As the resonance of their thoughts decreased slightly in volume, Manship deduced they were leaving the laboratory.

He heard the beginnings of a desperate, “But—but—” from Lirld. Then, off in the distance, Councilor Glomg, evidently having dismissed the scientist, asked his son a question, “And where is little Tekt? I thought she’d be with you.”

“Oh, she’s out at the landing field,” Rabd answered, “supervising last-minute stuff going into the ship. After all, we begin our mating flight tonight.”

“A wonderful female,” Glomg told him in a “voice” that was now barely audible. “You’re a very lucky flefnobe.”

“I know that, Pop,” Rabd assured him. “Don’t think I don’t know that. The most plentiful bunch of eye-ended tentacles this side of Gansibokkle and they’re mine, all mine!”

“Tekt is a warm and highly intelligent female flefnobe,” his father pointed out severely from a great distance. “She has many fine qualities. I don’t like you acting as if the mating process were a mere matter of the number of eye-ended tentacles possessed by the female.”

“Oh, it isn’t, Pop,” Rabd assured him. “It isn’t at all. The mating process is a grave and—er, a serious matter to me. Full of responsibilities—er, serious responsibilities. Yes, sir. Highly serious. But the fact that Tekt has over a hundred and seventy-six slime-washed tentacles, each topped by a lovely, limpid eye, won’t do our relationship a bit of harm. Quite the contrary, Pop, quite the contrary.”

“A superstitious old crank and a brash bumpkin,” Professor Lirld commented bitterly. “But between them, they can have my appropriation shut off, Srin. They can stop my work. Just when it’s showing positive results. We’ve got to prepare counter-measures!”

Manship was not interested in this all-too-familiar academic despair, however. He was straining desperately after the receding minds of Glomg and Rabd. Not that he was at all intrigued by the elder’s advice on How to Have a Sane and Happy Sex Life Though Married.