* * * * *
He started to leave Carson's air-cooled office. Carson said mildly:
"You're broke. You'll want a job when you haven't got a farm. You can't
afford to tell me to go to hell."
"You can't take my farm unless my fields are neglected," the colonist
said comfortably. "They aren't. And my _thanar_ leaf crop is going to
be a bumper one. I'll pay off all I owe--and we colonists are planning
to start a trading company of our own, to bring in good machinery and
deal fairly."
Carson smiled coldly.
"You forget something," he said. "As representative of the Trading
Company, I can call on you to pay up all your debts at once, if I have
reason to think you intend to try to evade payment. I do think so. I
call on you for immediate payment in full. Pay up, please!"
This was an especially neat paragraph in the fine print of the
colonists' contract with the Company. Any time a colonist got obstinate
he could be required to pay all he owed, on the dot. And if he had
enough to pay, he wouldn't owe. So the Trading Company could ruin
anybody.
But this colonist merely grinned.
"By law," he observed, "you have to accept _thanar_ leaves as legal
tender, at five credits a kilo. Send out a truck for your payment. I've
got six tons in my barn, all ready to turn in."
He made a most indecorous gesture and walked out. A moment later, he
put his head back in.
"I forgot," he commented politely. "You said I couldn't afford to
tell you to go to hell. With six tons of _thanar_ leaves on hand, I'm
telling you to--"
He added several other things, compared to which telling Carson to go
to hell was the height of courtesy. He went away.
Carson went a little pale. It occurred to him that this colonist was a
close neighbor of Lon Simpson. Maybe Lon had gotten tired of converting
_dhil_ weed and shiver leaves into green peas and asparagus, and had
gotten to work turning out _thanar_.
* * * * *
Carson went to Lon's farm. It was a very bad road, and any four-wheeled
vehicle would have shaken itself to pieces on the way. The gyrocar
merely jolted Carson severely. The jolting kept him from noticing how
hot the weather was. It was really extraordinarily hot, and Carson
suffered more because he spent most of his time in an air-conditioned
office. But for the same reason he did not suspect anything abnormal.
When he reached Lon's farm, he noticed that the _thanar_ leaves were
growing admirably. For a moment, sweating as he was, he was reminded
of tobacco plants growing on Maryland hillsides. The heat and the
bluish-green color of the plants seemed very familiar. But then a
cateagle ran hastily up a tree, out on a branch, and launched its
crimson furry self into midair. That broke the spell of supposedly
familiar things.
Carson turned his gyrocar in at Lon Simpson's house. There were half
a dozen other colonists around. Two of them drove up with farm trucks
loaded with mixed foliage. They had pulled up, cut off and dragged down
just about anything that grew, and loaded their truck with it. Two
other colonists were loading another cart with _thanar_ leaves, neatly
bundled and ready for the warehouse.
They regarded Carson with pleased eyes. Carson spoke severely to Cathy.
"What are you doing here? You're supposed to be on duty at the
beamphone exchange! You can be discharged--"
Lon Simpson said negligently, "I'm paying her passage. By law, anybody
can pay the passage of any woman if she intends to marry him, and then
her contract with the company is ended. They had rules like that in
ancient days--only they used to pay in tobacco instead of _thanar_
leaves."
Carson gulped. "But how will you pay her fare?" He asked sternly.
"You're in debt to the Company yourself."
Lon Simpson jerked his thumb toward his barn. Carson turned and looked.
It was a nice-looking barn. The aluminum siding set it off against a
backing of shiver trees, _dhil_ and giant _sketit_ growth. Carson's
eyes bugged out. Lon's barn was packed so tightly with _thanar_ leaves
that they bulged out the doors.
"I need to turn some of that stuff in, anyhow," said Lon pleasantly.
"I haven't got storage space for it. By law you have to buy it at five
credits a kilo. I wish you'd send out and get some. I'd like to build
up some credit. Think I'll take a trip back to Earth."
At this moment, there was a very peculiar wave of heat. It was not
violent, but the temperature went up about four degrees--suddenly, as
if somebody had turned on a room heater.
But still nobody looked up at the sun.
* * * * *
Rattled, Carson demanded furiously if Lon had converted other local
foliage into _thanar_ leaves, as he'd made his green peas and the
other stuff he'd told Cathy about on the beamphone. Lon tensed, and
observed to the other colonists that evidently all beamphones played
into recorders. The atmosphere became unfriendly. Carson got more
rattled still. He began to wave his arms and sputter.
