hought to himself, but aside from that a
good wife and mother in addition to being a reigning beauty. Lingua Four
was tall even for a Mercurian. Already she scaled seven dergs, or in
Earth terms, fourteen feet and was beginning to show evidences of a
fifth head. Five heads were rarely found on females and Probos Five was
justly proud of his good fortune. In all Mercury at the present time, he
knew of but two females possessing five heads and soon Lingua Four would
be the third of her sex to be thus endowed.

Yes, thought Probos Five, a woman to be proud of; for today after three
vargs of marriage the memory of her trim trunk with four pairs of eyes
laughing mischievously, filled his five brains with flame. Slim as a
birch she stood in his memory, and eight eyes whispered lovers' thoughts
across space and time.

Probos Five recalled his five minds from their nostalgic reverie and
gazed at the contour of the Earth that was rushing up to meet him.
White, blazing white reflecting the rays of the midnight sun covered the
region as far as the eye could reach.

"Good," thought Probos Five, "the Polar regions. That means the end will
come quickly. One or two seconds at the most of that bitter cold would
be enough."

* * * * *

Turning away from the windows Probos Five let his thoughts return to
Lingua Four, to Probos Two, his son, and his home on the first planet
from the sun. Ah, that is the place to live, thought Probos, the
temperature an unchanging 327 deg.; just comfortably warm, where one could
enjoy a life of warmth and ease. Too bad that he would not live to see
it again. Thirty vargs, he reflected, is such a short time. With luck,
perhaps he may have lived to see a hundred vargs slip by. And perhaps in
time he may have added three more heads and five dergs in length to his
towering trunk.

He thought of Probos Two and wondered idly if his son would also visit
the barbarian worlds to collect data for Lingua Four.

He wished that he could have seen more of Probos Two. There's an
up-and-coming lad, he thought, not quite two vargs old and two heads
already. Yes, indeed, he's quite a boy, Probos Five remembered proudly;
maybe his mother will keep him at home instead of running him all over
the universe to get material for her committees.

He wished that Lingua Four would settle down and be content as a
housewife, but he doubted that she would. Social ambition was boring
like a termit