“I stretched a piece of wire that I found in the desk of my cubicle across the door so my Zan would fall over it. He did, and the wire cut his leg.”
“Did he bleed red?”
“Yes but it didn’t seem to annoy him. He didn’t get mad about it; didn’t even mention it. When he came back the next time, a few hours later, the cut was one. Well, almost gone. I could see just enough of a trace of it to be sure it was the same Zan.”
Walter Phelan nodded slowly.
“He wouldn’t get angry, of course,” he said. “They’re emotionless. Maybe, if we killed one, they wouldn’t even punish us. But it wouldn’t do any good. They’d just give us our food through a trap door and treat us as men would have treated a zoo animal that had killed a keeper. They’d just see that he didn’t have a crack at any more keepers.
“How many of them are there?” she asked.
“About two hundred, I think, in this particular space ship. But undoubtedly there are many more where they came from. I have a hunch this is just an advance guard, sent to clear off this planet and make it safe for Zan occupancy,”
“They did a good—”
There was a knock at the door, and Walter Phelan called out, “Come in.”
A Zan stood in the doorway.