 What did the Kallerian and the Stortulian have in common?
My three staff men, Auchinleck, Stebbins and Ludlow, walked shieldwise in front of me. The aliens came in every shape and form, in all colors and textures—and all of them eager for a Corrigan contract. The name of the planet was MacTavish IV (if you went by the official Terran listing) or Ghryne (if you called it by what its people were accustomed to calling it). I thought of it privately as MacTavish IV and referred to it publicly as Ghryne. It's the best of its kind, the only really decent place where Earthmen can get a gander at the other species of the universe. "Before we begin, I'll need certain information about—" "I am a being of Regulus II," came the grave, booming reply, even before I had picked up the blank. We needed a green Regulan in our show; the last one had quit four years ago. A Terraphile alien who goes to the extent of rechristening himself with a Terran monicker would work for nothing, or even pay us, just so long as we let him get to Earth. He was followed by a roly-poly blue-skinned humanoid from Donovan's Planet, four feet high and five hundred pounds heavy. Ghryne is in the heart of the Caledonia Cluster, where the interstellar crossroads meet. It was the isolationism of the late 29th century that turned me into the successful proprietor of Corrigan's Institute, after some years as an impoverished carnival man in the Betelgeuse system. Back in 2903, the World Congress declared Terra off-bounds for non-terrestrial beings, as an offshoot of the Terra for Terrans movement. Before then, anyone could visit Earth. After the gate clanged down, a non-terrestrial could only get onto Sol III as a specimen in a scientific collection—in short, as an exhibit in a zoo. At the same time, we had turned away a dozen ursinoids, fifty of the reptilian natives of Ghryne, seven Sirian spiders, and no less than nineteen chlorine-breathing Procyonites wearing gas masks. It was also my sad duty to nix a Vegan who was negotiating through a Ghrynian agent. They're gentle and likable beings, but their upkeep runs into literally tons of fresh meat a day, and not just any old kind of meat either. "I happen to be a representative of the only Earthlike race that exists anywhere in the Galaxy but on Earth itself. The demand for beings from Wazzenazz XIII is pretty low these days.
 they did not like being turned down
 they did not like being turned down  they both desired a place in the zoo  they were unique creatures  they planned to kill the narrator if he refused them