The other air-breathing one is gone, the other Big Fish is feeding, as I have done just now, and it is not clear about the far Terran who lacks a Big Fish.
"All the bastards on both worlds are out to lunch," growled Harris, "and here I sit!"
You are in to lunch, agreed the monster.
The three eyes that bore upon the imprisoned man as the thinker swept past the tank had an intelligent alertness. Harris had come to imagine that he could detect expressions on Big Fish's limited features.
"You're the only friend I've got!" he exclaimed, slipping suddenly into self-pity. "I wish I could go with you."
Once you could, when you had your own tank.
"It was what we call a submarine," said Harris. "I was looking to see what was on the ocean floor. Tell me, is it all like this?"
Is it all like what? With blue lobsters?
Harris still retained enough sanity to realize that the Tridentians did not suggest Terran lobsters to this being who probably could not even imagine them. That was an automatic translation of thought furnished out of his own memory and name-calling.
"No," he said. "I mean is it all sand and mud with a few chasms here and there? Where do these crabs get their metals?"