"You made another gadget," said the skipper, with relish, "that turns
out power without fuel. The Company wants that, too. Spacelines will
pay for it. Cities will pay for it. It ought to be a pretty nice thing.
You're gonna make plans and explanations of how that works and we're
gonna make sure they're right. That clear?"
"Will you let us go when I've told you?" Lon asked bitterly.
"Not without one more gadget," the skipper added amiably. "You made
something that put a screen around the planet yonder, so it didn't
get burned up. It'd oughta be useful. The company'll put one around
Mercury. Convenient for minin' operations. One around that planet
that's too close to Sirius. Oh, there's plenty of places that'll be
useful. So you'll get set to draw up the plans for that, too--_and_
explanations of how it works. Then we'll talk about lettin' you go."
* * * * *
Lon knew that he wouldn't be let go in any case. Not after he'd told
them what was wanted. Not by men who'd work on a pleasure craft like
this. Not with Cathy a prisoner with him. But he might as well get all
the cards down.
"And if I won't tell you what you want to know?" he asked.
The skipper shrugged his shoulders. "You were knocked out a while," he
said without heat. "While we were waitin' for you to come to, we told
her--" he jerked his thumb at Cathy--"what would happen to her if you
weren't obligin'. We told her plenty. She knows we mean it. We won't
hurt you until we've finished with her. So you'd better get set to
talk. I'll let her see if she can persuade you peaceable. I'll give her
ten minutes."
He went out. The door clicked shut behind him and Lon knew that this
was the finish. He looked at Cathy's dazed, horror-filled eyes. He knew
this wasn't a bluff. He was up against the same system that had brought
colonists to Cetis Gamma Two. The brains that had planned that system
had planned this. They'd gotten completely qualified men to do their
dirty work in both cases.
"Lon, darling! Please kill me!" Cathy said in a hoarse whisper.
He looked at her in astonishment.
"Please kill me!" repeated Cathy desperately. "They--they can't ever
dare let us go, Lon, after what they've told me! They've got to kill us
both. But--Lon, darling--please kill me first...."
An idea came into Lon's mind. He surveyed it worriedly. He knew that he
would have to tell what he knew and then he would be killed. The Cetis
Gamma Trading Company wanted his inventions, and it would need him dead
after it had them.
The idea was hopeless, but he had to try it. They knew he'd made
gadgets which did remarkable things. If he made something now and
persuaded them that it was a weapon....
His flesh crawled with horror. Not for himself, but for Cathy. He
fumbled in his pockets. A pocket knife. A key chain. String. His
face was completely gray. He ripped an upholstered seat. There were
coiled springs under the foamite. He pulled away a piece of decorative
molding. He knew it wouldn't work, but there wasn't anything else
to do. His hands moved awkwardly, with the handcuffs limiting their
movements.
Time passed. He had something finished. It was a bit of wood with a
coil spring from the chair, with his key chain wrapped around it and
his pocket knife set in it so that the blade would seem to make a
contact. But it would achieve nothing whatever.
Cathy stared at him. Her eyes were desperate, but she believed. She'd
seen three equally improbable devices perform wonders. While Lon made
something that looked like the nightmare of an ultimatist sculptor, she
watched in terrified hope.
* * * * *
He had it in his hand when the door opened again and the skipper came
back into the saloon. He said prosaically, "Shall I call in the
scientist guys to listen, or the persuader guys to work on her?"
"Neither. I've made another gadget," Lon said from a dry throat. "It
will kill you. It'll kill everybody on the ship--from here. You're
going to put us back down on the planet below."
The skipper did not look at the gadget, but at Lon's face. Then he
called. The four men of the crew and the two uneasy scientists came in.
"We got to persuade," the skipper said sardonically. "He just told me
he's made a new gadget that'll kill us all."
He moved unhurriedly toward Lon. Lon knew that his bluff was no good.
If the thing had actually been a weapon, he'd have been confident and
assured. He didn't feel that way, but he raised the thing menacingly as
the skipper approached.
The skipper took it away, laughing.
"We'll tie him in a chair an' get to work on her. When he's ready
to talk, we'll stop." He looked at the object in his hands. It was
ridiculous to look at. It was as absurd as the device that extracted
power from matter stresses, and the machine that converted one kind
of vegetation into another, and the apparatus--partly barn roof--that
had short-circuited the ionosphere of Cetis Gamma Two to the planet's
solid surface. It looked very foolish indeed.
