“No,” said the ogre. “I think on my riddles to pass the time.”
“Well,” said Sam, “how would you like to come along home with me? When I’m king at home I can provide you with a fine large cave and pleasant neighbors, and send people with riddles to you from time to time. How about that?”
The ogre could hardly turn an offer like that down, so he agreed readily and they set out together. When they got near home, it was apparent to Sam that a celebration was going on in the kingdom.
He said to his ogre friend, “How would you like to go to a party?”
“Oh, fine,” said the ogre. “I’m sure I’d like a party, though I’ve never been to one.”
“Well, I’ll go in first, and then I’ll come out for you in a minute,” said Sam.
He went inside to find that there was a double celebration in progress. His brother Ned was about to be crowned king and to marry the sweet princess that Sam had sent home. Sam thought that was most unkind.
“Stop the wedding,” said Sam. They stopped the wedding and looked around at him. He said, “I succeeded at the Quest, and I claim the right to be king.”
Everybody laughed at him. They said, “Charming Ned brought home the ogre’s treasure. What did you bring?”
Sam showed them his single brass farthing. “I brought this,” he said and they all laughed the more. “And I brought one more thing,” he said, and threw open the doors. In walked the ogre, looking for the party he’d been promised.
Sam explained to the ogre that the party would begin straight away the moment he became king. Since the ogre was standing in the only doorway, Sam was made king in no time at all.
Well, after that, Sam set the ogre up in a cave of his very own, and after the neighbors found he wasn’t a bad sort he got on quite well. The ogre became a regular tourist attraction, one of the finest in the kingdom, and brought in a nice regular bit of revenue. Sam opened a charm school with his brother Ned in charge, and that brought in even more money. Sam married the princess himself and everybody lived quite happily from then on. If they haven’t moved away, and I don’t know why they would, they’ll be living there still.
Oh, yes. It took the ogre a full ten years to decide he couldn’t answer Sam’s riddle. Every week he would bundle the answers he’d thought of together and send them to Sam and Sam would send them back. Finally the ogre decided he would never find the right answer to the question, “What is it that is not and never will be?” He opened the paper Sam had given him so long before and took a look. The answer was, “A mouse’s nest in a cat’s ear.” (And that, my little friend, is the only real, true answer there is.)
“Oh, hell,” said the ogre. “I was just about to guess that.”
“There’s a moral, too,” George said. “My mother told it to me and I’ll tell it to you: If you’re bright and use your head, you’ll never go too far wrong. Just keep it in mind, and you’ll get along.”
Right after that, we reached the atmosphere of Grainau. George was busy with his buttons. I was thinking that he meant well enough and I was feeling a bit more friendly toward him.
I had gathered that entering a planet’s atmosphere was a tricky business, but George didn’t seem particularly concerned. The main problem was the same as when leaving the Ship: to strike a balance between one gravity field and the other, so that the people aboard were not plastered against the floor or left suddenly without any feeling of weight at all. Besides that, he had to take us to the point on the planet to which we were going, and how he did that, I couldn’t tell. Apparently he got bearings from his instruments. The dials and meters said incomprehensible things to me, but by some strange gift of tongues, he understood them. He switched on the vision screens and they showed nothing but a billowy gray blankness beneath us. Without any coaxing from George, the dome above our heads became first translucent and then gradually transparent, our interior lights fading in correspondence to the increasing light from outside.
As we descended, I looked all around through the dome. I was still feeling