"So we ate synthetics, but you know how they are--every morsel filled to the brim with everything a man needs to live on indefinitely, except one thing--taste. It almost broke Joe's spirit, he fixed the stuff for us in every way known to mortal Man. No matter how thin he sliced it, it was still synthetic and still had that flavor of a well-aged glue-pot." Lee ran his tongue over his lips, as though the taste were still in his mouth. "There were countless little incidents such as that," he said, "none of them important, but they all added up to a constant irritation and resentment among the men. Maybe it was easygoing Pop Jensen who spoiled us. I don't know." * * * * * Lee thought for a moment or two. "Then there was the time a water-pup nuzzled Prunella while she was taking a lone swim in the river that ran near the station. She spent all morning on a sandbar in the middle of the river before the school of pups tired of their play and left long enough for her to consider it safe enough to swim back to the river bank." He grinned to himself. "Sam, those pups are as harmless and friendly and playful as any pups of Earth, but Prunella didn't know that and none of us could convince her of it. She said that the pups might be dangerous, under some unknown circumstances which she didn't define, then quoted us a passage from the _Handbook_ which prohibited fraternization with any native life-forms until friendly relations were established. She evidently didn't consider being nuzzled a friendly act. Ergo, no more swimming and that was an order." He made another trip to the brandy bottle, then sank back into the deep chair again. "But the most exasperating thing Prunella pulled on us was the inspections every morning before we left on our daily field trips. We had all been on Xenon long enough to know what equipment we needed to carry, right down to the last specimen box, but what we carried and what the _Survival Handbook_ said to carry were two different things. That is, they were two different things before Prunella began her inspections. We had found long before that all of the gear prescribed by the _Handbook_ was heavy, most of it was useless, none of it necessary on Xenon. It might be of some use on some other planet, but we didn't need it there. So, as a consequence, we didn't lug much of that junk around over the landscape with us." "None of it?" I said. "Well, almost none. But after Little Miss Efficiency began making her morning spot checks, we left the compound each day looking like a picture of what the well-dressed man on a strange planet will wear. We carried everything in the book and a few more that Pruny thought up all by her little self. In addition to all the survival, signaling and first-aid equipment that dangled and jangled from various parts of us, we also carried enough offensive and defensive weapons to start and maintain a war of no small size.