you enough
credit, Gibbons," he said. "You're right! How about--"

"Don't help any," one of the Haslops said morosely. "I never was
married. And now I never will be if I've got to depend on you jerks to
get me out of this mess."

The sun went down just then and a soft, drowsy darkness fell. I thought
at first that we'd have to finish our investigation in the dark, but the
natives had made provisions for that. A swarm of fireflies as big as
robins sailed in from somewhere and circled around over the court,
lighting it as bright as day. The Balakian houses made a dim row of
flattened shadow-mounds at the outskirts of the circle. A ring of
natives sat tailor-fashion on the ground in front of them--a neat trick
considering that they had three legs each to fold up--and grinned at us.

They had waited twenty-two years for this show, and now that it had
come they were enjoying every minute of it.

* * * * *

Our investigation was pretty rough going. The fireflies overhead all
circled in one direction, which made you dizzy every time you looked up,
and besides that the Quack had remembered that he was a prisoner in an
alien environment and was at the mercy of any outlandish disease that
might creep past his permanent immunization. He muttered and grumbled to
himself about the risk, and his grousing got on our nerves even worse
than usual.

I moved over to shut him up, and blinked when I saw him pop something
into his mouth. My first guess was that he had managed to sneak some
food concentrate out of the ship somehow, and the thought made me
realize how hungry I was.

"What've you got there, Quack?" I demanded. "Come on, give--what are you
hiding out?"

"Antibiotics and stuff," he answered, and pulled a little flat plastic
case out of a pocket.

It was his portable medicine chest, which he carried the way
superstitious people used to carry rabbits' feet, and it was largely
responsible for our calling him the Quack. It was full of patent capsule
remedies that he had gleaned out of his home medical book--a cut thumb,
a surprise headache, or a siege of gas on the stomach would never catch
the Quack unprepared!

"Jerk," I said, and went back to Gibbons and Corelli, who were arguing a
new approach to our problem.

"It's worth a try," Gibbons said. He turned on the two Haslops, who were
bristling like a pair of strange dogs. "This question is for the real
Haslop: Have you ever been put thr