"'They?' You mean you've been feeding the natives!"
"We couldn't let them starve," Judy replied defiantly. "And, after all, it was all your fault they weren't gathering roots for food. If you hadn't gone and built them that handball court...!"
Ned looked accusingly at Danny. Danny lowered his eyes. "I suppose," he murmured to his wife, "'oup' means soup."
"You suppose correctly. And, if you two weren't such stubborn mules, you would realize that it was very clever of them to have learned the word. Get me the dehydrated potatoes, please, Jane; they're very nourishing."
Danny took off his helmet and ran his hands through his thick brown hair. "All right, so what if they do have a higher intelligence than Furbish thought? That still doesn't make them people. Still less does it make them our responsibility. How long are you proposing to run this soup kitchen, dear? You know, we were left with food supplies for four, not forty, or four hundred."
"They don't eat as much as we do," Jane put in, obviously quoting, "because of being smaller. And there are a lot of emergency stores in case Captain Harnick and the ship never come back, on account of being eaten by monsters or something. You thought we didn't know about that," she said proudly, "but we did."
"We don't have that amount of supplies, of course," Judy rushed to inform them before either of the men could protest. "As soon as I've got the natives organized—" Ned and Dan exchanged glances "—I plan to teach them more efficient ways of gathering roots, so that they'll have time for both work and play."
"And I don't suppose you had planned to organize a few to do your housework, had you?" Dan asked penetratingly.
"Well, naturally, I would be spending a good deal of time on this project, so I should expect to get what help I could with my regular duties."
"The captain said—" Ned began.