Lon Simpson treated him gently. He took him into the house to watch the
converter at work. One of the colonists kept its large coil suitably
stuffed with assorted foliage. There was a "hand" of cured, early--best
quality--_thanar_ leaves in an erratically cut tin can. Duplicates of
that hand of best quality _thanar_ were appearing in the small coil as
fast as they were removed, and fresh foliage was being heaped into the
large coil.
"We expect," said Lon happily, "to have a bumper crop of the best grade
of _thanar_ this year. It looks like every colonist on the planet will
be able to pay off his debt to the Company and have credit left over.
We'll be sending a committee back to Earth to collect our credits there
and organize an independent cooperative trading company that will bring
out decent machinery and be a competitive buying agency for _thanar_.
I'm sure the Company will be glad to see us all so prosperous."
It was stifling hot by now, but nobody noticed. The colonists were
much too interested in seeing Carson go visibly to pieces before them.
He was one of those people who seem to have been developed by an
all-wise Providence expressly to be underlings for certain types of
large corporations. Their single purpose in life is to impress their
superiors in the corporation that hires them. But now Carson saw his
usefulness ended. Through his failure, in some fashion, the Company's
monopoly on _thanar_ leaves and its beautiful system of recruiting
labor were ruined. He would be discharged and probably blacklisted.
If he had looked up toward the western sky, squinted a little, and
gazed directly at the local sun, he would have seen that his private
troubles were of no importance at all. But he didn't. He went
staggering to his gyrocar and headed back for Cetopolis.
It was a tiny town, with plank streets, a beamphone exchange, and its
warehouses over by the spaceport. It was merely a crude and rather ugly
little settlement on a newly colonized planet. But it had been the
center of an admirable system by which the Cetis Gamma Trading Company
got magnificently rich and dispensed _thanar_ leaf (a milligram a day
kept old age away) throughout all humanity at the very top price the
traffic would bear. And the system was shaky now and Carson would be
blamed for it.
Behind him, the colonists rejoiced as hugely as Carson suffered. But
none of them got the proper perspective, because none of them looked at
the sun.
About four o'clock in the afternoon, it got suddenly hotter again,
as abruptly as before. It stayed hotter. Something made Cathy look
up. There was a thin cloud overhead, just the right thickness to act
something like a piece of smoked glass. She could look directly at the
sun through it, examine the disk with her naked eye.
But it wasn't a disk any longer. Cetis Gamma was a bulging, irregularly
shaped thing twice its normal size. As she looked, it grew larger still.
* * * * *
Out on the ninth planet, Rhadampsicus was absorbed in his contemplation
of Cetis Gamma. With nothing to interfere with his scanning, he could
follow the developments perfectly. There had been first one gigantic
prominence, then two, which separated to opposite sides of its equator.
Then two other prominences began to grow between them.
For two full days, the new prominences grew, and then split, so that
the sun came to have the appearance of a ball of fire surrounded by a
ring of blue-white incandescence.
Then came instability. Flame geysers spouting hundreds of thousands
of miles into emptiness ceased to keep their formation. They turned
north and south from the equatorial line. The outline of the sun became
irregular. It ceased to be round in profile, and even the appearance
of a ring around it vanished. It looked--though this would never have
occurred to Rhadampsicus--very much like a fiercely glowing gigantic
potato. Its evolution of heat went up incredibly. It much more than
doubled its rate of radiation.
Rhadampsicus watched each detail of the flare-up with fascinated
attention. Nodalictha dutifully watched with him. But she could not
maintain her interest in so purely scientific a phenomenon.
When a thin streamer of pure blue-white jetted upward from the sun's
pole, attaining a speed of six hundred and ninety-two miles per second,
Rhadampsicus turned to her with enthusiasm.
"Exactly in the pattern of a flare-up according to Dhokis' theory!" he
exclaimed. "I have always thought he was more nearly right than the
modernists. Radiation pressure can build up in a closed system such
as the interior of a sun. It can equal the gravitational constant. And
obviously it would break loose at the pole."
Then he saw that Nodalictha's manner was one of distress. He was
instantly concerned.
"What's the matter, darling?" he asked anxiously. "I didn't mean to
neglect you, my precious one!"
Nodalictha did something that would have scared a human being out of a
year's growth, but was actually the equivalent of an unhappy, stifled
sob.
