John Thomas Stuart has a friend, and a problem. The friend, whose name
is Lummox, is an alien creature with six legs that Stuart’s
great-grandfather brought back from a trip to the stars. Lummox is about
the size of a pair of hippos, stronger than a dozen or so elephants, and
will eat anything it can find. Anything. Steel girders, high
explosives, rose bushes, you name it. Lummox can talk, but appears to be
about as smart as, say, a three year old. Do you see the problem?

And then a space ship–a very large space ship–appears in the Solar
System and announces that if they don’t get Lummox back, they’ll take
steps. Informed sources assure the powers that be that those steps are
liable to include complete planetary destruction.

What’s a young man to do?

If you’ve been following the web log for the last few months, you’ll
remember that I’ve been trying to find all of the early Heinlein novels I
hadn’t previously read. I’m not sure, but I think this is the last one.
The interesting thing is, it’s written during the period in which
Heinlein wrote all his juveniles, and it does feature a young adult hero
and heroine, but it doesn’t have the same tone as his other juveniles.
The politicking that goes on at the end has the tone of
Stranger in a Strange Land or
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress; I was actually rather surprised
that it wasn’t written about ten years later.