I do hope you can
cook, Pitt?"

"I will do my best, madame."

* * * * *

Algol daintily picked his way through the mud toward the saurian,
sniffed him with judicial deliberation; then, deciding that anyone who
smelled so much like the better class of fish must be All Right, rubbed
against his legs.

"Well," remarked Miss Anspacher, using the side of the spaceship as a
mirror by which to redden her somewhat prissy lips, "that makes it
practically unanimous, doesn't it?"

"All except Professor Bernardi," said Jrann-Pttt, looking at the
scientist with what might have been a smile. "He doesn't like me."

"I see that your telepathic powers are not quite accurate," the
professor returned. "I do not dislike you; I distrust you."

"The fact that the two terms are not entirely synonymous in your
language would argue a certain degree of incipient civilization," the
lizard-man observed.

"You know, Carl," Mrs. Bernardi whispered, "he has an awfully funny way
of talking, for a native."

"Frankly I don't like this at all, Professor," Captain Greenfield said,
mopping his brow with a limp handkerchief. "If I hadn't been off looking
for a better berth for the ship--all this mud worries me--this'd never
have happened."

"You mean you would have let the lizard get away with Miss Anspacher?"

The big man's face flushed crimson. "I don't think that's funny,
Professor."

Bernardi quickly changed the subject, for he realized that the captain,
being by far the most muscular of the party, was not a man to trifle
with. "Tell me, Greenfield, did you succeed in finding a better spot for
the ship? I must admit I'm worried about that mud myself."

"Only remotely dry spot around is an outcropping 'bout two kilometers
away," Greenfield said grudgingly. He shifted his camp stool in a futile
search for shade. Even though the sun never penetrated the thick layer
of clouds, the yellow light diffused through them was blinding. "Might
be big enough, but it's not level. Could blast it smooth, but that'd
take at least a week--Earth time."

Bernardi pulled his damp shirt away from his body. "Well, I daresay
we'll be all right where we are, if we're not assailed by any violent
forces of nature. On Earth, this might be a monsoon climate."

"If you ask me, that monster is more of a danger than any monsoon."

Bernardi sighed. Although by far the most competent officer available
for the job of spaceship captain,