"I am a beast!" said Rhadampsicus penitently. "I've kept you here, in
boredom, while I enjoyed myself watching this sun do tricks. I'm truly
sorry, Nodalictha. We will go on at once. I shouldn't have asked you
to--"
But Nodalictha said unhappily, "It isn't you, Rhadampsicus. It's me!
While you've been watching the star, I've amused myself watching those
quaint little creatures on the second planet. I've thought of them
as--well, as pets. I've grown fond of them. It was absurd of me--"
"Oh, but it is wonderful of you," said Rhadampsicus tenderly. "I love
you all the more for it, my darling. But why are you unhappy about
them? I made sure they had food and energy."
"They're going to be burned up!" wailed Nodalictha, "and they're so
cute!"
Rhadampsicus blinked his eyes--all sixteen of them. Then he said
self-accusingly, "My dear, I should have thought of that. Of course
this is only a flare-up, darling...." Then he made an impatient
gesture. "I see! You would rather think of them as happy, in their
little way, than as burned to tiny crisps."
He considered, scanning the second planet with the normal anxiety of a
bridegroom to do anything that would remove a cloud from his bride's
lovely sixteen eyes.
* * * * *
Night fell on Cetopolis, and with it came some slight alleviation of
the dreadfulness that had begun that afternoon. The air was furnacelike
in heat and dryness. There was the smell of smoke everywhere. The stars
were faint and red and ominous, seen through the smoke that overlay
everything. So far, to be sure, breathing was possible. It was even
possible to be comfortable in an air-conditioned room. But this was
only the beginning.
Lon and Cathy sat together on the porch of his house, after sundown.
The other colonists had gone away to their own homes. When the crack
of doom has visibly begun, men do queer things. In Cetopolis some
undoubtedly got drunk, or tried to. But there were farmers who would
spend this last night looking at their drooping crops, trying to
persuade themselves that if Cetis Gamma only went back to normal before
sunrise, the crops might yet be saved. But none of them expected it.
Off to the south there was an angry reddish glare in the sky. That was
vegetation on the desert there, burning. It grew thick as jungle in the
rainy season, and dried out to pure dessication in dry weather. It had
caught fire of itself from the sun's glare in late afternoon. Great
clouds of acrid smoke rose from it to the stars.
Beyond the horizon to the west there was destruction.
Lon and Cathy sat close together. She hadn't even asked to be taken
back to Cetopolis, as convention would have required. The sun
was growing hotter still while it sank below the horizon. It was
expanding in fits and starts as new writhing spouts of stuff from its
interior burst the bonds of gravity. Blazing magma flung upward in an
unthinkable eruption. The sun had been three times normal size when it
set.
Lon was no astronomer, but plainly the end of life on the inner planets
of Cetis Gamma was at hand.
Cetis Gamma might, he considered, be in the process of becoming a
nova. Certainly beyond the horizon there was even more terrible heat
than had struck the human colony before sundown. Even if the sun
did not explode, even if it was only as fiercely blazing as at its
setting, they would die within hours after sunrise. If it increased in
brightness, by daybreak its first rays would be death itself. When dawn
came, the very first direct beams would set the shiver trees alight on
the hilltops, and as it rose the fires would go down into the valleys.
This house would smoke and writhe and melt; the air would become flame,
and the planet's surface would glow red-hot as it turned into the
sunshine.
* * * * *
"It's going to be--all right, Lon," Cathy said unconvincedly. "It's
just something happening that'll be over in a little while. But--in
case it isn't--we might as well be together. Don't you think so?"
Lon put his arm comfortingly around her. He felt a very strong impulse
to lie. He could pretend to vast wisdom and tell her the sun's behavior
was this or that, and never lasted more than a few hours, but she'd
know he lied. They could spend their last hours trying to deceive each
other out of pure affection. But they'd know it was deceit.
"D-don't you think so?" insisted Cathy faintly.
He said gently, "No, Cathy, and neither do you. This is the finish. It
would've been a lot nicer to go on living, the two of us. We'd have had
long, long years to be together. We'd have had kids, and they'd have
grown up, and we'd have had--a lot of things. But now I'm afraid we
won't."
He tried to smile at her, but it hurt. He thought passionately that
he would gladly submit himself to be burned in the slowest and most
excruciating manner if only she could be saved from it. But he couldn't
do anything.
Cathy gulped. "I-I'm afraid so, too, Lon," she said in a small voice.
