remember. We didn't guess that the world was dead, blanketed in radiating dust outside. Politics had killed it.

These beings around me, they had been watching, seeing what was going to happen to our world, listening to our radios from their small settlements on the other planets of the Solar System. They had seen the doom of war coming. They represented stellar civilizations of great power and technology, and with populations that would have made ours seem a small village; they were stronger than we were, and yet they had done nothing.

"Why didn't you stop us? You could have stopped us."

A rabbity one who is closer than the others backs away, gesturing politely that he is giving room for someone else to speak, but he looks guilty and will not look at me with his big round eyes. I still feel weak and dizzy. It is hard to think, but I feel as if they are hiding a secret.

A doelike one hesitates and comes closer to my bed. "We discussed it ... we voted...." It talks through a microphone in its helmet with a soft lisping accent that I think comes from the shape of its mouth. It has a muzzle and very soft, dainty, long nibbling lips like a deer that nibbles on twigs and buds.

"We were afraid," adds one who looks like a bear.

"To us the future was very terrible," says one who looks as if it might have descended from some sort of large bird like a penguin. "So much— Your weapons were very terrible."

Now they all talk at once, crowding about my bed, apologizing. "So much killing. It hurt to know about. But your people didn't seem to mind."

"We were afraid."

"And in your fiction," the doelike one lisped, "I saw plays from your amusement machines which said that the discovery of beings in space would save you from war, not because you would let us bring friendship and teach peace, but because the human race would unite in hatred of the outsiders. They would forget their hatred of each other only in a new and more terrible war with us." Its voice breaks in a squeak and it turns its face away from me.

"You were about to come out into space. We were wondering how to hide!" That is a quick-talking one, as small as a child. He looks as if he might have descended from a bat—gray silken fur on his pointed face, big night-seeing eyes, and big sensitive ears, with a humped shape on the back of his air suit which might be folded wings. "We were trying to conceal where we had built, so that humans would not guess we were near and look for us."

They are ashamed of their fear, for because of it they broke all the kindly laws of their civilizations, restrained all the pity and gentleness I see in them, and let us destroy ourselves.

I am beginning to feel more awake and to see more clearly. And I am beginning to feel sorry for them, for I can see why they are afraid.

They are herbivores. I remember the meaning of shapes. In the paths of evolution there are grass eaters and berry eaters and root diggers. Each has its functional shape of face and neck—and its wide, startled-looking eyes to see and run away from the hunters. In all their racial history they have never killed to eat. They have been killed and eaten, or run away, and they evolved to intelligence by selection. Those lived who succeeded in running away from carnivores like lions, hawks, and men.

I look up, and they turn their eyes and heads in quick embarrassed motion, not meeting my eye. The rabbity one is nearest and I reach out to touch him, pleased because I am growing strong enough now to move my arms. He looks at me and I ask the question: "Are there any carnivores—flesh eaters—among you?"

He hesitates, moving his lips as if searching for tactful words. "We have never found any that were civilized. We have frequently found them in caves and tents fighting each other. Sometimes we find them fighting each other with the ruins of cities around them, but they are always