"If you'll excuse me," Guenther said, "it seems to me that the thing has some will of its own. For one thing, whatever form it takes, that form is not ambiguous or wavering, as an image in the mind's eye must be."
"What's more," Stetzel continued his friend's argument, "it can say things that are presumably not in the mind which called it into being. For example, using Greek to explain itself—I hope that I'm being clear—shows that the creature has imaginative power, as well as the ability to read our minds."
Percy N. Formeller hadn't been listening. Psychological investigations could wait until there was a good, solid foundation of physical fact on which to build. "I wonder if it's carnivorous?" he murmured.
Mr. Tedder nodded. He approved of Mr. Formeller's method. Strictly scientific. "I have some meat in my lunch," Mr. Tedder said. He walked carefully around the demonstration bench, staying a good five meters away from the potential carnivore. If the creature were a meat-eater, Mr. Tedder had no desire to have its feeding-habits demonstrated upon the person of a young physics instructor. Back in the stockroom Mr. Tedder opened his brown paper lunch bag, unfolded the wax paper from the top sandwich, and shook out a slice of pimento-loaf. He wished that he'd brought a less plebian lunch. Pork chops, perhaps. Oh, well. Mr. Tedder walked out into the classroom holding the slice of meat by one ketchup-moist corner.
Mr. Formeller impaled the slice of pimento-loaf on a length of No. 8 galvanized wire the physics teacher provided. Like a keeper shoving a flank of horse meat into a cageful of lions, the biology teacher thrust the baited wire into the empty air above the demonstration bench.
The pimento-loaf slice disappeared.
"Carnivorous," Mr. Formeller noted with satisfaction.
"Do you suppose that the creature could get off the table and ... walk around?" Miss MacIntire hoped that her maidenly caution wouldn't be thought an old maid's foible.
"If it were readily mobile, it wouldn't have developed so complex a mechanism to lure its prey," Mr. Formeller said. "Its various ... what's the classical word, Miss MacIntire?"