"Amazing!" a small, bespectacled male passenger said. "I can hardly believe my own senses!"
"Watch out for him," Ppon projected to me. "I think he's a scientist of some kind."
"Don't teach your ancestor to levitate," I conceptualized back.
Of course what struck the passengers first was neither the atmosphere nor the gravity; it was us. They never failed to be surprised, although the travel folders should have shown them what to expect. One of the folders had a picture of me, amusingly crude and two-dimensional, it's true, but not entirely unflattering. I'm not really purple, just a sort of tender fuchsia, but what could you expect from the rudimentary color processes they used? Sam had let me have the original and I always wished I could show it to Mother, but I couldn't without having to explain where it had come from.
"They're so cute!" a thin female screamed. "Almost like big squirrels, really, except for all those arms." Her teeth protruded more than those of the small rodent she was thinking about, or than mine, for that matter.
"Be careful, ma'am," the guide warned her. "They speak English."
"They do? How clever of them. Why, they must be quite intelligent, then."
"They are of a pretty high order of intelligence," the guide agreed, "although their methods of reasoning have always baffled scientists. Somehow they seem to sense scientists, think of them as their enemies, and just clam up entirely."
"I think they're just simply too cute," she said, gazing at me fondly.
"Ah, srrk yourself, madam," I excogitated, confident that humans were non-telepathic.