"But it's nice we met each other, anyhow. Now we know we love each
other. I don't like the idea of dying, but I'm glad we knew we loved
each other before it happened."
Lon's hands clenched fiercely. Then the rage went away. He said almost
humorously, "Carson--he's back in Cetopolis. I wonder how he feels. He
has no better chance than anybody else. Maybe he's sent off spacegrams,
but no ship could possibly get here in time."
Cathy shivered a little. "Let's not think about him. Just about us. We
haven't much time."
And just then, very strangely, an idea came to Lon Simpson. He tensed.
After a moment, he said in a very queer voice, "This isn't a nova. It's
a flare-up. The sun isn't exploding. It's just too hot, too big for the
temperature inside it, and it's a closed system. So radiation pressure
has been building up. Now it's got to be released. So it will spout
geysers of its own substance. They'll go out over hundreds of thousands
of miles. But in a couple of weeks it will be back--nearly--to normal."
He suddenly knew that. He knew why it was so. He could have explained
it completely and precisely. But he didn't know how he knew. The items
that added together were themselves so self evident that he didn't even
wonder how he knew them. They _had_ to be so!
* * * * *
Cathy said muffledly, her face against his shoulder, "But we won't be
alive in a couple of weeks, Lon. We can't live long past daybreak."
He did not answer. There were more ideas coming into his mind. He
didn't know where they came from. But again they were such self
evident, unquestionable facts that he did not wonder about them. He
simply paid tense, desperately concentrated attention as they formed
themselves.
"We--may live," he said shakily. "There's an ionosphere up at the
top of the atmosphere here, just like there is on Earth. It's made
by the sunlight ionizing the thin air. The--stronger sunlight will
multiply the ionization. There'll be an--actually conducting layer of
air.... Yes.... The air will become a conductor, up there." He wet his
lips. "If I make a--gadget to--short-circuit that conducting layer to
the ground here.... When radiation photons penetrate a transparent
conductor--but there aren't any transparent conductors--the photons
will--follow the three-finger rule....
"They'll move at right angles to their former course--"
He swallowed. Then he got up very quietly. He put her aside. He went
to his tool shed. He climbed to the roof of the barn now filled with
_thanar_ leaves. He swung his axe.
The barn was roofed with aluminum over malleable plastic. The useful
property of malleable plastic is that it does not yield to steady
pressure, but does yield to shock. It will stay in shape indefinitely
under a load, but one can tap it easily into any form one desires.
Lon swung his axe, head down. Presently he asked Cathy to climb up a
ladder and hold a lantern for him. He didn't need light for the rough
work--the burning desert vegetation gave enough for that. But when one
wants to make a parabolic reflector by tapping with an axe, one needs
light for the finer part of the job.
* * * * *
In Cetopolis, Carson agitatedly put his records on tape and sent it all
off by spacegram. He'd previously reported on Lon Simpson, but now he
knew that he was going to die. And he followed his instinct to transmit
all his quite useless records, in order that his superiors might
realize he had been an admirable employee. It did not occur to him that
his superiors might be trying frantically to break his sending beam to
demand that he find out how Lon Simpson made his power gadget and how
he converted vegetation, before it was too late. They didn't succeed in
breaking his beam, because Carson kept it busy.
He was true to type.
Elsewhere, other men were true to type, too. The human population of
Cetis Gamma Two was very small. There were less than five thousand
people on the planet--all within a hundred miles of Cetopolis, and all
now on the night side. The rest of the planet's land masses scorched
and shriveled and burst into flame where the sun struck them. The few
small oceans heated and their surfaces even boiled. But nobody saw it.
The local fauna and flora died over the space of continents.
But in the human settlement area, people acted according to
their individual natures. Some few ran amok and tried to destroy
everything--including themselves--before the blazing sun could return
to do it. More sat in stunned silence, waiting for doom. A few dug
desperately, trying to excavate caves or pits in which they or their
wives or children could be safe....
But Lon pounded at his barn roof. He made a roughly parabolic mirror
some three yards across. He stripped off aluminum siding and made a
connection with the ground. He poured water around that connection. He
built a crude multiply twisted device of copper wire and put it in the
focus of the parabolic mirror.
He looked up at the sky. The stars seemed dimmer. He took the copper
thing away, and they brightened a little. He carefully adjusted it
until the stars were at their dimmest.
