Nobody Saw the Ship by Murray Leinster — Read

Behind the hill-crest, the Qul-En moved away. It had not given up its plan of selecting specimens from the flock, of course, nor of anatomizing the man and dog. It was genuinely interested too, in the biped's novel method of defense. It dictated its own version of the problems raised, on a tight beam to the wavering, color-changing flame. Why did not the biped prey on the sheep if it could kill them? What was the symbiotic relationship of the dog to the man and the sheep? The three varieties of animal associated freely. The Qul-En dictated absorbed speculations, then it hunted for other specimens. It found a lobo wolf, and killed it, verified that this creature also could be a source of hormones. It slaughtered a chipmunk and made a cursory examination. Its ray-beam had pretty well destroyed the creature's brain-tissue, but by analogy of structure this should be a source also.

In conclusion, the Qul-En made a note via the wavering pin-point of flame that the existence of a hormone-bearing nervous system, centralized in a single mass of hormone-bearing nerve-tissue inside a bony structure, seemed universal among the animals of this planet. Therefore it would merely examine the four other types of large animal it had discovered, and take off to present its findings to the Center of its race. With a modification of the ray-beam to kill specimens without destroying the desired hormone, the Qul-En could unquestionably secure as much as the race could possibly need. Concentrations of the local civilized race in cities should make large-scale collection of the hormone practical unless that civilized race was an exception to the general nervous structure of all animals so far observed.