have sprung into being as he is now."
"Maybe he developed," Four offered. "It seems to me that he's bigger than when we first landed."
"He must have been here a long, long time," Fred said. "Fweepland, as Four calls it, kept its atmosphere and its water, which a planet this size ordinarily would have lost by now."
Reba looked at Fweep kindly. "We can thank the little fellow for that, anyway."
"I thank him for nothing," Joyce snapped. "He lured us down here by making us think the planet had heavy metals and I want him to let us go _immediately_!"
Fred turned impatiently on his wife. "Well, try making him understand! And if you can make him understand what you want him to do, try making him do it!"
Joyce looked at Fred with startled eyes. "Fred!" she said in a high, shocked voice and turned blindly toward her room.
Grampa lowered his bottle and smacked his lips. "Well, boy," he said to Fred, "I thought you'd never do that. Didn't think you had it in you."
Fred stood up apologetically. "I'd better go calm her down," he muttered, and walked quickly after Joyce.
"Give her one for me!" Grampa called.
Fred's shoulders twitched as the door closed behind him. From the room came the filtered sound of high-pitched voices rising and falling like some reedy folk music.
"Makes you think, doesn't it?" Grampa said, looking at Fweep benignly. "Maybe the whole theory of gravitation is cockeyed. Maybe there's a Fweep for every planet and sun, big and little, polarizing the gravity in circles, and the matter business is not a cause but a result."
"What I can't understand," Junior said thoughtfully, "is why the polarizer worked for a little while when we landed--long enough to keep us from being squashed--and then quit."
"Fweep didn't recognize it immediately, didn't know what it was or where it came from," Four explained. "All he knew was he didn't like linear polarization and he neutralized it as soon as he could. That's when we dropped."
"Linear polarization is uncomfortable for him, is it?" Grampa said. "Makes you wonder how something like Fweep could ever develop."
"He's no more improbable than people," said Four.
"Less than some I've known," Grampa conceded.
"If he can eat anything," Reba said, "why does he keep sweeping the cabin for dust and lint?"
"He wants to be helpful," Four replied without hesitation, "and he's lonely. After all," he added wistfully, "he's never had any friends."
"How do you know all these things?" Joyce asked from her doorway, excitement in her voice. "Can you talk to it?"
Behind her, Fred said, "Now, Joyce, you promised--"
"But this is important," Joyce cut him off eagerly. "Can you? Talk to it, I mean?"
"Some," Four admitted.
"Have you asked it to let us go?"
"Yes."

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