will have to waste valuable cargo space
on an _elephant_!" Iversen sputtered. "And you should know, if anyone
does, just how spacesick an elephant can get. By Pherkad, Lieutenant
Harkaway, you had no authority to make any promises to the Flimflim!"

"I discovered the Flimbotzik," Harkaway said sullenly. "_I_ learned the
language. _I_ established rapport. Just because you happen to be the
commander of this expedition doesn't mean you're God, Captain Iversen!"

"Harkaway," the captain barked, "this smacks of downright mutiny! Go to
your cabin forthwith and memorize six verses of the Spaceman's Credo!"

The greech lifted its head and barked back at Iversen, again. "That's my
brave little watch-greech," Harkaway said fondly. "As a matter of fact,
sir," he told the captain, "that was just what I was proposing to do
myself. Go to my cabin, I mean; I have no time to waste on inferior
prose. I plan to spend the rest of the voyage, or such part as I can
spare from my duties--"

"You're relieved of them," Iversen said grimly.

"--working on my book. It's all about the doctrine of
_mpoola_--reincarnation, or, if you prefer, metempsychosis. The
Flimbotzi religion is so similar to many of the earlier terrestrial
theologies--Hindu, Greek, Egyptian, Southern Californian--that sometimes
one is almost tempted to stop and wonder if simplicity is not the
essence of truth."

Iversen knew that, for the sake of discipline, he should not, once he
had ordered Harkaway to his cabin, stop to bandy words, but he was a
chronic word-bandier, having inherited the trait from his stalwart
Viking ancestors. "How can you have learned all about their religion,
their doctrine of reincarnation, in just four ridiculously short weeks?"

"It's a gift," Harkaway said modestly.

"Go to your cabin, sir! No, wait a moment!" For, suddenly overcome by a
strange, warm, utterly repulsive emotion, Iversen pointed a quivering
finger at the caterpillar. "Did you bring along the proper food for
that--that thing? Can't have him starving, you know," he added gruffly.
After all, he was a humane man, he told himself; it wasn't that he found
the creature tugging at his heart-strings, or anything like that.

"Oh, he'll eat anything we eat, sir. As long as it's not meat. All the
species on Flimbot are herbivores. I can't figure out whether the
Flimbotzik themselves are vegetarians because they practice _mpoola_, or
practice _mpoola_ because they're--"

"I don't want