"Okay," Possett said to the two robot crewmen at the main controls, "take her down."
At the waterfall's edge, flowering trees twisted their roots in the cliffside, and a fresh wind scattered plumes of its spray through their leaves. Taller trees, bell-blossomed, fanned out from the pool, gave way to a meadow, and followed the course of the stream down a broadening valley—among faceted boulders of translucent quartz, rose-pink, green, and golden, sheltering small, lustrous spires of fragile fungi.
On the meadow stood the house, the latest in Second Victorian, complete with carved plastic false-front in early Schenectady Gothic. The Buttons themselves, with Cousin Aurelia, stood in front of it. They wore long linen dusters and sun helmets with heavy mosquito veils. They were going exploring.
Cousin Aurelia was sputtering: "Do you know what he said when he left? 'Kid, you come along with Mike Possett. You don't want no part of that planet. I'll show you a ripsnorting time!' Then he gave me a look that—that was positively lecherous." She shuddered. "At least we'll have no more of that nonsense. Your planet is uninhabited."
Betty looked worried. "I've the funniest feeling," she said. "As if someone was watching."
"That's absurd!" snapped Cousin Aurelia. "You must be imagin—" She stopped in her tracks. "Wh-what's that?"
They looked. A large, soft, fuzzy beast had come out from under the trees. It was reddish and had very big feet. It blinked at them brightly, climbed a transparent green rock, and started to whistle, not too tunefully, through its long Roman nose.
Almost instantly, another emerged, a size smaller. Lowering its eyelids coquettishly, it began clapping its forepaws.
"Charles, they must be the 'critters' Burgee mentioned in that catalogue. Remember? I'm sure they're perfectly harmless."