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carefully deposited in the vat, now filled with cold water.
    The last cast, of course, was the colossal vat-shaped one. This was simply propped up under the spigot while the tired crew kept feeding in ingots.
    By the time this cast had been poured, twenty-four tons of gold had been used in all.
    While the largest chunk was being hauled to the ocean inside the forepart of the mouth, Dillingham broke open the smaller investments and laid out the casts according to his chart of the cavity. He gave each a minimum of finishing; on so gross a scale, it could hardly make much difference.
    The finished casts weighed more than twenty times as much as the original impressions had, and even the smallest ones were distinctly awkward to manoeuvre into place. He marked them, checked off their positions on his chart, and had the Enens ferry them up with the derrick. At the other end, he manhandled each into its proper place, verified its fit and position, and withdrew it to paint it with cement. No part of this filling could come loose in action.
    Once again the branching cavern lost its projections, this time permanently, as each segment was secured and severed from its projecting sprue. He kept the sprues—the handles of gold, the shape of the original plastic handles—on until the end, because otherwise there would have been no purchase on the weighty casts. He had to retain some means to move them.
    The derrick lowered the crevice-piece into the cavity. Two Enens pried it in with power crowbars. Dillingham stood by and squirted cement over the mass as it slid reluctantly into the hole.
    It was necessary to attach a heavy weight to the derrick-hook and swing it repeatedly against the four-ton cast in order to tamp it in all the way.
    At last it was time for the major assembly. Nineteen tons of gold descended-slowly into the hole while they dumped quarts of liquid cement into a pool below. The cast touched bottom and settled into place, while the cement bubbled up around the edges and overflowed.
    They danced a little jig on top of the finished filling—just to tamp it in properly, Dillingham told himself, for he considered himself to be too sedate to dance. He wished that a fraction of its value in Earth-terms could be credited to his account. The job was over.

    "A commendable performance," the high muck-a-muck said. "My son is frisking about in his pen like a regular tadpole and eating well."
    Dillingham remembered what he had seen during the walk along the occlusal surfaces. "I'm afraid he won't be frisking long. In another year or two he'll be feeling half a dozen other caries. Decay is rampant."
    "You mean this will happen again?" The tentacles waved so violently that the transcoder stuttered.
    Dillingham decided to take the fish by the tail. "Are you still trying to tell me that no member of your species has suffered dental caries before this time?"
    "Never."
    This still did not make sense. "Does your son's diet differ in any important respect from yours, or from that of other Gleeptads?"
    "My son is a prince!"
    "Meaning that he can eat whatever he wants, whether it is good for him or not?"
    The Gleep paused. "He gets so upset if he doesn't have his way. He's only a baby—hardly three centuries old."
    Dillingham was getting used to differing standards. "Do you feed him delicacies—refined foods?"
    "Naturally. Nothing but the best. I wish we had been able to afford such galactic imports when I was a tad!"
    Dillingham sighed. "Muck-a-muck, my people also had perfect teeth—until they began consuming sweets and overly refined foods. Then dental caries became the most common disease among them. You're going to have to curb your child's appetite."
    "I couldn't." He could almost read the agitation of the tentacles without benefit of translation. "Doctor, he'd throw a terrible tantrum."
    Dillingham had expected this reaction. He had encountered it many times on Earth. "In that case, you'd better begin training a crew of dentists.