Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 245: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“Consider this. Those Candles are immortal. They’d have to be. There’d be nothing to kill them. They apparently have no bodies—just balls of energy. That’s their answer to their environment. And you ‘have the nerve to think of capturing some of them! You, who know nothing about them, plan to take them back to Earth to me as a circus attraction, a sideshow drawing card—something for fools to gape at!” “People come out here to see them,” Page countered. “Plenty of them. The tourist bureaus use them in their advertising.” “That’s different,” roared Craig. “If the Candles want to put on a show on home territory, there’s nothing we can do about it. But you can’t drag them away from here and show them off. That would spell trouble and plenty of it!” “But if they’re so damned intelligent,” yelped Page, “why do they put on those shows at all? Just think of something and presto!—they’re it. Greatest mimics in the Solar System. And they never get anything right. It’s always cockeyed. That’s the beauty of It.” “It’s cockeyed,” snapped Craig, “because man’s brain never fashions a letter-perfect image. The Candles pattern themselves directly after the thoughts they pick up. When you think of something you don’t give them all the details— your thoughts are sketchy. You can’t blame the Candles for that They pick up what you give them and fill in the rest as best they can. Therefore camels with flowing manes, camels with four and five humps, camels with horns, an endless parade of screwball camels—if camels are what you are thinking of.” He flung the pencil down angrily. “And don’t you kid yourself the Candles are doing it to amuse us. More than likely they believe we are thinking up all those swell ideas just to please them. They're having the CORniclooo SS CO