While preparing for a surprise inspection, the officers of the military spaceship Bustler reread their manifest and discover that their equipment is supposed to include something called an "offog"; however, no one among the crew even knows what that is. Alarmed, captain McNaught devises a plan to pass the inspection anyway: on the assumption that "offog" must be the nickname of some obscure and unnecessary technological device, he orders communications officer Burman to simply fabricate a small box with blinkenlights and feed the inspecting officer some technobabble about what it does. The ruse seems to work, and the Bustler passes inspection.

Shortly afterward, the ship is unexpectedly ordered to return to Earth for a complete overhaul; Burman warns McNaught that the engineers of the shipyard will immediately see through their ruse. The captain solves the new problem by having Burman discreetly dispose of the "offog," blandly messaging headquarters that the item had "came apart under gravitational stress" while the ship passed close to a star. Two days later, an almost-unprecedented emergency transmission recalls Earth's entire space fleet to the nearest port; an equally urgent query addressed to the Bustler makes the horrified McNaught and Burman belatedly realize that "offog" had been a typo for "off.dog," or "official dog."

"Allamagoosa" won the 1955 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.^[2]

John Joseph Adams has called it "uproariously funny".^[3]

James Nicoll has commented that it is "apparently based on an urban legend".^[4] In fact, it is essentially a science-fictional retelling of a traditional tall tale, "The Shovewood".^[5]

• Allamagoosa title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Allamagoosa at webarchive of scifi.com