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possibly by the fungus. It also occurred to me that he erred in imagining
that he had discovered the moon; he had not discovered it, he had only
reached it. I tried to lay my hand on his arm and explain this to him, but
the issue was too subtle for his brain. It was also unexpectedly difficult
to express. After a momentary attempt to understand me--I remember
wondering if the fungus had made my eyes as fishy as his--he set off upon
some observations on his own account.
"We are," he announced with a solemn hiccup, "the creashurs o' what we
eat and drink."
He repeated this, and as I was now in one of my subtle moods, I determined
to dispute it. Possibly I wandered a little from the point. But Cavor
certainly did not attend at all properly. He stood up as well as he could,
putting a hand on my head to steady himself, which was disrespectful,
and stood staring about him, quite devoid now of any fear of the moon
beings.
I tried to point out that this was dangerous for some reason that was not
perfectly clear to me, but the word "dangerous" had somehow got mixed with
"indiscreet," and came out rather more like "injurious" than either; and
after an attempt to disentangle them, I resumed my argument, addressing
myself principally to the unfamiliar but attentive coralline growths on
either side. I felt that it was necessary to clear up this confusion
between the moon and a potato at once--I wandered into a long parenthesis
on the importance of precision of definition in argument. I did my best to
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