Once a Greech Page 5

regulations. Everyone exceptIversen gave up eating fish and eggs in addition to meat.

  Then, suddenly, one day a roly-poly blue animal appeared at the officersmess, claiming everyone as an old friend with loud squeals of joy. Thistime, Iversen was the only one who was glad to see him--really glad.

  "Aren't you happy to see your little friend again, Harkaway?" he asked,scratching the delighted animal between the ears.

  "Why, sure," Harkaway said, putting his fork down and leaving hisvegetable _macedoine_ virtually untasted. "Sure. I'm very happy--" hisvoice broke--"very happy."

  "Of course, it does kind of knock your theory of the transmigration ofsouls into a cocked hat," the captain grinned. "Because, in order forthe soul to transmigrate, the previous body's got to be dead, and I'mafraid our little pal here was alive all the time."

  "Looks it, doesn't it?" muttered Harkaway.

  "I rather think," Iversen went on, tickling the creature under the chinuntil it squealed happily, "that you didn't _quite_ get the nuances ofthe language, did you, Harkaway? Because I gather now that the wholedifficulty was a semantic one. The Flimbotzik were explaining thezoology of the native life-forms to you and you misunderstood it astheir theology."

  "Looks it, doesn't it?" Harkaway repeated glumly. "It certainly looksit."

  "Cheer up," Iversen said, reaching over to slap the young man on theback--a bit to his own amazement. "No real harm done. What if theFlimbotzik are less primitive than you fancied? It makes our discoverythe more worthwhile, doesn't it?"

  At this point, the radio operator almost sobbingly asked to be excusedfrom the table. Following his departure, there was a long silence. Itwas hard, Iversen realized in a burst of uncharacteristic tolerance, tohave one's belief, even so newly born a credo, annihilated with suchsuddenness.

  "After all, you did run across the Flimbotzik first," he told Harkawayas 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 alife-form that passes through two such striking metamorphoses is notunfraught with interest. You shall receive full credit, my boy, and yourlittle mistake doesn't mean a thing except--"

  "Doom," said Dr. Smullyan, sopping up the last of his gravy with a pieceof bread. "Doom, doom, doom." He stuffed the bread into his mouth.

  "Look, Smullyan," Iversen told him jovially, "you better watch out. Ifyou keep talking that way, next voyage out we'll sign on a parrotinstead 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 atthe doctor, "he's never been wrong. Maybe _he_ has powers beyond ourcomprehension. Perhaps we sought at the end of the Galaxy what was inour own back yard all the time."

  "Who was seeking what?" Iversen asked as all the officers looked atSmullyan 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'llscuttle the ship!"

  Later on, the first officer got the captain alone. "Look here, sir," hebegan tensely, "have you read Harkaway's book about _mpoola_?"

  "I read part of the first chapter," Iversen told him, "and that wasenough. Maybe to Harkaway it's eschatology, but to me it's just plainscatology!"

  "But--"

  "Why in Zubeneschamali," Iversen said patiently, "should I waste my timereading a book devoted to a theory which has already been provederroneous? Answer me that!"

  "I think you should have a look at the whole thing," the first officerpersisted.

  "Baham!" Iversen replied, but amiably enough, for he was in rare goodhumor these days. And he needed good humor to tolerate the way hisofficers and men were behaving. All right, they had made idiots ofthemselves; that was understandable, expected, familiar. But it wasn'tthe 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 aninnocent little animal?

  For, although no one actually mistreated the chu-wugg, the men avoidedhim as much as possible. Often Iversen would come upon the little fellowweeping from loneliness in a corner with no one to play with and, givingin to his own human weakness, the captain would dry the creature'stears and comfort him. In return, the chu-wugg would laugh at all hisjokes, for he seemed to have acquired an elementary knowledge of Terran.

  * * * * *

  "By Vindemiatrix, Lieutenant," the captain roared as Harkaway, foiled inhis attempt to scurry off unobserved, stood quivering before him, "whyhave you been avoiding me like this?"

  "I didn't think I was avoiding you any particular way, sir," Harkawaysaid. "I mean does it appear like that, sir? It's only that I've beenbusy with my duties, sir."

  "I don't know what's the matter with you! I told you I handsomelyforgave you for your mistake."

  "But I can never forgive myself, sir--"

  "Are you trying to go over my head?" Iversen thundered.

  "No, sir. I--"

  "If I am willing to forgive you, you will forgive yourself. That's anorder!"

  "Yes, sir," the young man said feebly.

  Harkaway had changed back to his uniform, Iversen noted, but he lookedunkempt, ill, harrowed. The boy had really been suffering for hisprecipitance. Perhaps the captain himself had been a little hard on him.

  Iversen modulated his tone to active friendliness. "Thought you mightlike to know the chu-wugg turned into a hoop-snake this morning!"

  But Harkaway did not seem cheered by this social note. "So soon!"

  "You knew there would be a fourth metamorphosis!" Iversen wasdisappointed. But he realized that Harkaway was bound to have acquiredsuch fundamental data, no matter how he interpreted them. It waspossible, Iversen thought, that the book could actually have some value,if there were some way of weeding fact from fancy, and surely there mustbe scholars trained in such an art, for Earth had many wholly indigenoustexts of like nature.

  "He's a thor'glitch now," Harkaway told him dully.

  "And what comes next?... No, don't tell me. It's more fun not knowingbeforehand. You know," Iversen went on, almost rubbing his handstogether, "I think this species is going to excite more interest onEarth than the Flimbotzik themselves. After all, people are people, evenif they're green, but an animal that changes shape so many times and soradically is really going to set biologists by the ears. What did yousay the name of the species as a whole was?"

  "I--I couldn't say, sir."

  "Ah," Iversen remarked waggishly, "so there are one or two things youdon't know about Flimbot, eh?"

  Harkaway opened his mouth, but only a faint bleating sound came out.

  * * * * *

  As the days went on, Iversen found himself growing fonder and fonder ofthe thor'glitch. Finally, in spite of the fact that it had now attainedthe dimensions of a well-developed boa constrictor, he took it to livein his quarters.

  Many was the quiet evening they spent together, Iversen entering acidcomments upon the crew in the ship's log, while the thor'glitch lookedover viewtapes from the ship's library.

  The captain was surprised to find how much he--well, enjoyed thisdomestic tranquility. I must be growing old, he thought--old and mellow.And he named the creature Bridey, after a twentieth-century figure whohad, he believed, been connected with another metempsychotic furor.

  When the thor'glitch grew listless and began to swell in the middle,Iversen got alarmed and sent for Dr. Smullyan.

  "Aha!" the medical officer declaimed, with a casual glance at thesuffering snake. "The day of reckoning is at hand! Reap the fruit ofyour transgression, scurvy humans! Calamity approaches with jetsaflame!"

  Iversen clutched the doctor's sleeve. "Is he--is he going to die?"

  "Unhand me, presumptuous navigator!" Dr. Smullyan shook the captain'sfingers off his arm. "I didn't
say he was going to die," he offered inordinary bedside tones. "Not being a specialist in this particularsector, I am not qualified to offer an opinion, but, strictly off therecord, I would hazard the guess that he's about to metamorphose again."

  "He never did it in public before," Iversen said worriedly.

  "The old order changeth," Smullyan told him. "You'd better callHarkaway."

  "What does _he_