t
what he claimed to be, a perfectly normal and thoroughly angry Terran;
but when each of them swore that one of them--the other one, of
course--was an alien, and the natives backed up the accusation, what
else could we believe?

Gaffa, who seemed to be a sort of headman, took over and explained the
situation--which seemed to be an incredibly long-range gag cooked up by
these octopod jokers, without the original Haslop's knowledge, against
the day when another Terran ship might land on Balak. Their real intent,
Gaffa said, was to present us with a problem that could be solved only
by a species with a real understanding of its own kind. If we could
solve it, his people stood ready to assist us in any way possible. If
not....

I didn't like the sound of it, so I reached for my heat-gun again. So
did Captain Corelli and Gibbons, but we were too slow.

A little stinging bug--another link in the cooperative Balakian
ecology--bit each of us on the back of the neck and we passed out cold.
When we woke up again, we were "guests" of Gaffa and his tribe in a sort
of settlement miles from the _S.E.2100_, and there wasn't so much as a
nail file among us in the way of weapons.

The natives hadn't bothered to shackle us or lock us up. We found
ourselves lying instead in the middle of a circular court surrounded by
mossy mounds that looked like flattened beehives, but which were
actually dwellings where the Balakians lived.

We learned later that the buildings were constructed by swarms of tiny
burrowing brutes like termites, who built them up grain by grain
according to specifications. I can't begin to explain the principle
behind the harmony existing between all living things on Balak; it just
was, and seemed to operate like a sort of hyper-sympathy or interlocking
telepathy between species. Every creature on the planet performed some
service for some other creature--even the plants, which grew edibles
without pain-nerves so it wouldn't hurt to be plucked, and which sent up
clouds of dust-dry spores once a week to make it rain.

And the three-legged, eight-armed natives were right at the top of this
screwy utopia, lords of it all.

Not that any of us were interested at first in it as an ecological
marvel, of course. From the moment we woke up we were too busy with
plans for escaping the trap we'd fallen into.

* * * * *

"The Quack is our only hope," Captain Corelli said, and groaned at the