In Dal this awareness of the oddness and difference of other races was
particularly acute. He knew that to Tiger and Jack he himself seemed
odd, both anatomically and in other ways. His fine gray fur and his
four-fingered hands set him apart from them--he would never be mistaken
for an Earthman, even in the densest fog. But these were comprehensible
differences. His close attachment to Fuzzy was something else, and still
seemed beyond their ability to understand.

He had spent one whole evening patiently trying to make Jack understand
just how his attachment to the little pink creature was more than just
the fondness of a man for his dog.

"Well, what would you call it, then?"

"Symbiosis is probably the best word for it," Dal had replied. "Two
life-forms live together, and each one helps the other--that's all
symbiosis is. Together each one is better off than either one would be
alone. We all of us live in symbiosis with the bacteria in our digestive
tracts, don't we? We provide them with a place to live and grow, and
they help us digest our food. It's a kind of a partnership--and Fuzzy
and I are partners in the same sort of way."

Jack had argued, and then lost his temper, and finally grudgingly agreed
that he supposed he would have to tolerate it even if it didn't make
sense to him.

But the creatures on 31 Brucker VII were "odd" far beyond the reasonable
limits of oddness--so far beyond it that the doctors could not believe
the things that their eyes and their instruments were telling them.