THRELKELD'S DAUGHTER BY JAMES BELL She was only a space captain's daughter--and all she wanted was a human to call her own! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Night was a diamond studded dream from where they sat. The moon was a maiden on wing suggesting amorous flight. Inside the stuffiness of the celluloid-like vehicle there was absolutely no hint of discomfort or absurd misfittings--despite the fact that Threlkeld and his daughter were now shaped out of all proportions to the conveyor itself. "You seem unusually drawn," Threlkeld suggested from his prone position on the floor of the craft. Gelerie took a deep, sensual sigh. "It is the pill, I am sure." "Look at you," Threlkeld muttered, "and look at me--we're perhaps the most unique imitation of humans the galaxy has ever produced." Again there was a maddening silence ... maddening to Threlkeld. "My daughter," he said at length, disturbed, "I must remind you of the importance of this little mission. My entire career with the inter-star patrol depends on how well we function." Gelerie was bent in a heap near the tapering nose of the pod-shaped vehicle as it hurtled past the lovely moon, headlong toward a giant green and purple planet below them. Hurtled in a vessel with no manual controls, a vessel grown in a government garden on another world ... catapulted on a very special assignment to a planet that neither grew missiles nor thought of launching them without myriads of mechanical wires, dials and blinker lights. Now Threlkeld was filled with indignation. "Gelerie, I command you--" "Yes, Father. You command me," she drawled. "Unless you remain attentive, my daughter, we may fail. Failing, I must concede that I have finally grown too old for spatial duty, and be sent to the Home. Do you want that?" Gelerie had acquired all the attributes of a beautiful, buxom Earth girl. She looked up in the soft light that glowed its phosphorous loveliness from the very walls of the seed pod they occupied. Threlkeld muttered, "Such beauty--it is beyond all that the textbooks described." Now Gelerie butted in, "The trouble, my father, is simple. The transition pills--" "What about them?" "They do more than convert us from a six-footed tree-hanging creature of the Alpha Centauri group. They impose upon us the same emotional stress of the human. You know, father, I have been changed into leopards, rhinos and snoquallimie eels before; but always I retained my own natural traits--the love of trees, the desire to return to my native form and habitat as quickly as possible. But this time, I feel demure and attractive and extremely vain and--"