he stretched for the silver globe and felt the ecstasy of its encompassing warmth , heard the idle chatter of gregarious penguins just returned from the north pole , their endless complaints about how the sea-lions thereabouts had taken to disguising themselves as strands and ice floes , thus circumventing their more traditional predatory role , the old inefficiencies reduced through this unfair - as the penguins saw it - application of what was after all an alien technology to increase the penguin feast .