really was the food-giver to this
bunch of sexless wonders. Corn, thank God, grew well on the red and
stubborn soil of Layard--good old corn from North America. Fed to
hogs, made into corn-pone for breakfast back on Earth, and here, on
Layard, the staple food crop for a gang of shiftless varmints who
still regarded, with some good solid skepticism and round-eyed wonder,
this unorthodox idea that one should take the trouble to grow plants
to eat rather than go out and scrounge for them.

Corn from North America, he thought, growing side by side with the
_vua_ of Layard. And that was the way it went. Something from one
planet and something from another and still something further from a
third and so was built up through the wide social confederacy of space
a truly cosmic culture which in the end, in another ten thousand years
or so, might spell out some way of life with more sanity and
understanding than was evident today.

He poured a mound of rockahominy into his own hand and put the bag
back into his pocket.

"Sipar."

"Yes, mister?"

"You were not scared today when the donovan threatened to attack us."

"No, mister. The donovan would not hurt me."

"I see. You said the donovan was taboo to you. Could it be that you,
likewise, are taboo to the donovan?"

"Yes, mister. The donovan and I grew up together."

"Oh, so that's it," said Duncan.

He put a pinch of the parched and powdered corn into his mouth and
took a sip of brackish water. He chewed reflectively on the resultant
mash.

He might go ahead, he knew, and ask why and how and where Sipar and
the donovan had grown up together, but there was no point to it. This
was exactly the kind of tangle that Shotwell was forever getting
into.

Half the time, he told himself, I'm convinced the little stinkers are
doing no more than pulling our legs.

What a fantastic bunch of jerks! Not men, not women, just things. And
while there were never babies, there were children, although never
less than eight or nine years old. And if there were no babies, where
did the eight-and nine-year-olds come from?

* * * * *

"I suppose," he said, "that these other things that are your taboos,
the stilt-birds and the screamers and the like, also grew up with
you."

"That is right, mister."

"Some playground that must have been," said Duncan.

He went on chewing, staring out into the darkness beyond the ring of
firelight.

"There's someth