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saw a gigantic mass of tentacles reaching for his portable drill near the base of the tooth. Each tentacle appeared to be thirty feet long, and as strong and sinuous as a python's tail.
    The biting surface no longer seemed like such a bad place. Dillingham remained where he was and watched the drill being carried into the darkness of the mouth's centre.
    In a few more minutes the amphibian vehicle appeared. The Enen driver emerged, chewed a stick, presented it. Dillingham reached for the transcoder—and discovered that it was the wrong one. All he had now was the Gleep interpreter.
    Chagrined, he fiddled with it. At least he could set it to play back whatever the Gleep prince might have said. Perhaps there had been meaning in that roar...
    There had been. "OUCH!" the machine exclaimed.

    The next few hours were complicated. Dillingham now had to speak to the Enens via the Gleep muck-a-muck (after the episode in the cavity, he regretted this nomenclature acutely), who had been summoned for a diagnostic conference. This was accomplished by setting up shop in the creature's communications department.
    The compartment was actually an offshoot from the Gleep lung, deep inside the body. It was a huge internal air space with sensitive tentacles bunching from the walls. This was the manner in which the dominant species of this landless planet had developed fast-moving appendages whose manipulation led eventually to tools and intelligence. An entire technology had developed— inside the great bodies.
    "So you see," he said. "I have to have an anaesthetic that will do the job, and canned air to breathe while I'm working, and a power drill that will handle up to an eighteen inch depth of rock. Also a sledgehammer and a dozen wedges. And a derrick and the following quantities of—" He went on to make a startling list of supplies.
    The transcoder sprouted half a dozen tentacles as he talked and waved them in a dizzying semaphore. After a moment a group of the wall tentacles waved back. "It shall be accomplished," the muck-a-muck's reply came.
    Dillingham wondered what visual signal had projected the "ouch" back in the patient's mouth. Then it came to him: the tentacles that had absconded with his drill and perhaps fragments of his other transcoder were extensions of the creature's tongue! Naturally they talked.
    "One other thing: while you're procuring my equipment, I'd like to see a diagram of the internal structure of your molars."
    "Structure?" The tentacles were agitated.
    "The pattern of enamel, dentin and pulp, or whatever passes for it in your system. A schematic drawing would do nicely. Or a sagittal section showing both the nerves and the bony socket. That tooth is still quite sensitive, which means the nerve is alive. I wouldn't want to damage it unnecessarily."
    "We have no such diagrams."
    Dillingham was shocked. "Don't you know the anatomy of your teeth? How have you repaired them before?"
    "We have never had trouble with them before. We have no dentists. That is why we summoned you."
    He paced the living floor of the chamber, amazed. How was it possible for such intelligent and powerful creatures to remain so ignorant of matters vital to their well-being? Never had trouble before? That cavity had obviously been festering for many years.
    Yet he had faced similar ignorance daily during his Earthly practice. "I'll be working blind, in that case," he said at last. "You must understand that while I'll naturally do my best, I can not guarantee to save the tooth."
    "We understand," the Gleep muck-a-muck replied contritely.

    Back on the tooth (after a stern warning to Junior to keep those jaws apart no matter how uncomfortable things might become), equipped with face mask, respirator, elbow-length gloves and hip boots, Dillingham began the hardest labour of his life. It was not intellectually demanding or particularly intricate—just hard. He was vaporizing the contaminated walls of the cavity with the beam of a thirty-pound