ver," Gaffa
said, "the test must be limited to a few hours. You have until sunrise
tomorrow morning, gentlemen."

And with that he crutched away at his skip-a-step walk, taking his
grinning cohorts with him. The two Haslops remained behind, glowering
and grumbling at each other.

* * * * *

The situation didn't look too bad at first.

"There are no two things," Captain Corelli declared, "that are exactly
and absolutely identical. And that applies, I should say, especially to
identities."

It had a heartening sound. I've never been long on logic, being a very
ordinary S.E. navigator whose automatic equipment is designed to do
practically everything for him, and Corelli seemed to know what he was
talking about.

Gibbons, being a scientist, saw it differently.

"That's not even good sophistry," he said. "The concept of identity
between two objects has no meaning whatever, Captain, unless we have a
prior identification of one or the other. Aristotle himself couldn't
have told an apple from a coconut if he'd never seen or heard of
either."

"Any fool would know that," one of the Haslops grunted. And the other
added in the same tone: "Hey, if you guys are going at it like that,
we'll be here forever!"

"All right," Corelli said, deflated. "We'll try another tack."

He thought for a minute or two. "How about screening them for background
detail? The real Haslop was a bounty-claimer, which means that he must
have made thousands of planetfalls before crashing here. The bogus one
couldn't remember the details of all those worlds as well as the
original, no matter how many times he'd been told, could he?"

"Won't work," one of the Haslops said disgustedly. "Hell, after
twenty-two years I can't remember those places myself, and I was
_there_."

The other Haslop gave him a dirty look. "You were _here_, fellow--_I_
was _there_."

And to the captain he said, "We're getting nowhere, friend. You're
underestimating these Balakians--they look and act like screwballs, but
they're sharp. In the twenty-two years I've lived with that carbon copy
of myself, he's learned everything I know."

"He's right," Gibbons put in. He blinked a couple of times and turned
pink. "Unless the real Haslop happened to be married, that is. I'm a
bachelor myself, but I'd say there are some memories that a married man
wouldn't discuss, even when marooned."

Captain Corelli stared at him admiringly. "I never gave