But Litlun was hardly listening. "Yes, yes," he said, one roving eye following the nymph as she waddled around the room. "One need not think of these details now. A suitable planet can certainly be found once we have returned to our proper time—which, of course, must be after the disappearance of the old Mother, as you will understand."
"Of course," Krake agreed, and then scowled suddenly. "No, I don't understand," he said. "Why does it have to be after?"
The Turtle squawked in amusement. "Because there cannot be two fertile Mothers at once, to be sure! The idea is preposterous!"
"But if we stopped just short of the disappearance, perhaps we could prevent it from happening in the first place!"
The Turtle hissed in sudden shock. "That must not be!" he rasped. "What good would it do to stop short? We could not succeed! One cannot stop the Sh'shrane from stealing the Mother planet! The aiodoi will not interfere again; one would be helpless against their terrible weapons. One would surely perish—and, what is far worse, at the same time endanger the life of the Mother to be!"
"One could damn well try," Krake snapped, tugging angrily at his beard.
"One must not! Think, Captain Krake," Litlun went on persuasively. "Suppose, in spite of everything, one should somehow succeed, and preserve the old Mother from the Sh'shrane. In that case, what would be the value of this paper you treasure so much? It would be worthless, Krake! It could not bind the old Mother. It would mean nothing; your people would be in the same status as ever." He hesitated, turning both eyes proudly on the nymph, who had begun to drift toward the doorway. Litlun moved to follow her. "And, even worse," he finished as he waddled away, "this one would not be He Who Is to Be the Consort."
"So you see," Moon Bunderan told her captain with satisfaction, "everything's all right."
"You think it's all settled then?" Krake asked. He considered for a moment, then surrendered to success. He said, "I guess it is. I never heard of a Turtle telling a lie." Then he chuckled. "Well, almost everything. I think we'll have to make sure we talk Litlun out of the idea of locating his new Mother planet in our solar system. My opinion is that they'll be better neighbors when they're farther away."
"I suppose," she said thoughtfully, studying his face. Then she said, "There's one other unsettled thing, Francis. I hope you won't think I'm too forward."
He blinked at her as she left the other control board and walked over to him. He started to protest at her abandonment of her post of duty, then swallowed it—after all, if the state-of-thc-ship instruments revealed that anything went most improbably wrong they would hear it at once and could act.
"Francis," she said, taking him by the hand, "this is the thing. I know you think I'm a child. Well, I am—almost. But I'm less of a child than I was. And, Francis, please remember that I won't be a child for long."