nd Terra, furnishing substitutes for the crystals you deal in.
There will be no loss to either faction."

"No loss?" Jennifer repeated indignantly. "But then there won't be any
demand for our crystals! We'll lose everything we've gained."

"Not so," Chafi Three assured her. "Galactic will offer satisfactory
items in exchange, as well as a solution to Terra's problems."

The Scoop, sensing Jennifer's surrender, slid its ponderous bulk nearer
and opened its mouth, leaving half an acre of lower jaw resting flush
with the _Island Queen's_ deck. Without hesitation, Jennifer stepped
over the rail and vanished into the yawning pinkish cavern beyond.

Appalled, Jeff rushed after her. "Jennifer! Have you lost your mind?"

"There is no danger," Chafi Three assured him. "Scoops are benevolent as
well as intelligent, and arrived long ago at a working agreement with
the islanders. This one has produced a crystal and is ready to be
relieved of it, else it would not have attached itself to a convenient
human."

Jeff said dizzily, "The Scoops make the crystals?"

"There is a nidus just back of a fleshy process in its throat,
corresponding to your own tonsils, which produces a crystal much as your
Terran oyster secretes a pearl. The irritation distracts the Scoops from
their meditations--they are a philosophical species, though not
mechanically progressive--and prompts them to barter their strength for
a time to be rid of it."

* * * * *

Jennifer reappeared with a walnut-sized crystal in her hand and vaulted
across the rail.

"There goes another Scoop," she said resignedly. "The _Queen_ will have
to tack with the wind for a while until another one shows up."

"So that's why your sails bellied backward when you came in to harbor,"
said Jeff. "The thing was _towing_ you."

A thin, high streak of vapor-trail needling down toward them from the
sunrise rainbow turned the channel of his thought.

"That will be Satterfield and his task force," Jeff told the Chafis. "I
think you're going to find yourselves in an argument over that matter of
squeezing Terra out of the crystal trade."

They reassured him solemnly.

"Terra has no real need of the crystals. We can offer a tested genetics
program that will eliminate racial anxiety within a few generations, and
supply neural therapy equipment--on a trade basis, of course--that will
serve the crystals' purpose during the interim."

There should be a f