"How nice! I knew they were sweet little creatures!"
Rhadampsicus hesitated a moment.
"From the male's mind I gather something else. Since the crew of this space yacht was incapacitated, and they were—ah—not employed on it, he and your female will bring it safely to port, and, I gather that they have a claim to great reward. Ah—it is something they call 'salvage.' He plans to use it to secure other rewards he calls 'patents' and they expect to live happily ever after."
"And," cried Nodalictha gleefully, "from the female's mind I know that she is very proud of him, because she doesn't know that you designed all the instruments he made, darling. She's speaking to him now, telling him she loves him very dearly."
Then Nodalictha blushed a little, because in a faraway space yacht Cathy had kissed Lon Simpson. The process seemed highly indecorous to Nodalictha, so recently a bride.
"Yes," said Rhadampsicus, drily. "He is returning the compliment. It is quaint to think of such small creatures—Ha! Nodalictha, you should be pleased again. He is telling her that they will be married when they reach Earth, and that she shall have a white dress and a veil and a train. But I am afraid we cannot follow to witness the ceremony."
Their tentacles linked and their positron blasts mingling, the two of them soared up from the surface of the ninth planet of Cetis Gamma. They swept away, headed for their home at the extreme outer tip of the most far-flung arm of the spiral outposts of the Galaxy.
"But still," said Nodalictha, as they swept through emptiness at a speed unimaginable to humans, "they're wonderfully cute."
"Yes, darling," Rhadampsicus agreed, unwilling to start an argument so soon after the wedding. "But not as cute as you."