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"Allamagoosa" is a 5000-word short story by Eric Frank Russell, about a spaceship crew who must prepare their ship for an inspection. The story was first published in the May, 1955 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.

Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.

Plot

A military spaceship gets word that they will be hosting an inspector soon. In a panic, they do a survey of all their stores to make sure nothing is missing. But at the end of the list of items in the galley, they come across the item “offog” with an id number, and nobody knows what that is, even though they must have checked it off when the ship left port years earlier. So they have one of their engineers rig up a box with lights and dials; when the inspector comes, they simply say that it’s a device for measuring gravitational fields. The inspector accepts that story and moves on.

Some time later, as the ship is heading into port for some major overhauls, they realize that the story they gave the inspector will not be enough to fool the experts doing the overhaul. So they send a message to port saying that their “offog” (and they give the id number) was torn apart by gravitational forces and had to be scrapped and used for fuel. Then HQ sends an urgent message for all ships to return to port, and a specific message to this ship wondering how the ship’s Official Dog (the ship’s manifest was a typo; it should have said “off. dog”) could have been torn apart by gravitational forces.

Additional Notes

This story has been reprinted in, among other places, Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 17 (1955).

Allamagoosa won the Hugo Award for best short story.

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