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the original jolly swagman."

    "Indeed ye're not, sorr! He's thinkin' o' you as Bligh!"

    "I suppose I should be flattered," admitted Grimes. "But I'm afraid that I shall never finish up as an admiral and as a colonial governor."

    "An' that's not what the black Captain Bligh was famous for, sorr!"

    "The mutiny? His first one? But during that, as during the subsequent ones, he was more sinned against than sinning!"

    "Not the way that Ned, here, recollects it, Captain."

    "Come off it, Mr. Flannery. There weren't any dogs of any kind aboard the Bounty] "

    The telepath stared at his grisly pet through bleary eyes, and his thick lips moved as he subvocalized his thoughts. Then: "Ned wasn't there himself, o' course, Captain, nor any of his blessed forefathers. But he still says as that was the way of it, that the wicked Captain Bligh drove his crew to mutiny, indeed he did."

    "Indeed he did not!" snapped Grimes, who had, his own ideas about what had happened aboard the ill-fated Bounty,

    "If that's the way ye feel about it, Captain," murmured Flannery diplomatically.

    "It is the way I feel about it." And then, a sudden, horrid suspicion forming in his mind: "What is all this about Bligh and the Bounty !"Are you suggesting. . . ?"

    "Indeed I'm not, Captain. An' as for Ned, here"—the waving hand just missed the tank and its gruesome contents—"would he be after tellin' ye, if he could? He would not. He would niver be on the side o' the oppressor."

    "Good for him," remarked Grimes sardonically. He got up to leave. "And, Mr. Flannery, you might get this—this mess cleaned up a bit. I did mention it to Miss Russell, but she said that her girls aren't kennelmaids. Those empty bottles . . . and that. . .  bone. "

    "But t'is only an old bone, Captain, with niver a shred o' meat nor gristle left on it. Poor Terry—may the blessed saints be kind to the soul of him—knew it was there, an' imagined it like it used to be. An' Ned's the same."

    "So it is essential to the efficient working of the amplifier?"

    "Indeed it is, sorr."

    Grimes stirred the greasy, dog-eared playing cards, spread out on the table for a game of Canfield, with a gingerly forefinger. "And I suppose that these are essential to your efficient working?"

    "Ye said it, Captain. An' would ye deprive me of an innocent game of patience? An' don't the watch officers in the control room, when ye're not around, set up games o' three-dimensional noughts an' crosses in the plottin' tank, just to while away the weary hours? Ye've done it yerself, like enough."

    Grimes's prominent ears flushed. He could not deny it—and if he did this telepath would know that he was lying.

    "An' I can do more wi' these than play patience, Captain. Did I iver tell ye that I have Gypsy blood in me veins? Back in the Quid Isle me great, great granny lifted her skirts to a wanderin' tinker. From him, an' through her, I have the gift." The grimy pudgy hands stacked the cards, shuffled them, and then began to rearrange them. "Would ye like a readin? Now?"

    "No, thank you," said Grimes as he left.

Chapter 8

    Discovery came to New Maine.

    New Maine is not a major colony; its overall population barely tops the ten million mark. It is not an unpleasant world, although, even on the equator, it is a little on the chilly side. It has three moons, one so large as to be almost a sister planet, the other two little more than oversized boulders. It is orbited by the usual system of artificial satellites—communication, meteorological, and all the rest of it. The important industries are fisheries and fish processing; the so-called New Maine cod (which, actually, is more of a reptile than a true fish) is a sufficiently popular delicacy on some worlds to make its smoking, packaging, and export worthwhile.

    A not very substantial contribution to the local economy is made by the Federation Survey Service sub-Base, which is not important enough to require a high ranking