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I got more and more mellow and talkative as time went by, but the skipper just sat there, breathing rhial. He didn’t seem to change a bit.

Something had been bothering me, though, and I finally figured out what it was. So I stopped talking about my farming troubles, and asked Captain Hannah a direct question.

“You say you carried an elephant?” I asked. “A live elephant? In a space ship?”

He nodded. “It’s an animal,” he said. “A very large animal. From Earth.”

“I know all about that,” I said. “We’re civilized here. We’re not just a bunch of back-planet hicks, you know. We study all about the Home Planet at school. But why—and how—would anyone take an elephant into space?”

He stared at me for a while, then took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “After all, it’s nothing to be really ashamed of.” He pondered for a full minute. “It all started just a few standard months ago, on Condor—over in Sector Sixty-four W.”

“Sixty-four W?” I broke in. “That’s clear over on the other side of the Galaxy.”