When You Giffle...

BY L. J. STECHER, JR.
They were like any other boys sporting in their old swimming hole—in the depths of space!
I was a little bit worried when I saw Captain Hannah again. I thought he might have decided he wanted his elephants back, and I'd grown sort of attached to them. Although I couldn't break the baby of the habit of nibbling on Gasha leaves, in spite of the fact that they're not good for him.
A few months earlier, Captain Hannah had conned me into taking the elephants off his hands and out of his tramp spaceship. He had suffered from intellectual terrestrial zoological insufficiency—or in other words, he hadn't known whales are mammals, and had delivered the multi-ton Beulah instead, to the Prinkip of Penguin, as an adult sample of Earth's largest mammal.
The Prinkip had quite properly refused delivery, and Hannah had stuck me with her and her incipient progeny.
I needn't have worried. Captain Hannah didn't want her back. He just wanted to relax and talk to someone. I bought him a drink, but I refused one myself, remembering what had happened to me the times before, when I had listened to Captain Hannah with a glass in my hand.
Captain Hannah ran a leathery hand over his leathery face. He looked haggard. I came here because I've got to talk to somebody, he said, and you make a good listener.
Do you remember after I completed my contract with you for the delivery of the gasha root, and after you had talked me into leaving Beulah with you for the sake of the little one, how we had a few drinks together to celebrate our mutual success, before I headed out?
Well, my memory about who had talked whom into what about Beulah didn't agree with his, but I told him I remembered our last get-together, and he went on.
Anyone who tries to set up an interstellar Jump with a hangover should be permanently barred from the spaceways, he said with some feeling. I guess that the only reason they aren't, is that the ones who make a mistake are never heard from again. He paused and sipped. Except me.