itself for a moment,
then raised its head and flooded the silence with melody. Faintly from a
grove of trees came an answering treble. The songbird cocked its head to
the side, listening, then swooped upward on wings of flashing color. A
small squirrellike creature bounded nervously up to the transparent wall
and sat on its haunches, surveying the room with bright beady eyes. As
Tee's ears attuned themselves he was suddenly aware of chirpings,
trebles, clearpitched whistles, and from somewhere in the depths of the
grove, a deep-pitched ga-rooph, ga-roomph.

* * * * *

A chubby little man with a round face and alert twinkling eyes entered
the room. He seemed to radiate happiness and contentment. "Well, I see
the patient's finally come around," he said, cheerfully.

"What happened?" asked Tee.

"Your ship crashed just beyond that grove."

Tee clutched at him. "The ship! How bad is it?"

"I think you were in worse shape than your ship. You must have had it
under control almost to the end, though how you stayed conscious with
space fever is beyond me."

"Space fever? So that's it. I remember getting sick and light-headed and
just before I passed out I flipped out of subspace and the automatic
finder, of course, took the ship to the nearest planet. I must have
landed by reflex action. I sure don't remember anything about it."

"Well," the man laughed, "I _have_ seen better landings, but not when
the pilot had a temperature of one-o-five. Anyway, you're safe now.
Welcome to Elysia."

There it was again. Safe! Safe! Tee raised up, then fell back weakly.

"Is anything wrong?" asked the little man, alarmed.

"N ... nothing, I just ... nothing!"

The man was looking at him questioningly.

"Elysia," mused Tee. "I seem to remember an old old myth brought from
the original Earth." He waved toward the sylvan setting, outside.

The little man smiled. "Yes, the old settlers named our planet well." He
caught himself. "Oh, I'm sorry; I'm Dr. Chensi. This is my home."

Tee smiled. "Well at least you'll have to admit I showed good judgment
crashing next to a doctor's house." Then more seriously, "Thanks, doc,
thanks for everything."

"My degrees aren't in medicine," replied Dr. Chensi. "I'm afraid I had
little to do with your recovery. My daughter's the one who nursed you.
Oh, here she is now." He raised his voice. "Come in, Lara."

Since Dr. Chensi was using the only chair she sat down o