"Back where?" says Marvin. He does not seem completely awake, for he continues to stare at the shining things and the lighted things and to listen to the tiny sounds coming from some of them.
Then he suddenly unbends himself and makes large eyes at the cat.
"You can still talk!" he says. "Which one are you now?"
The Klygha hesitates. Then he makes the cat speak the truth, for he is now a coward.
"I am the one who spoke through your pet before," the cat says for him. "Please return! I need your help."
Through the cat's vision, we see the Terran's large, five-divided grippers reach out at us. The view shifts ... he has picked up the cat and put it on a flat space before some of the shining things. We twitch about on the beach until we realize that it is the cat twitching its ears and tail. It is not happy on the flat space and it is not happy with the Klygha in its mind. We know.
The Terran called Marvin moves clicking things in front of him and speaks. With the Klygha, we understand that his sounds are carried along a string of metal to other parts of the travelling-shell. Soon, other Terrans answer, and a little later they arrive.
Then the noise increases. They all talk at once, and their opinions are much less to be understood than ours when all of us communicate at once. They do not add to each other's strength; they lessen it. The cat is irritated—it looks away at the shining lights. The Klygha wishes the cat could see in color, for then he would be able to understand more about the Terrans' controls, but this wish is weak. He wants more that the Terrans return, and he listens anxiously to them.
"But I heard him say it!" says Marvin. "There's another spacer there—it couldn't be those lumpy beach-crawlers!"
"T'at would make senss," says Foggy. "I never believed t'ose tings looked smart enough."