t's where
Harkaway starts the progression."

"Harkaway! Is there no escaping that cretin's name?"

"Sir," said the first officer, "may I speak frankly?"

"No," Iversen said, "you may not."

"Your skepticism arises less from disbelief than from the fact that you
are jealous of Harkaway because it was he who made the great discovery,
not you."

"Which great discovery?" Iversen asked, sneering to conceal his hurt at
being so overwhelmingly misunderstood. "Flimbot or _mpoola_?"

"Both," the first officer said. "You refuse to accept the fact that this
hitherto incompetent youth has at last blossomed forth in the lambent
colors of genius, just as the worthy greech becomes a zkoort, and the
clean-living zkoort in his turn passes on to the next higher plane of
existence, which is, in the Flimbotzik scale--"

"Spare me the theology, please," Iversen begged. "Once a greech, always
a greech, I say. And I can't help thinking that somehow, somewhere,
Harkaway has committed some horrible error."

"Humanity is frail, fumbling, futile," Dr. Smullyan declared, coming
upon them so suddenly that both officers jumped. "To err is human, to
forgive divine, and I am an atheist, thank God!"

"That _mk'oog_ is powerful stuff," the first officer said. "Or so they
tell me," he added.

"This is more than mere _mk'oog_," Iversen said sourly. "Smullyan has
been too long in space. It hits everyone in the long run--some sooner
than others."

"Captain," the doctor said, ignoring these remarks as he ignored
everything not on a cosmic level, which included the crew's ailments,
"I am in full agreement with you. Young Harkaway has doomed that pretty
little planet--"

"Moon," the first officer corrected. "It's a satellite, not a--"

"We ourselves were doomed _ab origine_, but the tragic flaw inherent in
each one of our pitiful species is contagious, dooming all with whom we
come in contact. And Harkaway is the most infectious carrier on the
ship. Woe, I tell you. Woe!" And, with a hollow moan, the doctor left
them to meditate upon the state of their souls, while he went off to his
secret stores of oblivion.

"Wonder where he's hidden that _mk'oog_," Iversen brooded. "I've turned
the ship inside out and I haven't been able to locate it."

The first officer shivered. "Somehow, although I know Smullyan's part
drunk, part mad, he makes me a little nervous. He's been right so often
on all the other voyages."

"Ruchbah!" Iversen said, not par