Again there was a maddening silence ... maddening to Threlkeld. "My daughter," he said at length, disturbed, "I must remind you of the importance of this little mission. My entire career with the inter-star patrol depends on how well we function."
Gelerie was bent in a heap near the tapering nose of the pod-shaped vehicle as it hurtled past the lovely moon, headlong toward a giant green and purple planet below them. Hurtled in a vessel with no manual controls, a vessel grown in a government garden on another world ... catapulted on a very special assignment to a planet that neither grew missiles nor thought of launching them without myriads of mechanical wires, dials and blinker lights.
Now Threlkeld was filled with indignation. "Gelerie, I command you—"
"Yes, Father. You command me," she drawled.
"Unless you remain attentive, my daughter, we may fail. Failing, I must concede that I have finally grown too old for spatial duty, and be sent to the Home. Do you want that?"
Gelerie had acquired all the attributes of a beautiful, buxom Earth girl. She looked up in the soft light that glowed its phosphorous loveliness from the very walls of the seed pod they occupied. Threlkeld muttered, "Such beauty—it is beyond all that the textbooks described."
Now Gelerie butted in, "The trouble, my father, is simple. The transition pills—"
"What about them?"
"They do more than convert us from a six-footed tree-hanging creature of the Alpha Centauri group. They impose upon us the same emotional stress of the human. You know, father, I have been changed into leopards, rhinos and snoquallimie eels before; but always I retained my own natural traits—the love of trees, the desire to return to my native form and habitat as quickly as possible. But this time, I feel demure and attractive and extremely vain and—"
"I warn you, my daughter. I am old. I have seen these Earth types at work. They are a useless breed. Their extra-curricular activities are beyond all reason. Very few of them stick to what is really important. Very few of them understand that achievement of the goal is the only thing there is. Now, I suggest you fight off these emotions. Try not to succumb to human frailties, for we have an important job to do—lest your poor father be put out to pasture."