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brought back to Earth, sir?" Bucker asked.
    "Are they animals or are they people?”
    Hardly hearing, Bruce Ainson sent his gaze probing over the crowds outside. He thought he had caught a glimpse of his good-for-nothing son, Aylmer, wearing his usual hangdog expression as he plunged through the mob.
    "Swine," he said.
    "You mean they look like swine or they act like swine?”
    The explorer turned to stare at the reporter.
    "I'm Bucker of the Windsor Circuit, sir. My paper would be interested in anything you could tell us about these creatures. You think they are animals, am I right in saying?”
    "What would you say mankind is, Mr. Bucker, civilized beings or animals? Have we ever met a new race without corrupting it or destroying it? Look at the Polynesians, the Guanches, the American Indians, the Tasmanians “
    "Yes, sir, I get your point, but would you say these aliens....”
    "Oh, they have intelligence, as has any mammal; these are mammals. But their behavior or lack of behavior is baffling because we must not think anthropomorphically about them. Have they ethics, have they consciences? Are they capable of being corrupted as the Eskimos and Indians were? Are they perhaps capable of corrupting us? We have to ask ourselves a lot of searching questions before we are capable of seeing these rhinomen clearly. That is my feeling on the matter.”
    "That is very interesting. What you are saying is that we have to develop a new way of thinking, is that it?”
    " No, no, no, I hardly think this is a problem I can discuss with a newspaper representative, but man places too much trust in his intellect; what we need is a new way of feeling, a more reverent.... I was getting somewhere with those two unhappy creatures we have captive - establishing trust, you know, after we had slaughtered their companions and taken them prisoner, and what is happening to them now?
    They're going to be a sideshow ha the Exozoo. The Director, Sir Mihaly Pasztor, is an old friend of mine; I shall complain to him.”
    "Heck, people want to see the beasts! How do we know they have feelings like ours?”
    "Your view, Mr. Bucker. is probably the view of the damn fool majority. Excuse me, I have a technical! to make.”
    Ainson hurried from the building, where the wedge of people instantly closed in and held him tight. He stood helpless there while a lorry moved slowly by, buoyed along with cheers, cries and exclamations from the onlookers. Through the bars at the back of the lorry, the two ETA's stared down on the onlookers. They made no sound. They were large and grey, beings at once forlorn and formidable.
    Their gaze rested on Bruce Ainson. They gave no sign of recognition. Suddenly chilled, he turned and began to worm his way through the press of wet mackintoshes.
    The ship was emptying and being emptied. Cranes dipped their great beaks into the ship's vitals, coming up with nets full of cartons, boxes, crates, and canisters. Sewage lighters swarmed, sucking out the waste from the metal creature's alimentary canal. The hull bled men in little gouts. The great whale Mariestopes was stranded and powerless, beached far from its starry native deeps.
    Walthamstone and Ginger Duffield followed Quilter to one of the exit ducts. Quilter was loaded with kit and due to catch an ionosphere jet from another corner of the port to the U.S.A. in half an hour's time. They paused on the lip of the ship and looked out quizzically, inhaling the strange-tasting air.
    "Look at it, worst weather in the universe," Waltham-stone complained. "I'm staying in here till it stops, I tell you straight.”
    "Catch a taxi." Duffield suggested.
    " 'Tisn't worth it. My aunt's place is only half a mile away. My bike's over there in the P.T.O.'s offices.
    I'll cycle when the rain clears - if it does.”
    "Does the P.T.O. let you leave your bike there free between flights?" Duffield asked with interest.
    Anxious not to get involved in what promised to become a rather English