Twenty minutes later, Yerdeth Pell looked up from the data book facsimiles and scanned Dodeth's face with appraising eyes.
"Very cute," he said at last, with a slight chuckle. "Now, what I want to know is: is someone playing a joke on you, or are you playing a joke on me?"
Dodeth's eyelids slid upwards in a fast blink of surprise. "What do you mean?"
"Why, these bathygraphs." Yerdeth rapped the bathygraphs with a wrinkled, horny hand. He was a good deal older than Dodeth, and his voice had a tendency to rasp a little when the frequency went above twenty thousand cycles. "They're very good, of course. Very good. The models have very fine detail to them. The eyes, especially are good; they look as if they really ought to be built that way." He smiled and looked up at Dodeth.
Dodeth resisted an urge to ripple a stomp. "Well?" he said impatiently.
"Well, they can't be real, you know," Yerdeth replied mildly.
"Why not?"
"Oh, come, now, Dodeth. What did it evolve from? An animal doesn't just spring out of nowhere, you know."
"New species are discovered occasionally," Dodeth said. "And there are plenty of mutants and just plain freaks."
"Certainly, certainly. But you don't hatch a snith out of a hurkle egg. Where are your intermediate stages?"