ontrast to the drabness of the ordinary tribal dress. He must be, very
apparently, a man above the common tribesmen to hold their respect.

"And that," Bruckner added, "was the reason for our little act this
morning. The best way to impress them with our power is to display the
magnificence of our leader. The better we can keep them convinced of my
greatness, the less risk there will be of trouble."

* * * * *

Big Stupe--someone gave their pet the name the first five minutes and it
stuck--had the run of the ship. Individually and in groups, the crew
took turns amusing themselves with him. And Big Stupe accepted
everything they did very seriously and loved the attention. He was
definitely a gregarious animal.

And his name fitted perfectly. His gullibility and invariable stupidity
seemed to have no limits. He fell for the same practical jokes over and
over again. He was clumsy and stumbled over furniture, loose objects and
even his own feet.

[Illustration]

He would eat anything. If what he swallowed proved indigestible, he
would stand for a minute with an astounded expression on his hairy face
and then whatever he had eaten would come rolling up. He eagerly gulped
down the same rubber ball a dozen times in the space of ten minutes.
Whenever spoken to, he replied promptly, in his incredible squawking
bray. A "hello," by one of the crew, with an answering bray from Big
Stupe, was always good for a laugh.

Big Stupe had a fear of loud noises and pulled a variation of the
ostrich-head-in-hole routine, at every unexpected loud sound, of turning
his back to whatever had frightened him and peering cautiously back
under a flipper. If a tail feather was pulled, he'd make a determined
and prolonged effort to run straight through the ship's wall, flapping
and treadmilling and skidding and pushing his beak against it.

Another of his tricks was the dispensing of pebbles--which he seemed to
consider very valuable gifts--from his marsupial pouch to the crew
members who took his fancy.

Sweets often wondered how an animal with so little common intelligence
had survived the evolutionary process. He could spot no counterbalancing
ability or survival characteristic. But somehow the species had escaped
extinction.

* * * * *

On the second day, Bruckner sent Sweets and Teller, the head engineer,
to the chief with a present and samples of rare ores. Sweets' duties