The

The To Serve Man by Damon Knight

The Canemate were not very pretty, it's true.

They looked something like pigs and something like people, and that

is not an attractive combination. Seeing them for the first time shocked you. That was their

handicap. When a thing with the countenance of a fiend comes from the stars and offers a gift, you are

disinclined to accept. I don't know what we expected interstellar visitors to look like,

those who thought about it at all that is. Angels, perhaps, or something too alien to be really

awful.

Maybe that's why we were all so horrified and repelled when they landed in their great ships,

and we saw what they really were like.

The cannamate were short and very hairy, thick, bristly brown-grey hair all over their plump bodies.

The noses were snout-like and their eyes small, and they had thick hands of three fingers each.

They wore green leather harness and green shorts, but I think the shorts were a concession to our notions of public decency.

The garments were quite modishly cut, with slash pockets and half-belts in the back.

The canamette had a sense of humour, anyhow.

There were three of them at this session of the UN,

and Lord I can't tell you how queer it looked to see them

there in the middle of a solemn plenary session, three pig-like creatures in green harness

and shorts sitting at the long table below the podium, surrounded by the packed arcs of delegates

from every nation.

They sat correctly upright, politely watching each speaker.

...