He descended to the ground again. He felt an odd incredulity about what
he'd done. He didn't doubt that it would work. He was simply unable to
understand how he'd thought of it.
* * * * *
"There, darling! Your pets are quite safe!" Rhadampsicus said pleasedly.
Nodalictha scanned the second planet. It was apparently coated with a
metallic covering. But it was not quite like metal. It was misty, like
an unsubstantial barrier to light--and to Nodalictha's penetrating
thoughts.
"I had your male pet," Rhadampsicus explained tenderly, "set up a power
beam link to the ionosphere. With several times the usual degree of
ionization--because of the flaring sun--the grounded ionosphere became
a _Rhinthak_ screen about the planet. The more active the sun, the
more dense the screen. They'll have light to see by when their side of
the planet is toward the sun, but no harmful radiation can get down to
them. And the screen will fade away as the sun goes back to its normal
state."
Nodalictha rejoiced. Then she was a little distressed.
"But now I can't watch them!" she pouted. Rhadampsicus watched her
gravely. She said ruefully, "I see, Rhadampsicus. You've spoiled me!
But if I can't watch them for the time being, I won't have anything to
occupy me. Darling Rhadampsicus, you must talk to me sometimes!"
He talked to her absorbedly. He seemed to think, however, that
discussion of the local solar phenomena was conversation. With
feminine guile, she pretended to be satisfied, but presently she went
back to her housekeeping. She began to dream of their life when they
had returned home, and of the residence they would inhabit there.
Presently she was planning the parties she would give as a young
matron, with canapés of krypton snow and zenon ice, with sprinklings of
lovely red nickel bromide crystals for a garnish--
* * * * *
The sun rose again, and they lived. It was as if the sky were covered
with a thick cloud bank which absorbed the monstrous radiation of a sun
now four times its previous diameter and madly changing shape like a
monstrous ameba of flame.
In time the sun set. It rose again. It set. And Cetis Gamma Two
remained a living planet instead of being a scorched cinder.
When four days had gone by and nobody died, the colonists decided that
they might actually keep on living. They had at first no especially
logical foundation for their belief.
But Cathy boasted. And she boasted in Cetopolis. Since they were going
to keep on living, the conventions required that she return to the
planet's one human settlement and her duties as a beamphone operator.
It wasn't proper for her to stay unchaperoned so long as she and Lon
weren't married yet.
She had no difficulty with Carson. He didn't refer to her desertion.
Carson had his own troubles. Now that he had decided that he would
live, his problems multiplied. The colonists' barns were filled to
capacity with _thanar_ leaves which would pay off their debts to the
Company. He began to worry about that.
Lost without the constant directives from the Company, he had his
technicians step up the power in the settlement transmitter. He
knew that the screen Lon had put up would stop ordinary spacegram
transmission. Even with a tight beam, he could broadcast and receive
only at night, when the screen was thinnest. Even so, he had to search
out holes in the screen.
The system didn't work perfectly--it wasn't two-way at all, until the
Company stepped up the power in its own transmitter--but spacegrams
started to get through again.
Carson smiled in relief. He began to regain some of his old arrogantly
bored manner. Now that the Company's guiding hand was once more with
him, nothing seemed as bad as it had been. He was able to report that
something had happened to save the colony from extinction, and that
Lon Simpson had probably done it.
In return, he got a spacegram demanding full particulars, and precise
information on the devices he had reported Lon Simpson to have made.
Humbly, Carson obeyed his corporation.
* * * * *
He pumped Cathy--which was not difficult, because she was bursting with
pride in Lon. She confirmed, in detail, the rumor that Lon was somehow
responsible for the protective screen that was keeping everybody alive.
Carson sent the information by spacegram. He was informed that a
special Company ship was heading for Cetis Gamma Two at full speed.
Carson would take orders from its skipper when it arrived. Meanwhile,
he would buy _thanar_ leaf if absolutely necessary, but stall as long
as possible. The legal staff of the Trading Company was working on
the problem of adapting the system to get the new surplus supplies of
_thanar_ without letting anybody get anything in particular for it. He
would keep secret the coming of the special ship, which was actually
the space yacht of a member of the Board of Directors. And he would
display great friendliness toward Lon Simpson.
The last was the difficult part, because Lon Simpson was becoming
difficult. With the sun writhing as if in agony overhead--seen dimly
through a permanent blessed mistiness--and changing shape from hour
to hour, Lon Simpson had discovered something new to get mad about.
