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explained patiently. “You know that.”
    “But they’ve had over 4,000 solar revolutions in which to change it! What in the Void are they waiting for? The Prime Builder to name it for them?”
    “Terra,” a dry voice interrupted. “They call their planet Terra.”
    Vastly annoyed, the mushroom closed his lipless mouth.
    Squee, the ship's Communicator, waddled forward, his enormous atrophied tail dragging behind him along the floor. Squee was the last known surviving member of his lizardoid race. The rest of his home world population having gone on to evolve into a higher species while he was touring the galaxy with Leader Idow.
    Nowadays, in a valiant attempt to resurrect his old species, Squee seduced and mated with every egg-laying, cold-blooded female he could find. Current medical theories claimed that such interspecies breeding was impossible. Yet Squee succeeded again and again in impregnating his alien lovers, and they subsequently gave birth to tiny duplicates of Squee—who promptly evolved into a higher species. This bothered the poor lizard to no end.
    Suspicious as always, Boztwank squinted at the Communicator. “Everybody uses that name?” he demanded rudely.
    With a start, Squee stopped the perpetual scratching at the scales on his tail. The limb didn't itch, the act was just something he did while thinking. The way humanoids rubbed their chins, or bloopoids hit themselves with a fish.
    “Well, no,” Squee admitted honestly. “Not everybody.”
    “And what is the root word for this name, Terra?”
    “Earth,” he answered proudly.
    The mushroom scowled, a hard thing for him to do.
    Leader Idow was unmistakably pleased by this exchange. Plainly, Squee had done an excellent job of analyzing Dirt's primary tongue.
    Furious at being thwarted in anything, Boztwank rallied to the attack once more. “And in their major language, Earth translates into what?”
    Squee bit his forked tongue. Oh Void, he had hoped they wouldn't ask that.
    “Well?” Boztwank demanded.
    “Dirt,” Squee sighed sadly. “It means dirt.”
    “Ah HA!” the mushroom cried in righteous victory. “I told you so! I told you so! I told you so!”
    With true lizard dignity, Squee turned tail on the Engineer and waddled back to his station, where his instruments lit up, overjoyed to see their scaly master again. A vegetarian, from a race of vegetarians, Squee wondered what Boztwank would taste like. Probably bitter as stinkweed, the nasty old 'shroom.
    Privately, Idow also viewed the jubilant fungi with disflavor. Boztwank had many bad habits, being a poor winner among them. And didn't the name of his home planet translate into something like, “The Place That Holds Our Roots in Safety” ? Hmm . . . hmm. . . .
    “Is it true, Idow?” Gasterphaz asked, resuming the original line of conversation. “Might they be too primitive a race for us to use?”
    “No, my friend,” Idow stated firmly, crossing his legs and meticulously straightening the cuff on his dusky uniform. “They are not. Dirt has a planetary government, crude space flight and a world communications system. These alone prove that they are sufficiently advanced for our needs.”
    The rock shrugged. “Acceptable then. We have dealt with worse.”
    “And we have dealt with better,” Boztwank cried irritably. “Let's go home!”
    “BUT WE ARE HERE RIGHT NOW!” Idow thundered, using his throat of command. “And it was quite an effort to get here now, so we will test these—”
    “Humans,” Squee interjected.
    “Dirtlings,” Idow continued, “And simply hope for the best.”
    Grumbling to himself, Boztwank directed his floating pot back to his tech station, where he ordered his squirter to splash him with more of the pink liquid, but it didn't cheer him up a drop.
    Royally blue, Idow returned to his viewscreen, the picture on it the same as before. The test subjects had hardly moved a foot. What was wrong with them? No curiosity? He flexed his eyebrows