Alien Zoo Ship III

Nicholas van Rijn's current female companion tells Captain Torrance:

"'I'm coming to Earth with you...Freeman Van Rijn has promised me a very good job.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 567.

Torrance thinks, "He always does..." (ibid.)

Van Rijn would neither give a good job to anyone who was incompetent nor make a promise that he was unable to keep but would also be confident of his ability to resolve any contradiction that he had talked himself into. So how would he resolve this one? I do not know, not being van Rijn.

Some covers of Trader To The Stars incorrectly show an elephant. See recent posts. The organism in question is:

a quadruped;
the size of an elephant;
slenderer, indicating a lower gravity;
green and faintly scaled with hair along its back;
armed with a powerful trunk that ends in a ring of strong pseudodactyls but no horns.

Torrance speculates that a one-armed race could accomplish as much as humanity although not as easily. But the elephantoids are not the zoo keepers either...

And, of course, sf writers need to imagine alien animals that cannot be described as looking like Terrestrial organisms.