Lon had felt definitely on top of the world. He had solved the problem
of clearing his debts and getting credit sufficient for two passages
back to Earth, with money there to take care of getting rich on his
inventions. There was no reason to delay marriage. He wanted to get
married. And through a deplorable oversight, there had been no method
devised by which a legal marriage ceremony could be performed on Cetis
Gamma Two.
It was one of those accidental omissions which would presently be
rectified. But the legal minds who'd set up the system for the planet
had been thinking of money, not marriages. They hadn't envisioned
connubial bliss as a service the Company should provide. And Lon was
raising cain. His barn was literally bursting with _thanar_ leaves,
and he was filling up his attic, extra bedroom, living quarters and
kitchen with more. He was rich. He wanted to get married. And it wasn't
possible.
Lon was in a position to raise much more cain than ordinary. He'd made
an amicable bargain with his fellow colonists. They brought truckloads
of miscellaneous foliage to be put into his vegetation converter, and
he converted it all into _thanar_ leaves. The product was split two
ways. Everybody was happy--except Carson--Because every colonist had
already acquired enough _thanar_ leaf to pay himself out of debt, and
was working on extra capital.
If this kept up, the galactic market would be broken.
Carson had nightmares about that.
* * * * *
So the sun went through convulsions in emptiness, and nobody on its
second planet paid any attention at all. After about a week, it
occasionally subsided. When that happened, the ionization of the
planet's upper atmosphere lessened, the radiation screen grew thinner,
and a larger proportion of light reached the surface. When the sun
flared higher, the shield automatically grew thicker. An astronomical
phenomenon which should have destroyed all life on the inner planets
came to be taken for granted.
But events on the second planet were not without consequences
elsewhere. The Board of Directors of the Cetis Gamma Trading Company
simultaneously jittered and beamed with anticipation. If Lon could
convert one form of vegetable product into another, then the Company's
monopoly of _thanar_ would vanish as soon as he got loose with his
device. On the other hand, if the Company could get that device for its
very own....
_Thanar_ had a practically unlimited market. Every year a new age
group of the population needed a milligram a day to keep old age away.
But besides that, there was Martian _zuss_ fiber, which couldn't be
marketed because there wasn't enough of it, but would easily fetch a
thousand credits a kilo if Lon's gadget could produce it from samples.
There was that Arcturian _sicces_ dust--the pollen of an inordinately
rare plant on Arcturus Four--which could be sold at more than its
weight in diamonds, for perfume. And--
The directors of the Company shivered over what might happen; and
gloated over what could. So they kept their fingers crossed while the
space yacht of one of their number sped toward Cetis Gamma Two, manned
by very trustworthy men who would carry out their instructions with
care and vigor and no nonsense about it.
Lon Simpson worked with his neighbors, converting all sorts of
vegetable debris--the fact that some of it was scorched did not
seem to matter--into _thanar_ leaf which was sound legal tender on
that particular planet. From time to time he went to Cetopolis. He
talked sentimentally and yearningly to Cathy. And then he went to
Carson's office and raised the very devil because there was as yet no
arrangement by which he and Cathy could enter into the state of holy
matrimony.
* * * * *
Rhadampsicus looked over his notes and was very well pleased. He
explained to Nodalictha that from now on the return of Cetis Gamma to
its normal condition would be a cut-and-dried affair. He would like to
stay and watch it, but the important phenomena were all over now. He
said solicitously that if she wanted to go on, completing their nuptial
journey.... She might be anxious to see her family and friends.... She
might be lonely....
Nodalictha smiled at him. The process would have been horrifying to a
human who watched, but Rhadampsicus smiled back.
"Lonely?" asked Nodalictha coyly. "With you, Rhadampsicus?"
He impulsively twined his eye stalks about hers. A little later he was
saying tenderly, "Then I'll just finish my observations, darling, and
we'll go on--since you don't mind waiting."
"I'd like to see my pets again," said Nodalictha, nestling comfortably
against him.
Together, they scanned the second planet, but their thoughts could
not penetrate its _Rhinthak_ screen. They saw the space yacht flash
up to it. Rhadampsicus inspected the minds of the bipeds inside it.
Nodalictha, of course, modestly refrained from entering the minds of
male creatures other than her husband.
