with populations that would have made ours
seem a small village; they were stronger than we were, and yet they had
done nothing.

"Why didn't you stop us? You could have stopped us."

* * * * *

A rabbity one who is closer than the others backs away, gesturing
politely that he is giving room for someone else to speak, but he looks
guilty and will not look at me with his big round eyes. I still feel
weak and dizzy. It is hard to think, but I feel as if they are hiding a
secret.

A doelike one hesitates and comes closer to my bed. "We discussed it ...
we voted...." It talks through a microphone in its helmet with a soft
lisping accent that I think comes from the shape of its mouth. It has a
muzzle and very soft, dainty, long nibbling lips like a deer that
nibbles on twigs and buds.

"We were afraid," adds one who looks like a bear.

"To us the future was very terrible," says one who looks as if it
might have descended from some sort of large bird like a penguin. "So
much-- Your weapons were very terrible."

Now they all talk at once, crowding about my bed, apologizing. "So much
killing. It hurt to know about. But your people didn't seem to mind."

"We were afraid."

"And in your fiction," the doelike one lisped, "I saw plays from your
amusement machines which said that the discovery of beings in space
would save you from war, not because you would let us bring friendship
and teach peace, but because the human race would unite in _hatred_ of
the outsiders. They would forget their hatred of each other only in a
new and more terrible war with us." Its voice breaks in a squeak and it
turns its face away from me.

"You were about to come out into space. We were wondering how to hide!"
That is a quick-talking one, as small as a child. He looks as if he
might have descended from a bat--gray silken fur on his pointed face,
big night-seeing eyes, and big sensitive ears, with a humped shape on
the back of his air suit which might be folded wings. "We were trying to
conceal where we had built, so that humans would not guess we were near
and look for us."

They are ashamed of their fear, for because of it they broke all the
kindly laws of their civilizations, restrained all the pity and
gentleness I see in them, and let us destroy ourselves.

I am beginning to feel more awake and to see more clearly. And I am
beginning to feel sorry for them, for I can see why they are afraid.

They are