Joel's dinner arrived just then via a slot in the bulkhead and he addressed himself to it silently. Gustav Liedl, though, dawdled over his meal, talking with Tamis.
"Yes," Joel heard Liedl say in reply to one of Tamis' questions. "I was a professor." He made a rueful face, tugging at his black goatee. "At the Sorbonne. Anthropology was my subject."
"Anthropology!" Joel interrupted. "Then you must have some ideas about the natives of Asgard. What they are? Why no one has ever seen them?"
Liedl regarded Joel with a smile. "Ah, the elusive Centaurians! Yes. I've a theory about the Asgardian natives. I spent several years, you know, studying their villages with the Sorbonne's Asgardian Institute...."
Joel, glancing at Tamis, surprised a startled, half-frightened expression on her smooth ivory countenance.
"I've a theory," Liedl repeated, "that the Centaurians are masters of camouflage. I doubt very seriously that they are human. They may even be a quasi-intelligent species of plant life. Have you ever seen the Asgardian jungles, young man?"
"No," Joel admitted.
"Horrible!" Liedl said. "Plants with snaky tendrils like jointless arms. And they aren't rooted. They're capable of independent motion. It's amazing the number of Asgardian species that can move around freely as mammals."
Tamis said gaily, "Then you think the anthropologists have been looking for a man-like animal when all the time the natives have been plants who crept off into the jungle and hid?"
"Exactly!"