The skipper was amused.
"Look out, you fellas," he said humorously. "It's gonna kill you!"
He crooked his finger and the knifeblade made a contact. He swept it
in mock menace about the saloon. The four crew-members and the two
scientists went stiff. He gaped at them, then turned the device to
stare at it incredulously. He came within its range.
He stiffened. Off-balance, he fell on the device, breaking its gimcrack
fastenings and the contact which transmitted nothing that Lon Simpson
could imagine coming out of it. The others fell, one by one, with
peculiarly solid impacts.
Their flesh was incredibly hard. It was as solid, in fact, as so much
mahogany.
* * * * *
Nodalictha said warmly, "You're a darling, Rhadampsicus! It was
outrageous of those nasty creatures to intend to harm my pets! I'm glad
you attended to them!"
"And I'm glad you're pleased, my dear," Rhadampsicus said pleasantly.
"Now shall we set out for home?"
Nodalictha looked about the cosy landscape of the ninth planet of
Cetis Gamma. There were jagged peaks of frozen air, and mountain ranges
of water, solidified ten thousand aeons ago. There were frost-trees
of nitrogen, the elaborate crystal formations of argon, and here a
wide sweep of oxygen crystal sward, with tiny peeping wild crystals of
deep-blue cyanogen seeming to grow more thickly by the brook of liquid
hydrogen. And there was their bower; primitive, but the scene of a true
honeymoon idyll.
"I almost hate to go home, Rhadampsicus," Nodalictha said. "We've been
so happy here. Will you remember it for always?"
"Naturally," said Rhadampsicus. "I'm glad you've been happy."
Nodalictha snuggled up to him and twined eye stalks with him.
"Darling," she said softly, "you've been wonderful, and I've been
spoiled, and you've let me be. But I'm going to be a very dutiful wife
from now on, Rhadampsicus. Only it has been fun, having you be so nice
to me!"
"It's been fun for me, too," replied Rhadampsicus gallantly.
Nodalictha took a last glance around, and each of her sixteen eyes
glowed sentimentally. Then she scanned the far-distant spaceship in the
shadow of the second planet from the now subsiding sun.
"My pets," she said tenderly. "But--Rhadampsicus, what are they doing?"
"They've discovered that the crew of their vehicle--they call it a
space yacht--aren't dead, that they're only in suspended animation. And
they've decided in some uneasiness that they'd better take them back to
Earth to be revived."
"How nice! I knew they were sweet little creatures!"
Rhadampsicus hesitated a moment.
"From the male's mind I gather something else. Since the crew of this
space yacht was incapacitated, and they were--ah--not employed on
it, he and your female will bring it safely to port, and, I gather
that they have a claim to great reward. Ah--it is something they
call 'salvage.' He plans to use it to secure other rewards he calls
'patents' and they expect to live happily ever after."
"And," cried Nodalictha gleefully, "from the female's mind I know that
she is very proud of him, because she doesn't know that you designed
all the instruments he made, darling. She's speaking to him now,
telling him she loves him very dearly."
Then Nodalictha blushed a little, because in a faraway space yacht
Cathy had kissed Lon Simpson. The process seemed highly indecorous to
Nodalictha, so recently a bride.
"Yes," said Rhadampsicus, drily. "He is returning the compliment. It is
quaint to think of such small creatures--Ha! Nodalictha, you should be
pleased again. He is telling her that they will be married when they
reach Earth, and that she shall have a white dress and a veil and a
train. But I am afraid we cannot follow to witness the ceremony."
Their tentacles linked and their positron blasts mingling, the two of
them soared up from the surface of the ninth planet of Cetis Gamma.
They swept away, headed for their home at the extreme outer tip of the
most far-flung arm of the spiral outposts of the Galaxy.
"But still," said Nodalictha, as they swept through emptiness at a
speed unimaginable to humans, "they're wonderfully cute."
"Yes, darling," Rhadampsicus agreed, unwilling to start an argument so
soon after the wedding. "But not as cute as you."
* * * * *
On the space yacht, Lon Simpson tried to use his genius to invent a way
to get his handcuffs and leg-irons off. He failed completely.
Cathy had to get the keys out of the skipper's pocket and unlock them
for him.