Allamagoosa

While preparing for an inspection, the crew of the starship Bustler reread their manifest and discover that they are supposed to have something called an "offog;" however, nobody knows what that is. They devise a plan to pass the inspection anyway: going on the assumption that nobody else would know what it is either, they simply manufacture a small box with blinkenlights and feed the commanding officer some technobabble about what the device does. The plan seems to work, and the ship passes the inspection.The ship is soon ordered back to Earth for overhaul; the crew, fearing that their deception will soon be uncovered, try to get rid of the "offog" and message headquarters that it "came apart under gravitational stress." Two days later, the entire fleet is ordered to be grounded, and the crew realizes that "offog" was a typo of "off.dog", short for "official dog", and the headquarters are now grounding the fleet to conduct an investigation about how an animal could come apart under gravitational stress. Just what it was, they werenвЂTMt quite sure, but they knew it had to be there; the BureauвЂTMs Inventory said so. And the consequences of its “accidental” destruction were most astonishing…