"Yes. English was the official language of Earth. Then there was Martian, Venusian chat-chat, and Spotian. It was a queer amalgam, but it could be understood by everyone, more or less."
"So that's where it came from. Chikker-im-up-im chat-chat too-much, eh? Interplanetary bêche de mer."
"Exactly. Only of course it was called bêche d'espace. Me two-fellah vimb' kitch-im pjoug by'm by. But even after the language difficulty was solved, we had our troubles. They already had camels on Mars, for instance, and the Martians were amazed when we brought in more. Particularly because theirs were wild and semi-intelligent and the first thing the Martian camels did was come over and liberate their brothers from Earth. They never did come back.
"Same sort of thing with the raincoats on Venus. It doesn't rain down there, as we know now. It sort of mists up. From the ground. Soaks up under a raincoat in no time. These were just petty annoyances, of course, but they were symptomatic of the way our half-baked planning operated."
"You didn't know about the people of Ganymede then?"
"No. We were so busy trying to build another Red Spot that we never did get to Jupiter's satellites. Oh, it was partly a matter of appropriations, too. The budget commission kept explaining to us that there was only so much money and that we'd better show a profit on what we had before we put in a request to go tooling off to colonize some new place. I guess the 'Medeans first came when you were about ten?"
"Eleven," the younger man said.
"They scouted our colonies and came directly to Earth. They took right over and colonized us."
A 'Medean overseer climbed the hill effortlessly. He was tall and tentacled and the breathing apparatus over his head gave him the appearance of a mechanical man.
"Kigh-kigh pinis," the 'Medean said. "You two-fella all-same chat-chat too-much. B'phava b'long work he-stop 'long orchard pick-im apple."