“The opper-popper.”

“Baby names, see? Didin and opper-popper. Now rack your brains and remember what you called an offog four years ago.”

“Nothing,” asserted Burman, “has ever been called an offog to my knowledge.”

“Then,” demanded McNaught, “why did we sign for one?”

“I didn’t sign for anything. You did all the signing.”

“While you and others did the checking. Four years ago, presumably in the galley, I said, ‘Offog, one,’ and either you or Blanchard pointed to it and said, ‘Check.’ I took somebody’s word for it. I have to take other specialists’ words for it. I am an expert navigator, familiar with all the latest navigational gadgets but not with other stuff. So I’m compelled to rely on people who know what an offog is-or ought to.”

Burman had a bright thought. “All kinds of oddments were dumped in the main lock, the corridors, and the galley when we were fitted-out. We had to sort through a deal of stuff and stash it where it properly belonged, remember? This offog-thing might be anyplace today. It isn’t necessarily my responsibility or Blanchard’s.”

“I’ll see what the other officers say,” agreed McNaught, conceding the point. “Gregory, Worth, Sanderson, or one of the others may be coddling the item. Wherever it is, it’s got to be found. Or accounted for in full if it’s been expended.”

He went out. Burman pulled a face, inserted his earplugs, resumed fiddling with his apparatus. An hour later McNaught came back wearing a scowl.

“Positively,” he announced with ire, “there is no such thing on the ship. Nobody knows of it. Nobody can so much as guess at it.”

“Cross it off and report it lost,” Burman suggested.

“What, when we’re hard aground? You know as well as I do that loss and damage must be signaled at time of occurrence. If I tell Cassidy the offog went west in space, he’ll want to know when, where, how, and why it wasn’t signaled. There’ll be a real ruckus if the contraption happens to be valued at half a million credits. I can’t dismiss it with an airy wave of the hand.”