"But, Judy, maybe he isn't washable!"
"What do you think he'll do—shrink? Or run?" Judy looked at the native. "Come to think of it, he might run at that. Why don't you get out some of the music tapes, Jane, and play them to distract him?"
But the native loved being bathed. He loved the music tapes. And, at the end of his ablutions, he stood revealed as the possessor of not only a beautiful cerulean skin, but a fine, true soprano.
By the time Ned and Dan had returned from the south pole, the Furbishian Glee Club had been formed.
"I'd hoped to have come and gone before Christmas," Captain Harnick sighed discontentedly. "These isolated outposts are so depressing at holiday time."
"But think of the personnel, sir," the pilot told him with gentle reproach. "They have to spend all their time here."
"You're right, Wilkins," the captain admitted shamefacedly. "It's a hard, dull life for them. And Furbish is particularly bad. Only four people on an otherwise uninhabited planet. They must go mad with the monotony. The weeks must seem like months, the months like years, the years—"
"Uninhabited, did you say?" Wilkins interrupted. "I could have sworn I saw a village down there. Of course it is growing dark, but still—aha, there it is!"
The captain leaned forward and peered into the dusk below. "By George, you're right! There seem to be a good two dozen houses there. Now, how could that have happened?"