"What else?" asked Mr. Furnay. He pointed with his antennae to the fluorescent hieroglyphs on the undersurface of the saucer-ship. "See, in our lingua galactica it reads: SKRRFF BROTHERS' INTERSTELLAR CIRCUS, THE GALAXY'S GREATEST. It is the best on the circuit."
He indicated the circle of identical Bivinses. "These are the Skrrff brothers, our owners. I, sir, am business manager."
"But not always a good one," one of the brothers said pointedly. "This time he has bought an entire menagerie of such fierceness that our trainers cannot exhibit it. It will have to be sold to some frontier-planet zoo, and our loss will be staggering."
It was left for Perrl-high-C-trill-and-A-above to deal with the problem, which she did with universal feminine practicality.
"Oliver made your bear well," she pointed out. "And he is afraid of nothing—nothing! Could he not train his own fierce beasts as well as I train my gentle ones?"
Oliver said, "Huh?"
The Skrrff brothers, of course, implored Oliver on the spot to join them at any salary.
Perrl-high-C-trill-and-A-above said demurely, in three octaves and for all the world to hear: "And I'm lonely, Oliver!"
Oliver never had a chance.