"Oh, have you found yourself at last?" Iversen purred. "Splendid! Now that you know where you are, supposing you do me a big favor and go lose yourself again while we make ready for blastoff."
"For shame," said the first officer as Harkaway stamped off. "For shame!"
"The captain's a hard man," observed the chief petty officer, who was lounging negligently against a wall, doing nothing.
"Ay, that he is," agreed the crewman who was assisting him. "That he is—a hard man, indeed."
"By Caroli, be quiet, all of you!" Iversen yelled. The very next voyage, he was going to have a new crew if he had to transfer to Colonization to do it! Even colonists couldn't be as obnoxious as the sons of space with which he was cursed.
It was only after the Herringbone had left the Virago System entirely that Iversen discovered Harkaway had taken the greech along.
"But you can't abscond with one of the natives' pets!" he protested, overlooking, for the sake of rhetoric, the undeniable fact that Harkaway had already done so and that there could be no turning back. It would expend too much precious fuel and leave them stranded for life on Virago XI^a.
"Nonsense, sir!" Harkaway retorted. "Didn't the Flimflim say everything on Flimbot was mine? Thlu'pt shig-nliv, snusnigg bnig-nliv were his very words. Anyhow, they have plenty more greechi. They won't miss this little one."
"But he may have belonged to someone," Iversen objected. "An incident like this could start a war."