I was still thinking when evening swept in fast, as it does in dry climates, and the birds began to wake up and climb out of the crater, presumably to forage for food.

"Wait!" I cried. "Isadore!"

I drew out a lunch package and spread it to attract him. It attracted all of them.

I pulled out "The Dodo."

"'Tell me what thy lordly name is/On the Night's Plutonian shore.'"

"Isadore," he volunteered, swallowing fast while I climbed aboard him.

"Take me back."

Then I realized I had made a mistake with the food.

"Go!" I cried. "Spaceship! More food!" He just stood there, his beak poking around the ground for crumbs.

But I had to get that skin spray washed off before twenty-four hours were up.

"Nepenthe!" I shouted desperately.

The dodo was off like a flash and didn't stop till we were back at the ship.

"You were gone quite a while," Rene said nonchalantly. "Find anything?"

"Enough to pay you off," I said. "And we'll make it five thousand because I found it. Stow this somewhere. It's perfume."

He did. "Find anything else?"

"Nothing that would interest you. I'll be ready to blast off as soon as I've had a shower."

Rene shrugged.

The perfume, when we returned to Earth, proved to be worth what he'd said it would be. A lot of people wanted to know where I'd gotten it. "The crops on Odoria," they said, "are entirely sewed up by Odoria, Inc."

"They certainly are," I always replied agreeably.

It took all I cleared from the perfume to put a down payment on a ship and hire an expert on fertilizing perfume flowers. But this time I 

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