The drinks arrived.
"Sit down," Maxine said. "Want a moon?"
There was a moon.
"Could have two or three," she said, "but that would be overdoing it. One moon seems more like Earth. Seems more comfortable."
"There must be a limit somewhere," Bishop said. "They can't keep on kicking you upstairs indefinitely. There must come a time when even the Kimonians can't come up with anything that is new and novel."
"You wouldn't live long enough," she told him, "for that to come about. That's the way with all you new ones. You underestimate the Kimonians. You think of them as people, as Earth people who know just a little more. They aren't that, at all. They're alien. They're as alien as a spider-man, despite their human form. They conform to keep contact with us."
"But why do they want to keep contact with us? Why - "
"Buster," she said, " that's the question that we never ask. That's the one that can drive you crazy."
15
He had told them about the human custom of going out on picnics and the idea was one that they had never thought of, so they adopted it with childish delight.