I'll see whether they're still
interfering on Samms' wave."

He took out a small, insulated case and touched the contact stud lightly
with his fingers. His arm jerked away powerfully.

"Still at it," he gave the necessary explanation. "They don't seem to
want us to talk outside, but his interference is as good as my
talking--they can trace it, of course. Now I'll see what I can find out
about our breakfast."

He stepped over to the plate and shot its projector beam forward into
the control room, where he saw Nerado lying, doglike, at his instrument
panel. As Costigan's beam entered the room a blue light flashed on and
the Nevian turned an eye and an arm toward his own small observation
plate. Knowing that they were now in visual communication, Costigan
beckoned an invitation and pointed to his mouth in what he hoped was the
universal sign of hunger. The Nevian waved an arm and fingered controls,
and as he did so a wide section of the floor of Clio's room slid aside.
The opening thus made revealed a table which rose upon its low pedestal,
a table equipped with three softly cushioned benches and spread with a
glittering array of silver and glassware. Bowls and platters of
dazzlingly white metal, narrow-waisted goblets of sheerest crystal; all
were hexagonal, beautifully and intricately carved or etched in
apparently conventional marine designs. And the table utensils of this
strange race were peculiar indeed. There were tearing forceps of sixteen
needle-sharp curved teeth; there were flexible spatulas; there were deep
and shallow ladles with flexible edges; there were many other peculiarly
curved instruments at whose uses the Terrestrials could no even guess;
all having delicately fashioned handles to fit the long, slender fingers
of the Nevians.

But if the table and its appointments were surprising to the
Terrestrials, revealing as they did a degree of culture which none of
them had expected to find in a race of beings so monstrous, the food was
even more surprising, although in another sense. For the wonderful
crystal goblets were filled with a grayish-green slime of a nauseous and
overpowering odor, the smaller bowls were full of living sea spiders and
other such delicacies; and each large platter contained a fish fully a
foot long, raw and whole, garnished tastefully with red, purple, and
green strands of seaweed!

Clio looked once, then gasped, shutting her eyes and turning away from
the table, but Costigan f