"What… are you wearing?" "These are the grasping pincers of Titan's apex predator! Replicated in miniature, of course. I'm sure the real thing would tower over us." "I've read Pahanin's treatise on cephalopods—" "No, not squids. Crabs, obviously! The perfect organism! The form toward which all life inevitably converges! Even on Nessus—" "Those are not crabs. Where are you getting all this?" "The VanNet. Look, the farther out from Earth we get, the more we'll see that crabs are everywhere. Look at the Eliksni!" "The Eliksni don't have a common ancestor with anything on Earth, so I don't think our taxonomy really applies to the—" "How big do you think an Eliksni can get? Do you think there's a giant one out there somewhere? …I'm asking Variks." "Do NOT ask—hey, come back!"