"You're probably wondering about a lot of things," Bullard began sadly. "Frankly, we don't have any ideas about how we can fix Captain Fromer's door." He waited to let that sink in. Then he continued: "It took us three days back at the base to find out that when these ships were built, almost five hundred years ago, nobody bothered to include detail drawings of the door mechanism." "But why? You certainly know how to build--" "We know how to build Star Class ships, sure. We've built a few in the past century or two. There's never been need for replacement, really. These ships are designed to last forever. The original fleet was conceived to fill the System's needs for a full thousand years." "But the doors on the few ships that have been built. How--" "The ship's we've built were exact duplicates of Captain Fromer's ship--except for the door." Bullard's long face radiated despair. "No one ever questioned why the door mechanism wasn't included in the original plans. We simply designed another type--a different type--of door." "Well, you certainly can find out how this particular door works, can't you?" "I hope so," Bullard said, wringing his hands. "But we have a couple of other problems. Number one, Captain Fromer has an extremely important passenger aboard. None other than His Exalted Excellency, R'thagna Bar. He is--or was--on his way home after concluding a treaty of friendship with the President of the Federation." Hansen managed a whistle. "Furthermore," Bullard continued, "His Excellency _has to be home soon_ to get there in time for the mating season. This occurs once in a lifetime, I'm told, and this is his only chance to continue the ancestral rule--" "Wait a minute," Hansen said. "Are you trying to say that you can't solve a simple problem like getting him home and getting him out of the ship? You can always cut it in two, can't you?" "These ships were made to last forever," Bullard explained. "The hull is, of course, pseudo-met, but, not the kind of pseudo-met used for other applications. In short, about the only way you'll get in that ship is to vaporize it." "But can't you simply disassemble the door mechanism? My God, how complicated can it be?" "We're going to try to do just that," Bullard said without a trace of confidence. "As far as the complication goes, let me say just this: it's full of moving parts." "What are you getting at?" Hansen asked. "Just this. These ships are perfect mechanisms. There is hardly anything in them that could be called a moving part. Now a door has to open and close. Sure, we devised a simple, safe way to do it a few hundred years after the original fleet was built. The men who designed the original door mechanism felt, perhaps, that it was incongruous to include it in the first place. Maybe that is why they threw away the plans. God knows, it is incongruous. Look! Here's a photo we took of one in a ship back at base."