"And the reason they had the same life cycle as the carolla was that the adult dinglebury will eat only the adult carolla, and it has to fill itself full to bursting before it will reproduce. If I had the translation done correctly, they were supposed to dart gracefully around, catching carolla on the wing and stuffing themselves happily.
"I had to find out what was wrong with my awkward dingleburys. And that, of course, meant going out into the ship again. But I had to do that anyway, because it was almost 'daylight', and time for me to start shifting the lights again.
"The reason for the dingleburys' problem is fairly obvious. When you set up artificial gravity by spinning a ship, the gravity is fine down near the skin where the plants are. But the gravity potential is very high, and it gets very light up where things fly around, going to zero on the middle line of the ship. And the unfamiliar gravity gradient, together with the Coriolis effect and all, makes the poor dingleburys dizzy, so they can't catch carolla.
"And if you think I figured all that out about dingleburys getting dizzy at the time, in that madhouse of a ship, then you're crazy. What happened was that I saw that there was one of the creatures that didn't seem to be having any trouble, but was acting like the book said it should. I caught it and examined it. The poor thing was blind, and was capturing her prey by sound alone.
"So I spent the whole day—along with my usual chore of shifting the lights—blindfolding dingleburys. Which is a hell of a sport for a man who is captain of his own ship."
I must say that I agreed with him, but it seemed to be a good time for me to keep my mouth shut.
"Well, after the dingleburys had eaten and propagated, they became inquisitive. They explored the whole ship, going into places I wouldn't have believed it to be possible for them to reach, including the inside of the main computer, which promptly shorted out. I finally figured that one of the things had managed to crawl up the cooling air exhaust duct, against the flow of air, to see what was going on inside.
"I didn't dare to get rid of the things without checking my book, of course, so it was back to the head for me. 'Night' had come again—and it was the only place I could get any privacy. There were plenty of the carolla left to join me outside.
"I showered and swatted and started to read. I got as far as where it said that the dingleburys continued to be of importance, and then I'm afraid I fell asleep.