"Peculiar," commented Rhadampsicus. "Very peculiar. If I were a
sociologist, I might find it less baffling. But they must have a very
queer sort of social system. They actually intend to harm your pets,
Nodalictha, because the male now knows how to supply them all with food
and energy! Isn't that strange? I wish the _Rhinthak_ screen did not
block off scanning.... But it will fade, presently."
"You will keep the others from harming my pets," said Nodalictha
confidently. "Do you know, darling, I think I must be quite the
luckiest person in the Galaxy, to be married to you."
* * * * *
The space yacht landed at the field outside Cetopolis. Inhabitants
of the tiny town flocked to the field to see new faces. They were
disappointed. One man came out and the airlock closed. No visitors.
The skipper went into Carson's office. He closed the door firmly
behind him. He had very beady eyes and a very hard-boiled expression.
He looked at Carson with open contempt, and Carson felt that it was
because Carson did the Company's dirty work with figures and due
regard for law and order, instead of frankly and violently and without
shilly-shallying.
"This Lon Simpson's got those gadgets, eh?" asked the skipper.
"Why--yes," said Carson unhappily. "He's very popular at the moment. He
made something on his barn roof that kept the sun from burning us all
to death, you know--that still keeps us from burning to death, for that
matter."
"So if we take it away or smash it," observed the skipper, "we don't
have to worry about anybody saying nasty things about us afterward.
Yeah?"
Carson swallowed.
"Everybody'd die if you smashed the gadget," he admitted, "but all the
_thanar_ plants in existence would be burned up, too. There'd be no
more _thanar_. The Company wouldn't like that."
The skipper waved his hand. "How do I get this Simpson on my ship? Take
a bunch of my men and go grab him?"
"Wh-what are you going to do with him?"
"Don't you worry," said the skipper comfortingly. "We know how to
handle it. He knows how to make some things the bosses want to know how
to make. Once I get him on the ship, he'll tell. We got ways. Do I take
some men and grab him, or will you get him on board peaceable?"
"There--ah--" Carson licked his lips. "He wants to get married. There's
no provision in the legal code for it, as yet. It was overlooked. But I
can tell him that as a ship captain, you--"
The skipper nodded matter of factly.
"Right. You get him and the girl on board. And I've got some orders for
you. Gather up plenty of _thanar_ seed. Get some starting trays with
young plants in them. I'll come back in a couple of days and take you
and them on board. The stuff this guy has got is too good, understand?"
"N-no. I'm afraid I don't."
* * * * *
"I get this guy to tell us how to make his gadgets," the skipper
explained contemptuously. "We make sure he tells us right. To be extra
sure, we leave the gadgets he's got made and working back here, where
he can't get to 'em and spoil 'em. But when we know all he knows--and
what he only guesses, too, and my tame scientists have made the same
kinda gadgets, an' they work--why, we come back and pick you up, and
the _thanar_ seed and the young growing plants. Then we get the gadgets
this guy made here, and we head back for Earth."
"But if you take the gadget that keeps us all from being burned up--"
Carson said agitatedly, "if you do, everybody here--"
"Won't that be too bad!" the skipper said ironically. "But you won't be
here. You'll be on the yacht. Don't worry. Now go fix it for the girl
and him to walk into our parlor."
Carson's hand shook as he reached for the beamphone. His voice was not
quite normal as he explained to Cathy in the exchange that the skipper
of the space yacht had the legal power to perform marriage ceremonies
in space. And Carson, as a gesture of friendship to one of the most
prominent colonists, had asked if the captain would oblige Cathy and
Lon. The captain had agreed. If they made haste, he would take them out
in space and marry them.
The skipper of the space yacht regarded him with undisguised scorn when
he hung up the phone and mopped his face.
"Pretty girl, eh?" he asked contemptuously, "and you didn't have the
nerve to grab her for yourself?" He did not wait for an answer. "I'll
look her over. You get your stuff ready for when I come back in a
couple of days."
"But--when you release them," Carson said shakily, "They'll report--"
The skipper looked at Carson without any expression at all. Then he
went out.
Carson felt sick. But he was a very loyal employee of the Cetis Gamma
Trading Company. From the windows of his air-conditioned office, he
watched Lon Simpson greet Cathy on his arrival in Cetopolis. He saw
Cathy put a sprig of _chanel_ blossoms on the lapel of her very best
suit, in lieu of a bridal bouquet. And he watched them go with shining
faces toward the airport. He didn't try to stop them.
Later he heard the space yacht take off.
