"Look!" he said suddenly. "This planet not only has flora—it has fauna." He rushed to the air lock.
"Four!" Reba called out warningly.
"It's all right, Reba," Four assured her. "The air is within one per cent of Earth-normal and the bio-analyzer can find no micro-organisms viable within the Terran spectrum."
"What about macro-organisms—" Reba began, but the boy was gone already. Reba's face was troubled. "That boy!" she said to Junior. "Sometimes I think we've made a terrible mistake with him. He should have friends, play-mates. He's more like a little old man than a boy."
But Junior nodded meaningfully at Fred and disappeared into the chart room. Fred followed casually. Then, as the door slid shut behind him, he asked impatiently. "Well, what's all the mystery?"
"No use bothering the others yet," Junior said, his face puzzled. "You see, I didn't let the flivver drop those last few inches. The polarizer quit."
"Quit!"
"That's not the worst. I tried to take it up again. The flivver—it won't budge!"
The thing was a featureless blob, a two-foot sphere of raspberry gelatin, but it was alive. It rocked back and forth in front of Four. It opened a raspberry-color pseudo-mouth and said plaintively, "Fweep? Fweep?"