Rod went on concentrating, “I’m a dumb cat. I have a package to deliver. I’m a dumb cat.”

The subchief looked down at him scornfully. Rod felt the other’s mind slide over his own in the rough equivalent of a search. He remained relaxed and tried to feel stupid while the other hiered him. Rod said nothing. The subchief flashed his baton over the package, eyeing the crystal knob at the end,

“Books,” he snorted.

Rod nodded.

“You,” said the bright young subchief, “you see bodies?” He spoke in a painfully clear, almost childish version of the Old Common Tongue.

Rod held up three fingers and then pointed upward.

“You, cat-man, you feel the brainbomb!”

Rod, beginning to enjoy the game, threw his head backward and let out a cattish yowl expressing pain. The subchief could not help clapping his hands over his ears. He started to turn away, “I can see what you think of it, cat-fellow. You’re pretty stupid, aren’t you?”

Still thinking low dull thoughts as evenly as he could, Rod said promptly and modestly, “Me smart cat. Very handsome too.”

“Come along,” said the subchief to his robot, disregarding Rod altogether.

Rod plucked at his sleeve.

The subchief turned back.

Very humbly Rod said, “Sir and Master, which way, Hostel of Singing Birds, Room Nine?”

“Mother of poodles!” cried the subchief. “I’m on a murder case and this dumb cat asks me for directions.” He was a decent young man and he thought for a minute. “This way—” said he, pointing up the Upshaft — “it’s twenty more meters and then the third street over. But that’s ‘people only.’ It’s about a kilometer over to the steps for animals.” He stood, frowning, and then swung on one of his robots: “Wush’, you see this cat!”

“Yes, master, a cat-man, very handsome.”

“So you think he’s handsome, too. He already thinks so, so that makes it unanimous. He may be handsome, but he’s dumb. Wush’, take this cat-man to the address he tells you. Use the upshaft by my authority. Don’t put a belt on him, just hug him.”

Rod was immeasurably grateful that he had slipped his shaftbelt off and left it negligently on the rack just before the robot arrived.

The robot seized him around the waist with what was literally a grip of iron. They did not wait for the slow upward magnetic drive of the shaft to lift them. The robot had some kind of a jet in his bedpack and lifted Rod with sickening speed to the next level. He pushed Rod into the corridor and followed him.

“Where do you go?” said the robot, very plainly.

Rod concentrating on feeling stupid just in case someone might still be trying to hier his mind, said slowly and stumblingly,

“Hostel of the Singing Birds, Room Nine.”

The robot stopped still, as though he were communicating telepathically, but Rod’s mind, though alert, could catch not the faintest whisper of telepathic communication. “Hot buttered sheep!” thought Rod, “he’s using radio to check the address with his headquarters right from here!”

Wush appeared to be doing just that. He came to in a moment. They emerged under the sky, filled with Earth’s own moon, the loveliest thing that Rod had ever seen. He did not dare to stop and enjoy the scenery, but he trotted lithely beside the robot-policeman.

They came down a road with heavy, scented flowers. The wet warm air of Earth spread the sweetness everywhere.

On their right there was a courtyard with copies of ancient fountains, a dining space now completely empty of diners, a robot waiter in the comer, and many individual rooms opening on the plaza. The robot-policeman called to the robot-waiter,

“Where’s number nine?”

The waiter answered him with a lifting of the hand and an odd twist of the wrist, twice repeated, which the robot-policeman seemed to understand perfectly well.

“Come along,” he said to Rod, leading the way to an outside stairway which reached up to an outside balcony serving the second story of rooms. One of the rooms had a plain number nine on it.

Rod was about to tell the robot-policeman that he could see the number nine, when Wush’, with officious kindness, took the doorknob and flung it open with a gesture of welcome to Rod.

There was the great cough of a heavy gun and Wush, his head blown almost completely off, clanked metallically to the iron floor of the balcony. Rod instinctively jumped for cover and flattened himself against the wall of the building.

A handsome man, wearing what seemed to be a black suit, came into the doorway, a heavy-caliber police pistol in his hand.

“Oh, there you are,” said he to Rod, evenly enough. “Come on in.”

Rod felt his legs working, felt himself walking into the room despite the effort of his mind to resist. He stopped pretending to be a dumb cat. He dropped the books on the ground and went back to thinking like his normal Old North Australian self, despite the cat body. It did no good. He kept on walking involuntarily, and entered the room.

As he passed the man himself, he was conscious of a sticky sweet rotten smell, like nothing he had ever smelled before. He also saw that the man, though fully clothed, was sopping wet.

He entered the room.

It was raining inside.

Somebody had jammed the fire-sprinkler system so that a steady rain fell from the ceiling to the floor.

C’mell stood in the middle of the room, her glorious red hair a wet stringy mop hanging down her shoulders. There was a look of concentration and alarm on her face.

“I,” said the man, “am Tostig Amaral. This girl said that her husband would come with a policeman. I did not think she was right. But she was right. With a cat-husband there comes a policeman. I shoot the policeman. He is a robot and I can pay the Earth government for as many robots as I like. You are a cat. I can kill you also, and pay the charges on you. But I am a nice man, and I want to make love with your little red cat over there, so I will be generous and pay you something so that you can tell her she is mine and not yours. Do you understand that, cat-man?”

Rod found himself released from the unexplained muscular bonds which had hampered his freedom.

“My lord, my master from afar,” he said, “C’mell is an underperson. It is the law here that if an underperson and a person become involved in love, the underperson dies and the human people gets brain-scrubbed. I am sure, my master, that you would not want to be brainscrubbed by the Earth authorities. Let the girl go. I agree that you can pay for the robot.”

Amaral glided across the room. His face was pale, petulant, human, but Rod saw that the black clothes were not clothes at all.

The “clothes” were mucous membranes, an extension of Amaral’s living skin.

The pale face turned even more pale with rage.

“You’re a bold cat-man to talk like that. My body is bigger than yours, and it is poisonous as well. We have had to live hard in the rain of Amazonas Triste, and we have mental and physical powers which you had better not disturb. If you will not take payment go away anyhow. The girl is mine. What happens to her is my business. If I violate Earth regulations, I will destroy the c’girl and pay for her. Go away, or you die.”

Rod spoke with deliberate calm and with calculated risk. “Citizen, I play no game. I am not a cat-man but a subject of Her Absent Majesty the Queen, from Old North Australia. I give you warning that it is a man you face, and no mere animal. Let that girl go.”

C’mell struggled as though she were trying to speak, but could not.

Amaral laughed, “That’s a lie, animal, and a bold one! I admire you for trying to save your mate. But she is mine. She is a girlygirl and the Instrumentality gave her to me. She is my pleasure. Go, bold cat! You are a good liar.”

Rod took his last chance, “Scan me if you will.”

He stood his ground.

Amaral’s mind ran over his personality like filthy hands pawing naked flesh. Rod recoiled at the dirtiness and intimacy of being felt by such a person’s thoughts, because he could sense the kinds of pleasure and cruelty which Amaral had experienced. He stood firm, calm, sure, just. He was not going to leave C’mell with this — this monster from the stars, man though he might be, of the old true human stock.