"Yes," Woodward said firmly. "In my own home. But I cannot give you the name of his world, and neither can Borsu. At the moment, their way-station is an airless asteroid in our solar system, where they are living in an artificial atmosphere and surviving on synthetic food. There are fewer than ten thousand of them, refugees from a world which suffered a fate so terrible that they have allowed themselves to forget everything about it."
"Forget? What do you mean?"
"They have a belief, an ancient conviction, about Forgetting. I don't know whether it's cultural, or religious, or scientific in origin; but each generation conceals the past from the new generation, especially those things in the past which have been unpleasant or hurtful. They are future-minded; they believe their children are sounder mentally if they know nothing of past evils. Whatever happened on the world of their birth is a story only their dead ancestors knew. Their interest is only in tomorrow."
"And just what kind of tomorrow do they have in mind?"
Woodward took a deep breath.
"They wish to migrate to Earth, Mr. Ridgemont. All of them. Their evolutionary development was virtually identical to ours; when I marveled at this, Borsu laughed heartily at me. It is the belief of their science—or perhaps their theology—that the physical form both races share is the only one possible to the intelligent beings of the universe. So you see," Woodward said wryly, "perhaps the old prophets were right, when they said that God made Man in his own image. Perhaps it's the only possible image in the cosmos."
"Then they look like us? Exactly like us?"
"Not exactly, no. There are some—surface differences. I know nothing of Borsu's interior construction, only X rays could tell us that."
Ridgemont said, suspiciously: "What surface differences?"
"They are somewhat more angular than we are, a bit taller. Their craniums are larger, their shoulders narrower and bones finer. Borsu told me that they have no tonsils or appendix. In a way, they might be one lateral step higher on the evolutionary scale than the people of Earth. Their science is slightly more advanced in some areas, behind us in others. And of course, the number of their scientists and technicians is greatly limited." Woodward paused. "And they are blue. A soft, pleasant shade, but unmistakably—blue."