However, the adventurous life seemed to exert an irresistible lure upon them and they all shipped upon the _Herringbone_ again--much to the captain's dismay, for he had hoped for a fresh start with a new crew and there seemed to be no way of getting rid of them short of reaching retirement age. The men weren't quite ready to accept _mpoola_ as a practical religion--Harkaway hadn't finished his book yet--but as something very close to it. The concept of reincarnation had always been very appealing to the human mind, which would rather have envisaged itself perpetuated in the body of a cockroach than vanishing completely into nothingness. "It's all so logical, sir," the first officer told Iversen. "The individuality or the soul or the psyche--however you want to look at it--starts the essentially simple cycle of life as a greech--" "Why as a greech?" Iversen asked, humoring him for the moment. "There are lower life-forms on Flimbot." "I don't know." The first officer sounded almost testy. "That's where Harkaway starts the progression." "Harkaway! Is there no escaping that cretin's name?" "Sir," said the first officer, "may I speak frankly?" "No," Iversen said, "you may not." "Your skepticism arises less from disbelief than from the fact that you are jealous of Harkaway because it was he who made the great discovery, not you." "Which great discovery?" Iversen asked, sneering to conceal his hurt at being so overwhelmingly misunderstood. "Flimbot or _mpoola_?" "Both," the first officer said. "You refuse to accept the fact that this hitherto incompetent youth has at last blossomed forth in the lambent colors of genius, just as the worthy greech becomes a zkoort, and the clean-living zkoort in his turn passes on to the next higher plane of existence, which is, in the Flimbotzik scale--" "Spare me the theology, please," Iversen begged. "Once a greech, always a greech, I say. And I can't help thinking that somehow, somewhere, Harkaway has committed some horrible error." "Humanity is frail, fumbling, futile," Dr. Smullyan declared, coming upon them so suddenly that both officers jumped. "To err is human, to forgive divine, and I am an atheist, thank God!" "That _mk'oog_ is powerful stuff," the first officer said. "Or so they tell me," he added. "This is more than mere _mk'oog_," Iversen said sourly. "Smullyan has been too long in space. It hits everyone in the long run--some sooner than others." "Captain," the doctor said, ignoring these remarks as he ignored everything not on a cosmic level, which included the crew's ailments, "I am in full agreement with you. Young Harkaway has doomed that pretty little planet--" "Moon," the first officer corrected. "It's a satellite, not a--"