food was quick to prepare and it might be as good for you as they said it was, but the outside looked like the inside, and it all tasted flavorless and grey. What was the use of saving time in cooking if you ended up with food that wasn't any fun to eat?

"You aren't looking well, Amy," Captain Bjornson said three or four weeks later. He looked at her with the critical attention of an old friend. "You've got on a lot of cosmi-lac, but you still look peaked. What's the matter, worried about Bob? Ships don't get hurt in meteor swarms any more." He looked down at his grafted foot reminiscently. "Not like it was when I was a third mate."

Amy Dinsmore shook her head. She picked up one of the brightly-colored hexagons--they had been playing a desultory game of Maroola in the airy coolness of the side stoa--and fiddled with it.

"I haven't been sleeping well," she confessed at last. "I've had such unpleasant dreams. Horrid things."

"What about?" Bjornson asked. "That blasted plant? Honestly, Amy, it looks like some kind of spider to me."

"No! I don't know why you can't leave my Venusian Rambler alone! Robert told me it was a very valuable plant, rare even in its own habitat. It's doing so nicely, too. A spider! I wish you'd stop trying to spoil it for me."

"I'm sorry," Bjornson apologized. "Forget it. Go on, tell me about your dreams."

"Well, on Tuesday--or was it Wednesday?--no, it must have been Tuesday because that was the day after I flew over to Hartford--I was down by the hothouse and I found the most unpleasant thing beside the path." She shuddered. "I've been dreaming about it ever since."

"What was it?" Bjornson urged.

"Oh, a--I guess it must have been a rabbit once. One of the wild ones. Only it was nothing except some fur and some bones. Not decayed, Hjalmar, you understand, just gone. I can't imagine what had happened to it.""Better see a mental hygienist," the Captain advised after a pause. "Nightmares can be very serious."
"I suppose so. I really dread going to sleep."
*       *       *       *       *
The next morning, very early, Amy turned on the fluor with unsteady fingers. What a horrid dream it had been! She could hardly believe that it hadn't been real and that she was safe and sound in her own bedroom after all. Outside, the noise that had wakened her--the jagged, unearthly caterwauling of a couple of tomcats promenading in the moonlight--came 

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