se."

"Fromer here. Who is it?"

"Dr. Quemos speaking. How is your passenger?"

"My passenger is fine. But he keeps telling me that he is very anxious to
plant his seed. When can you get us out of here?"

"Plant his seed?" said Quemos.

"There's nothing salacious about this, I've been assured. He simply has a
biological craving at this time in his life to--to plant his seed."

"I got problems like that, too," Bullard said, "but I don't go around
telling everybody."

* * * * *

"Stop clowning," Fromer snapped, "you guys better find a way to fix this
damn door or you'll have a galactic war on your hands. Anybody have any
ideas yet?"

"We're sure that the door mechanism is made of metal," Quemos said, "and
the construction is probably based on the principal of a worm gear."

"A what?"

"A worm gear, Captain," Quemos said patiently. "It's an ancient metal
device that was sometimes used for closing large doors. There is also the
possibility that the door is closed and opened by dogs. These seem to have
been used, at least, to operate doors of undersea crafts. Although we're
not quite certain about the function of dogs."

The captain maintained a stony silence.

"Also," Quemos continued, "we have unearthed, so to speak, a reference to a
metal component called a babbitt--"

"Now see here!" Captain Fromer roared, "who do you think you're kidding
with this talk about worms, dogs and rabbits--"

"Babbitts, Captain, babbitts! Perhaps a type of bearing. Anyway, we're at
work on the problem, I assure you." Quemos motioned to Hansen that he was
through talking.

* * * * *

During the next three days, Hansen twice visited Bullard and Quemos.
On each occasion, he found the two men in trance-like conditions,
ostensibly thinking through the problem that they had been assigned to
solve, but more probably, Hansen guessed, brooding about the reaction
of Sector Headquarters to their daily progress reports which Hansen had
been relaying for them. Hansen had only sympathy for the people back at
Sector Headquarters, for if these two experts were the Galaxy's two top
trouble-shooters, the Federation, was not, as Hansen put it to himself,
in very good shape to fight a war with one hundred billion enraged
citizens who worshiped His Exalted Excellency R'thagna Bar almost as
much as they did his seed.

Hansen went back to his reading, only to be interrupted with inc