"After all, you did run across the Flimbotzik first," he told Harkaway as he spread gooseberry jam on a hard roll for the ravenous ex-zkoort (now a chu-wugg, he had been told). "That's the main thing, and a life-form that passes through two such striking metamorphoses is not unfraught with interest. You shall receive full credit, my boy, and your little mistake doesn't mean a thing except--" "Doom," said Dr. Smullyan, sopping up the last of his gravy with a piece of bread. "Doom, doom, doom." He stuffed the bread into his mouth. "Look, Smullyan," Iversen told him jovially, "you better watch out. If you keep talking that way, next voyage out we'll sign on a parrot instead of a medical officer. Cheaper and just as efficient." Only the chu-wugg joined in his laughter. "Ever since I can remember," the first officer said, looking gloomily at the doctor, "he's never been wrong. Maybe _he_ has powers beyond our comprehension. Perhaps we sought at the end of the Galaxy what was in our own back yard all the time." "Who was seeking what?" Iversen asked as all the officers looked at Smullyan with respectful awe. "I demand an answer!" But the only one who spoke was the doctor. "Only Man is vile," he said, as if to himself, and fell asleep with his head on the table. "Make a cult out of Smullyan," Iversen warned the others, "and I'll scuttle the ship!" Later on, the first officer got the captain alone. "Look here, sir," he began tensely, "have you read Harkaway's book about _mpoola_?" "I read part of the first chapter," Iversen told him, "and that was enough. Maybe to Harkaway it's eschatology, but to me it's just plain scatology!" "But--" "Why in Zubeneschamali," Iversen said patiently, "should I waste my time reading a book devoted to a theory which has already been proved erroneous? Answer me that!" "I think you should have a look at the whole thing," the first officer persisted. "Baham!" Iversen replied, but amiably enough, for he was in rare good humor these days. And he needed good humor to tolerate the way his officers and men were behaving. All right, they had made idiots of themselves; that was understandable, expected, familiar. But it wasn't the chu-wugg's fault. Iversen had never seen such a bunch of soreheads. Why did they have to take their embarrassment and humiliation out on an innocent little animal? For, although no one actually mistreated the chu-wugg, the men avoided him as much as possible. Often Iversen would come upon the little fellow weeping from loneliness in a corner with no one to play with and, giving in to his own human weakness, the captain would dry the creature's tears and comfort him. In return, the chu-wugg would laugh at all his jokes, for he seemed to have acquired an elementary knowledge of Terran. * * * * *