" ... really?" Lyall resists the urge to look him over again, but it's hard. Instead he comments, looking very surprised, "But you look exactly like a human would. This can't be the only viable form for intelligent life out there. I had-- I had been certain that another species on another planet entirely would have developed different in some fashion, and this way you look now was altered, to interact with us." After all, the other alien was doing plenty of altering, and with portable equipment to boot, so he knows it's doable.

"I-- am sorry for the assumption, if it was wrong," he finishes. But it sure does seem like a reasonable one to make. What would the odds be like for an alien species developing so exactly like Earth's, right down to the scent? And then the odds of that one species going to Earth? Infinitesimal, he's sure.