't do it if he'd talk the way you do--or could
you teach him to talk the way you write?"

"Ouch! That's a dirty dig. However, Mrs. Seaton, I am able and willing
to defend my customary mode of speech. You realize that the spoken word
is ephemeral, whereas the thought, whose nuances have once been
expressed in imperishable print is not subject to revision--its
crudities can never be remodeled into more subtle, more gracious
shading. It is my contention that, due to these inescapable conditions,
the mental effort necessitated by the employment of nice distinctions in
sense and meaning of words and a slavish adherence to the dictates of
the more precise grammarians should be reserved for the print...."

He broke off as Dorothy, in one lithe motion, rose and hurled her pillow
at his head.

"Choke him, somebody! Perhaps you had better build it, Dick, after all."

"I believe that he would like it, Dick. He is trying hard to learn, and
the continuous use of a dictionary is undoubtedly a nuisance to him."

"I'll ask him. Shiro!"

"You have call, sir?" Shiro entered the room from his galley, with his
unfailing bow.

"Yes. How'd you like to learn to talk English like Crane there
does--without taking lessons?"

Shiro smiled doubtfully, unable to take such a thought seriously.

"Yes, it can be done," Crane assured him. "Doctor Seaton can build a
machine which will teach you all at once, if you like."

"I like, sir, enormously, yes, sir. I years study and pore, but
honorable English extraordinary difference from Nipponese--no can do.
Dictionary useful but ..." he flipped pages dexterously, "extremely
cumbrous. If honorable Seaton can do, shall be extreme ...
gratification."

He bowed again, smiled, and went out.

"I'll do just that little thing. So long, folks, I'm going up to the
shop."

* * * * *

Day after day the _Skylark_ plunged through the vast emptiness of the
interstellar reaches. At the end of each second she was traveling
exactly twenty-six feet per second faster than she had been at its
beginning; and as day after day passed, her velocity mounted into
figures which became meaningless, even when expressed in thousands of
miles per second. Still she seemed stationary to her occupants, and only
different from a vessel motionless upon the surface of the Earth in that
objects within her hull had lost three-sixteenths of their normal
weight. Acceleration, too, had its effect. Onl