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synthetics, but you know how they are--every morsel filledto the brim with everything a man needs to live on indefinitely,except one thing--taste. It almost broke Joe's spirit, he fixed thestuff for us in every way known to mortal Man. No matter how thin hesliced it, it was still synthetic and still had that flavor of awell-aged glue-pot."

  Lee ran his tongue over his lips, as though the taste were still inhis mouth. "There were countless little incidents such as that," hesaid, "none of them important, but they all added up to a constantirritation and resentment among the men. Maybe it was easygoing PopJensen who spoiled us. I don't know."

  * * * * *

  Lee thought for a moment or two. "Then there was the time a water-pupnuzzled Prunella while she was taking a lone swim in the river thatran near the station. She spent all morning on a sandbar in the middleof the river before the school of pups tired of their play and leftlong enough for her to consider it safe enough to swim back to theriver bank."

  He grinned to himself. "Sam, those pups are as harmless and friendlyand playful as any pups of Earth, but Prunella didn't know that andnone of us could convince her of it. She said that the pups might bedangerous, under some unknown circumstances which she didn't define,then quoted us a passage from the _Handbook_ which prohibitedfraternization with any native life-forms until friendly relationswere established. She evidently didn't consider being nuzzled afriendly act. Ergo, no more swimming and that was an order."

  He made another trip to the brandy bottle, then sank back into thedeep chair again. "But the most exasperating thing Prunella pulled onus was the inspections every morning before we left on our daily fieldtrips. We had all been on Xenon long enough to know what equipment weneeded to carry, right down to the last specimen box, but what wecarried and what the _Survival Handbook_ said to carry were twodifferent things. That is, they were two different things beforePrunella began her inspections. We had found long before that all ofthe gear prescribed by the _Handbook_ was heavy, most of it wasuseless, none of it necessary on Xenon. It might be of some use onsome 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 hermorning spot checks, we left the compound each day looking like apicture of what the well-dressed man on a strange planet will wear. Wecarried everything in the book and a few more that Pruny thought upall by her little self. In addition to all the survival, signaling andfirst-aid equipment that dangled and jangled from various parts of us,we also carried enough offensive and defensive weapons to start andmaintain a war of no small size.

  "Granted, the first-aid and radio paraphernalia might be handy in someway, but blasters, needle-guns, knives, defense shields and all theother apparatus struck as being a little on the ridiculous side,especially since neither we nor the men before us had found a singlelife-form on Xenon that would attack Man. Or rather, with oneexception, none of them would and a blaster or needle-gun was of nouse on _that_ one."

  * * * * *

  I followed my cue. "Really? And what was this mysterious exception?" Ithought I was playing straight man for some elaborate joke, but Leewas serious.

  "Damn it all, don't you people even read your own directives? I'mtalking about the powder puffs. Does _that_ mean anything to you?"

  Seeing my blank look, he explained resignedly, "The powder puffs arethe way the Xenon equivalent of Earthly mushrooms takes to spread itsspores. They have some unpronounceable Latin name, but we called thempowder puffs because, oddly enough, that's what they looked like. Thepuffs are little round balls of a very light fluffy material, with thespores adhering to small fibers on the surface. The things are carriedby the winds over great distances and when they finally come down,they bump along, leaving a dusting of spores on anything they touch."

  "They don't sound very dangerous," I told him.

  "They aren't then. It's the next step in their life cycle that makesthem a nuisance. You see, Sam, if they don't come in contact with somesubstance containing moisture and a high percentage of nitrogen, thespores lie dormant. Can you think of any substance fitting thoserequirements better than a nice warm mess of living protein?"

  He grinned at me ghoulishly. "Don't look so horrified, Sam. I'll betcredits against chalk that you're host to at least one kind of fungusright now. Do you have athlete's foot?"

  He was thirsty again and took steps to remedy such a deplorablesituation. "The puffs are only another type of fungus, even thoughthey do cause more trouble than most. The animals on Xenon are immunefrom them, but when they land on a man, they send out tiny rootletsthat are like minute hairs. These go into the nearest capillary andstart taking the nitrogen they need from the blood. After a week orso, they drop off and continue their cycle. I'm told that a man can bepractically covered with the varmints and his nitrogen balance won'tbe disturbed enough to bother him."

  "Then why worry about them?" I asked as he paused a moment.

  He didn't seem to hear me. "Those puffs would be just anotherannoyance except for the fact that those little rootlets evidentlywork on the nerve endings of the body just enough so they don't hurtbut itch instead and, brother, how they do itch! Makes you wish youhad four more hands and someone else to help scratch."

  He squirmed in remembrance. "I understand some of the earlier men dugout divots of flesh to get rid of the intolerable itch and to keepfrom going crazy. It's that bad. Good thing, though, that the sporescan't live inside the body. Can you imagine having an itch like thatin your lungs?"

  * * * * *

  Another sip and then he continued. "You'll forgive me if I seem towander from La Prunella, but you have to understand the powder puffsto know why she left our bed and board so suddenly.

  "Of course, it's true all of the old-timers on Xenon had been puffedat one time or another, but just to prevent a repeat performance, weall, including Prunella, wore that protective goo you people sent outto us a few years ago. Works pretty well. You build up a considerableimmunity after the first attack of puffs and more after eachsucceeding one, but that's the hard way. The goo is easier." His voicetrailed off as, with a surprised look, he noticed his glass, was againempty. This time he brought the bottle back with him. "But to get backto Pruny. Well, the men were getting pretty fed up with Prunella'sarbitrary ways and her morning inspections, but the last straw waswhen she shot Johnny, the station's pet Me-too bird that we had raisedfrom almost an egg. Same as humans, Johnny had his little faults andfoibles, but we loved him in spite of them.

  "One of those faults was the reason Johnny lived outside the domeinstead of inside with the rest of us, as he would have liked. Wenever let him stay inside for any length of time because he was neverable to understand why floors should be clean and kept that way. SoJohnny's nest was on top of the ultra-wave tower and that's where hespent most of his time when he wasn't lazily riding around on theshoulders of one of us or pan-handling Joe, the cook, for somethingextra to eat.

  "He was in his nest when Prunella got him with that delicate-looking,deadly little needle-gun of hers. I'll bet he had a hundred of thosetiny slivers of steel in him. One would have been enough, but she musthave set the gun on full automatic and then let it spew itself empty."

  I made sympathetic noises.

  "She said afterward that Johnny had been a possible disease carrierand, besides, he was dirty. There was absolutely no doubt aboutit--Johnny _was_ dirty and in more ways than one, but as for diseases,Xenon seemed to have none that the human race hadn't already overcomeon some other planet far more dangerous than this one."

  * * * * *

  I laid more wood on the fire as Lee paused to sip and roll the brandy.

  He said, "I've always suspected, however, that the real reason forJohnny's assassination struck Prunella, so to speak, like a bolt fromthe blue when she walked und
er his nest in the tower. At any rate, Isaw her shoving her shirt into the disposer chute. Johnny had one badhabit and all of us knew better than to get within his range, butPrunella, being new with us, just didn't understand that bird."

  He stopped, twirling his empty glass suggestively, with painfulmemories obviously clouding his eyes while he stared into thehypnotically flickering fire.

  "Empty," he said mournfully, "just as my heart was." He bowed his headto Johnny's memory as I hastily left him alone with his grief. Iquickly returned from the kitchen, bringing a fresh supply of themedicinal spirits that Grandfather had advised for moments of stressand, over Lee's feeble protests, forced