* * * * *
Nodalictha prepared to share the thoughts and the happiness of the
female biped whose emotions were familiar, since Nodalictha was so
recently a bride herself. Rhadampsicus was making notes, but he
gallantly ceased when Nodalictha called to him. They sat, then, before
their crude but comfortable bower on the ninth planet, all set to share
the quaint rejoicing of the creatures of which Nodalictha had grown
fond.
Nodalictha penetrated the thoughts of the female, in pleased
anticipation. Rhadampsicus scanned the mind of the male, and his
expression changed. He shifted his thought to another and another of
the bipeds in the ship's company. He spoke with some distaste.
"The ones you consider your pets, Nodalictha, are amiable enough. But
the others--" He frowned. "Really, darling, if you went into their
minds, you'd be most displeased. They are quite repulsive. Let's forget
about them and start for home. If you really care for pets, we've much
more suitable creatures there."
Nodalictha pouted.
"Rhadampsicus, let's just watch their marriage ceremony. It is so
cute to think of little creatures like that loving each other--and
marrying--"
Rhadampsicus withdrew his thought from the space yacht and looked
about the charming rural retreat he and Nodalictha had occupied.
Its nitrogen-snow walls glittered in the starlight. The garden of
cyanogen flowers and the border of ammonia crystals and the walkway
of monoclinic sulphur, and the reflection pool of liquid hydrogen
he'd installed in an odd half hour. These were simple, but they were
delightful. The crudity of the space yacht with its metal walls so
curiously covered over with a coating of lead oxide in hardened oil,
and the vegetable gum flooring.... Rhadampsicus did not like the
surroundings men made for themselves in space.
"Very well, darling," he said resignedly. "We will watch, and then
we'll take off for home. I'm anxious to see what the modernists have
to say when I show them my notes on this flare-up.--And of course," he
added with grave humor, "you want to show your family that I haven't
ill-treated you."
He was the barest trace impatient, but Nodalictha's thoughts were with
the female biped in the spaceship. Her expression was distressed.
"Rhadampsicus!" she said angrily. "The other bipeds are being unkind to
my pets! Do something! I don't like them!"
* * * * *
A sailor in a soiled uniform led them into the space yacht's saloon.
The airlock clanked shut, and the yacht soared for the skies. The
sailor vanished. Nobody else came near. Then Lon stiffened. He got the
flavor of his surroundings. He had Cathy with him. On her account, his
flesh crawled suddenly.
This was a space yacht, but of a very special kind. It was a pleasure
ship. The decorations were subtly disgusting. There were pictures on
the walls, and at first glance they were pretty enough, but on second
glance they were disquieting, and when carefully examined they were
elaborately and allusively monstrous. This was the yacht of someone
denying that anything could be more desirable than pleasure--and who
took his pleasure in a most unattractive fashion.
Lon grasped this much, and it occurred to him that the crew of such a
yacht would be chosen for its willingness to coöperate in its owner's
enterprises. And Lon went somewhat pale, for Cathy was with him.
The ship went up and up, with the dark shutters over the ports showing
that it was in sunshine fierce enough to be dangerous on unshielded
flesh. Presently there was the feel of maneuvering. After a time the
shutters flipped open and stars were visible.
Lon went quickly to a port and looked out. The great black mass of the
night side of Cetis Gamma Two filled half the firmament. It blotted
out the sun. The space yacht might be two or three thousand miles up
and in the planet's umbra--its shadow--which was not necessary for a
space wedding, or for anything involving a reasonably brief stay in the
excessive heat Cetis Gamma gave off.
There were clankings. A door opened. The skipper came in and Cathy
smiled at him because she didn't realize Lon's fierce apprehension.
Four other men followed, all in soiled and untidy space yacht uniforms,
then two other men in more ordinary clothing. Their expressions were
distinctly uneasy.
The four sailors walked matter of factly over to Lon and grabbed at
him. They should have taken him completely by surprise, but he had been
warned just enough to explode into battle. It was a very pretty fight,
for a time. Lon kept three of them busy. One snarled with a wrenched
wrist, another spat blood and teeth and a third had a closed eye before
the fourth swung a chair. Then Lon hit something with his head. It was
the deck, but he didn't know it.
* * * * *
When he came to, he was hobbled. He was not bound so he couldn't move,
but his hands were handcuffed together, with six inches of chain
between for play. His ankles were similarly restricted. He could
move, but he could not fight. Blood was trickling down his temple and
somebody was holding his head up.