Feghoot IV: Feghoot in captivity

Ron Koolman posted this on alt.callahans. Chris Cole indicates that it may originally have been an Asimov pun.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


In 2916, after a captivity of 22 years, Ferdinand Feghoot escaped from the planet Aah-ook. As soon as he landed on Earth, hundreds of reporters surrounded him and began asking questions, which he answered with his usual directness:

"The Aah-ookians are highly intelligent dragonoid beings upwards of 800 yards long. I was taken by one called Urk-tss. He was so old that he had a set of false teeth, uppers and lowers. Each plate measured at least 50 yards front to back.

"No, he treated me very humanely. My only task was to take the seeds out of melons and things so that they wouldn't get under his teeth; and he went to great lengths to protect me from bat-weevils and other vermin. In fact, he had one of his molars hollowed out into a cozy three-room apartment, and allowed me to live there."

"You poor man!" sighed a sob sister. "How dreadful - to be a slave all those years."

"A slave? Goodness, no!" replied Ferdinand Feghoot. "I was an indentured servant."

(Copyright © 1957 by Mercury Press. First published in THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, November 1957).