The Terrans look at each other a long time before Halloran says, "From a star called Sol. And you?"
"I lived here before you arrived," says the cat for the Klygha.
This is not very true, and it seems strange to us that the Terrans do not realize it.
"How is it," says Marvin, "that you have the ... ah ... are sufficiently advanced to contact us in this manner, and yet have built none of the usual appurtenances of civilization?"
The Klygha makes him say it another way before he understands and can answer.
"In the first place," the cat says for him, "we are an aquatic race. You see us only at the meeting of the sea and land. In the second, there may be civilization without complicated physical structures. We do not know of any other kind, since you are the first beings to come here from a star."
The Terrans seem not to hear the slip he makes, that should reveal to them he has again not told the truth. The Klygha always fools them; they still believe the shells we made for the Klygha are what they call "fossils." They do not know that by a natural body process we can draw substances from seawater and form them as we wish. The Klygha learned this almost at the beginning. Besides the objects he wanted for deceiving the Terrans, we made for him some of the liquids he uses to make his travelling-shell go—but he was impatient that it took us so long.
"Perhaps," says Halloran, "we could both benefit by exchanging information; that is, if you are really what you say!"
He looks suspiciously at the other Terrans, as if he does not entirely believe the cat is controlled by another mind.
From then on, the talk is strange to us. When the Klygha answers questions, the cat talks as if it were one of us here on the beach—but we learn that the Klygha understands us only a little. The answers he gives are mostly wrong. He has never troubled to learn how we live underwater, but only used us for his own purposes.