dy covered Ayesha's bet,
after I left. If they did, she collects. The large outer membranes
in the comb seem to be unaffected, but there is considerable
compression of the small round ones inside, in just one area,
and more on the left side than on the right. Charley says it
was flying across in front of him from left to right."

"The receptor-area responding to the frequencies of the report,"
Ayesha said.

Anna de Jong made a passing gesture toward Fayon. "The baby's yours,
Bennet," she said. "This isn't psychological. I won't accept a case
of psychosomatic compound fracture."

"Don't be too premature about it, Anna. I think that's more or less
what you have, here."

Everybody looked at him, surprised. His subject was comparative
technology. The bio and psycho-sciences were completely outside
his field.

"A lot of things have been bothering me, ever since the first
contact. I'm beginning to think I'm on the edge of understanding
them, now. Bennet, the higher life-forms here--the people, and that
domsee, and Charley's svant-bat--are structurally identical with us.
I don't mean gross structure, like ears and combs. I mean molecular
and cellular and tissue structure. Is that right?"

Fayon nodded. "Biology on this planet is exactly Terra type. Yes.
With adequate safeguards, I'd even say you could make a viable
tissue-graft from a Svant to a Terran, or vice versa."

"Ayesha, would the sound waves from that pistol-shot in any
conceivable way have the sort of physical effect we're considering?"

"Absolutely not," she said, and Luis Gofredo said: "I've been shot
at and missed with pistols at closer range than that."

"Then it was the effect on the animal's nervous system."

Anna shrugged. "It's still Bennet's baby. I'm a psychologist,
not a neurologist."

"What I've been saying, all along," Fayon reiterated complacently.
"Their hearing is different from ours. This proves it.

"It proves that they don't hear at all."

He had expected an explosion; he wasn't disappointed. They all
contradicted him, many derisively. Signal reactions. Only Paul
Meillard made the semantically appropriate response:

"What do you mean, Mark?"

"They don't _hear_ sound; they _feel_ it. You all saw what they have
inside their combs. Those things don't transmit sound like the ears
of any sound-sensitive life-form we've ever seen. They transform
sound waves into tactile sensations."

Fayon cursed, slowly and luridly. Anna de Jong l