"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew that, in relation to her, he was not advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless, except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as her own world. She had something else in mind.