between the two types," the Vegan went on. "Basic differences, one would expect."

"Then your question to me is, what are these differences, if any?"

"Precisely."

How very typical of the superficial Vegan mentality, the Sirian thought to himself. Worrying themselves over some minor biological detail, when the obviously fascinating mystery lay in the creatures' ability to cause nuclear fission and fusion. These thoughts he screened from them, for the Vegans are quick to take offense, a rather childish lot, for all of their advanced culture.

"Very well, I will look into that, too," he agreed and with appropriate, interstellar amenities, took his leave Earthward.

He looked for a concentration of "people," and he found one, scattered along two miles of sandy beach adjacent to a nervously lapping body of liquid which was aqueous, saline and incredibly full of lower life-forms.

He hovered over the heads of the bathers at an altitude of less than fifty feet, his person distributed almost the whole two miles of beach. The sun being at its zenith, no one looked directly up, and if they had they would have seen only a faint, golden glow.

He scanned the general atomic-molecular-cellular-structural patterns of the entities, inventoried his own energy content, decided he could just about make it, and set about carefully condensing his photons. As the swirling energy came to a focus, people still did not stare up, but hundreds sought the shade of their beach umbrellas, donned their sun-glasses or decided they'd had enough for today.

Presently, he had himself organized into a ball of evanescence two-hundred yards in diameter, all ready for the final compression. This was the most tedious metamorphosis he had ever attempted—all those nerve-endings, hair follicles, pores, sweat-glands!

He found a bare patch of sand, some fifteen feet across, just vacated by a family of fourteen. In a rush he sought to complete the transformation before the crowd expanded into it.

But wait! There was one decision more. He had, indeed, discovered that there were two kinds of "humans" on the beach. The physiological differences seemed very minor, and the deciding factor was that one category wore attire only in one place, whereas the other covered its body at two points, thus excluding a bit more of the delicious radiance of the golden sun.

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