"You'd be just as well pleased if I didn't?"
"What do you think, sir?"
"We'll be working at top speed and they'd be very much in the way, so they'll get theirs later—after you've licked the cream off the top of the...."
"Ready to roll, Clee," James announced.
"Roll."
"Why, I lost contact!" Miss Flurnoy exclaimed.
"Naturally," Garlock said. "Did you expect to cover a distance it takes light thousands of years to cross? You can record anything you see in the plates. You can talk to Jim or Lola any time they'll let you. Don't bother Miss Bellamy or me from now on."
Garlock and Belle went to work. All four Galaxians worked all day, with half an hour off for lunch. They visited seventy planets and got back to Margonia in time for a very late dinner. ComOff Flurnoy had less than a quarter of one roll of recorder-tape left unused, and the Primes had enough information to start the project they had in mind.
And shortly after dinner, all five retired.
"In one way, Clee, I'm relieved," Belle pondered, "but I can't figure out why all the Primes—the grown-up ones, I mean—on all the worlds are just about the same cantankerous, you-be-damned, out-and-out stinkers as you and I are. How does that fit into your theory?"