. Even in such a conglomeration of
fools under Captain Iverson, his idiocy was of outstanding quality.

The captain, however, had not been wholly beyond reproach in this
instance, as he himself knew. Pity he had made such an error about the
eleventh planet's moons. It was really such a small mistake. Moons one
to eighteen and twenty to forty-six still appeared to be cinders. It was
all too easy for the spectroscope to overlook Flimbot, the nineteenth.

But it would be Flimbot which had turned out to be a green and pleasant
planet, very similar to Earth. Or so Harkaway reported on the intercom.

"And the other forty-five aren't really moons at all," he began.
"They're--"

"You can tell me all that when we reach Flimbot," Iversen interrupted,
"which should be in about six hours. Remember, that intercom uses a lot
of power and we're tight on fuel."

But it proved to be more than six _days_ later before the ship reached
Flimbot. This was owing to certain mechanical difficulties that arose
when the crew tried to lift the mother ship from the third planet, on
which it was based. For sentimental reasons, the IEE(E) always tried to
establish its prime base on the third planet of a system. Anyhow, when
the _Herringbone_ was on the point of takeoff, it was discovered that
the rock-eating species which was the only life on the third planet had
eaten all the projecting metal parts on the ship, including the
rocket-exhaust tubes, the airlock handles and the chromium trim.

"I had been wondering what made the little fellows so sick," Smullyan,
the ship's doctor, said. "They went wump, wump, wump all night long,
until my heart bled for them. Ah, everywhere it goes, humanity spreads
the fell seeds of death and destruction--"

"Are you a doctor or a veterinarian?" Iversen demanded furiously. "By
Betelgeuse, you act as if I'd crammed those blasted tubes down their
stinking little throats!"

"It was you who invaded their paradise with your ship. It was you--"

"Shut up!" Iversen yelled. "Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!"

So Dr. Smullyan went off, like many a ship's physician before him, and
got good and drunk on the medical stores.

* * * * *

By the time they finally arrived on Flimbot, Harkaway had already gone
native. He appeared at the airlock wearing nothing but a brief, colorful
loincloth of alien fabric and a wreath of flowers in his hair. He was
fondling a large, woolly pink caterpil