Selenites, or whatever we choose to call them--have got us tied

hand and foot. Whatever temper you choose to go through with it in, you

will have to go through with it.... We have experiences before us that

will need all our coolness."

He paused as if he required my assent. But I sat sulking. "Confound your

science!" I said.

"The problem is communication. Gestures, I fear, will be different.

Pointing, for example. No creatures but men and monkeys point."

That was too obviously wrong for me. "Pretty nearly every animal," I

cried, "points with its eyes or nose."

Cavor meditated over that. "Yes," he said at last, "and we don't. There's

such differences--such differences!"

"One might.... But how can I tell? There is speech. The sounds they make,

a sort of fluting and piping. I don't see how we are to imitate that. Is

it their speech, that sort of thing? They may have different senses,

different means of communication. Of course they are minds and we are

minds; there must be something in common. Who knows how far we may not get

to an understanding?"

The things are outside us," I said. "They're more different from us than

the strangest animals on earth. They are a different clay. What is the

The First Men In The Moon