of that planet As far as I can see, this notion began with you. Is that so?"
The question was a relief. This Ainson could answer.
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"The notion did begin with me, Mr. Bone, though I would call it a conclusion rather than a notion. I can
explain it easily, even to a layman. These ETA's belonged to the ship; be quite clear about that Their
excreta was caked all over the inside of it - a computed thirty days' accumulation of it As additional
evidence, the ship was clearly built in their image."
"TheMariestopes, you might say, is built in the image of the common dolphin. It proves nothing about
the shape of the engineers who designed it."
"Please be courteous enough to hear me out. We found no other mammalian type life of 12B -
Clementina, as it is now called. We found no animal life larger than a two-inch tail-less lizard and no
insect life larger than a type of bee as big as a common shrew. In a week, with stratospheric surveys day
and night you cover a planet pretty thoroughly from pole to equator. Excluding the fish in the seas, we
discovered that Clementina had no animal life worth mentioning - except these big creatures that turn the
scales at twenty Earth stones. And they were together in one group by the spaceship. Clearly it is an
absurdity to suppose them to be natives."
"You found them beside a river. Why should they not be an aquatic animal, possibly one that spends
most of its time at sea?"
Ainson opened and shut his mouth. "Sir Mihaly, this discussion naturally raises points that a layman can
hardly be expected... I mean, no purpose is served...."
"Quite so," agreed Pasztor. "All the same, I think Gerald has an interesting point. Do you feel we can
definitely rule out the possibility that these fellows are" aquatic?"
"As I've said, they came from the spaceship. That was absolutely conclusive, you have my word for it
as the man on the spot." As he spoke, Ainson's eye went belligerently over the group; when it met
Lattimore's eye, Lattimore spoke.
"I would say they had the lines of a marine animal -speaking purely as a layman, of course."
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