it. It’s priceless, I assure you.” The ancient wrist watch with its transparent back was passed from hand to hand.

“Frightening little monster, isn’t it,” Bullard said.

“Those small round wheels are called gears,” elucidated Quemos, “one gear turns another, which turns another, and so on. I rather imagine that your door is operated on some similar principle.”

“I seem to be the one who asks all the schoolboy questions,” Hansen began, “would somebody tell me why Captain Fromer doesn’t take His Excellency to his home planet, land the ship, and then let his technical staff tear off the door mechanism?”

“We’ve gone through that,” Bullard said wearily. “Unfortunately we need special tools. And there’s no way to get them into the ship.”

“Can I speak to Captain Fromer?” Quemos asked.

“Right away,” Hansen said. He pressed his hand in various patterns on his belt. “This is Hansen. Let us talk to Captain Fromer, please.”

“Fromer here. Who is it?”

“Dr. Quemos speaking. How is your passenger?”

“My passenger is fine. But he keeps telling me that he is very anxious to plant his seed. When can you get us out of here?”

“Plant his seed?” said Quemos.

“There’s nothing salacious about this, I’ve been assured. He simply has a biological craving at this time in his life to—to plant his seed.”

“I got problems like that, too,” Bullard said, “but I don’t go around telling everybody.”

“Stop clowning,” Fromer snapped, “you guys better find a way to fix this damn door or you’ll have a galactic war on your hands. Anybody have any ideas yet?”

“We’re sure that the door mechanism is made of metal,” Quemos said, “and the construction is probably based on the principal of a worm gear.”

“A what?”

“A worm gear, Captain,” Quemos said patiently. “It’s an ancient metal device that was sometimes used for closing large doors. There is also the possibility that the door is closed and opened by dogs. These seem to have been used, at least, to operate doors of undersea crafts. Although we’re not quite certain about the function of dogs.”

The captain maintained a stony silence.

“Also,” Quemos continued, “we have unearthed, so to speak, a reference to a metal component called a babbitt—”

“Now see here!” Captain Fromer roared, “who do you think you’re kidding with this talk about worms, dogs and rabbits—”

“Babbitts, Captain, babbitts! Perhaps a type of bearing. Anyway, we’re at work on the problem, I assure you.” Quemos motioned to Hansen that he was through talking.

During the next three days, Hansen twice visited Bullard and Quemos. On each occasion, he found the two men in trance-like conditions, ostensibly thinking through the problem that they had been assigned to solve, but more probably, Hansen guessed, brooding about the reaction of Sector Headquarters to their daily progress reports which Hansen had been relaying for them. Hansen had only sympathy for the people back at Sector Headquarters, for if these two experts were the Galaxy’s two top trouble-shooters, the Federation, was not, as Hansen put it to himself, in very good shape to fight a war with one hundred billion enraged citizens who worshiped His Exalted Excellency R’thagna Bar almost as much as they did his seed.

Hansen went back to his reading, only to be interrupted with increasing frequency by message transmissions from an increasingly alarmed Sector Headquarters. Most messages were addressed to Bullard, and were bravely designed to disguise the senders’ hysteria, while at the same time urging Bullard on to more magnificent efforts. A few messages, fairly representative of the state of affairs as time wore on reflected an increasing suspicion on the part of Sector Headquarters that Quemos