"You knew there would be a fourth metamorphosis!" Iversen was
disappointed. But he realized that Harkaway was bound to have acquired
such fundamental data, no matter how he interpreted them. It was
possible, Iversen thought, that the book could actually have some value,
if there were some way of weeding fact from fancy, and surely there must
be scholars trained in such an art, for Earth had many wholly indigenous
texts 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 knowing
beforehand. You know," Iversen went on, almost rubbing his hands
together, "I think this species is going to excite more interest on
Earth than the Flimbotzik themselves. After all, people are people, even
if they're green, but an animal that changes shape so many times and so
radically is really going to set biologists by the ears. What did you
say 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 you
don'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 of
the thor'glitch. Finally, in spite of the fact that it had now attained
the dimensions of a well-developed boa constrictor, he took it to live
in his quarters.
Many was the quiet evening they spent together, Iversen entering acid
comments upon the crew in the ship's log, while the thor'glitch looked
over viewtapes from the ship's library.
The captain was surprised to find how much he--well, enjoyed this
domestic tranquility. I must be growing old, he thought--old and mellow.
And he named the creature Bridey, after a twentieth-century figure who
had, 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 the
suffering snake. "The day of reckoning is at hand! Reap the fruit of
your transgression, scurvy humans! Calamity approaches with jets
aflame!"