IT MUST BE ADMITTED that the method invented by Sita Dulip is not entirely reliable. You sometimes find yourself on a plane that isn’t the one you meant to go to. If whenever you travel you carry with you a copy of Roman’s Handy Planary Guide, you can read up on wherever it is you get to when you get there, though Roman is not always reliable either. But the Encyclopedia Planaria, in forty-four volumes, is not portable, and after all, what is entirely reliable unless it’s dead?

I arrived on Islac unintentionally, when I was inexperienced, before I had learned to tuck Roman into my suitcase. The Interplanary Hotel there did have a set of the Encyclopedia, but it was at the bindery, because, they said, the bears had eaten the glue in the bindings and the books had all come to pieces. I thought they must have rather odd bears on Islac, but did not like to ask about them. I looked around the halls and my room carefully in case any bears were lurking. It was a beautiful hotel and the hosts were pleasant, so I decided to take my luck as it came and spend a day or two on Islac. I got to looking over the books in the bookcase in my room and trying out the built-in legemat, and had quite forgotten about bears, when something scuttled behind a bookend.

I moved the bookend and glimpsed the scuttler. It was dark and furry but had a long, thin tail of some kind, almost like wire. It was six or eight inches long not counting the tail. I didn’t much like sharing my room with it, but I hate complaining to strangers—you can only complain satisfactorily to people you know really well—so I moved the heavy bookend over the hole in the wall the creature had disappeared into, and went down to dinner.