That palace was like nothing on earth. Naturally, you'll say, it's
on Jupiter. But I mean it was even queerer than that. It was like no
building on any planet at all. And, in fact, it wasn't on a planet; it
was floating up there only two hundred miles in from the raw edge of
space.
In that building everything stayed right where it was put. If it was
put twelve or fifty feet up off the floor, it stayed there. Not that
there wasn't gravity. There was plenty of gravity to suit me--just
right, in fact--and still they had furniture sitting around in the air
as solid as if on a floor. Which was fine for flying hopper-scorps, but
what about Casey Ritter, who hadn't cultivated even a feather?
Attaboy, however, had the answers for everything. Towing me from the
airlock to the window ledge, he again sniffed that delectable odor on
my chest, caressed me with his front pair of legs while I manfully
endured, and then without warning tossed me onto his back above the
little box and flew off with me along a tunnel with luminous red walls.
We finally came to the central hall of the palace, and at the sight
of all that space dropping away, I clutched at his shell and nearly
dropped the arsenic. But he didn't have any brakes I could grab, so he
just flew out into mid-air in a room that could have swallowed a city
block, skyscrapers and all. It was like a mammoth red cavern, and it
glowed like the inside of a red light.
No wonder those scorpions like green and purple. What a relief from all
that red!
A patch in the middle of the hall became a floating platform holding up
a divan twenty feet square covered with stuff as green as new spring
grass, and in the center of this reclined Akroida. It had to be. Who
else could look like that? No one, believe me, boys and girls, no one!
Our little Akroida was a pure and peculiarly violent purple--not a
green edge anywhere. She was even more purple than my fancy enameled
space suit, and she was big enough to comfortably fill most of that
twenty-foot couch. To my shrinking eyes right then she looked as big as
a ten-ton cannon and twice as mean and dangerous. She was idly nipping
here and there as though she was just itching to take a hunk out of
somebody, and the way the servants were edging away out around her, I
could see they didn't want to get in range. I didn't blame them a bit.
Under the vicious sag of her Roman nose, her mandibles kept grinding,
shaking the jewels that were hung all over her repulsive carcass, and
making the Halcyon Diamond on her chest blaze like a bonfire.
Attaboy dumped me onto a floating cushion where I lay clutching and
shuddering away from her and from the void all around me, and went
across to her alone with the arsenic.
Akroida rose up sort of languidly on an elbow that was all stripped
bone and sharp as a needle. She pulled an eyeball out about a yard and
scanned Attaboy and the box. He closed in to the couch all hunched
over, ducked his head humbly half-a-dozen times, and pushed the box
over beside her. Akroida eased her eyeball back, opened the box and
sniffed, and then turned to Attaboy with a full-blown Satanic grin. I
could hear her question reverberate away over where I was.
"Who from?" asked Akroida.
That conversation was telegraphed to me blow by blow by the actions of
those hopper-scorps. I didn't need their particular brand of Morse Code
at all.
"Who from?" Attaboy cringed lower and blushed a purple all-over blush.
"Dear lady, it is from an interspace trader who possesses some truly
remarkable jewels," he confessed coyly.
Akroida toyed with the Halcyon Diamond and ignored the bait. "His
name?" she demanded. And when he told her, with a bad stutter in
his code, she reared up higher on her skinny elbow and glared in my
direction. "Casey Ritter? Never heard of him. Where's he from?"
Well, after all, she wasn't blind. He had to confess. "I--uh--the
stones were so amazing, Royal Akroida, that I didn't pay much attention
to the--uh--trader. He does seem to resemble an--ah--earthman." He
ducked his head and fearfully waited.
A sort of jerking quiver ran through Akroida. She reared up even
higher. Her mean Roman nose twitched. "An earthman? Like Pard Hoskins?"
Attaboy shrank smaller and smaller. He could only nod dumbly.
The storm broke, all right. That old dame let out a scream like a
maddened stallion and began to thrash around and flail her couch with
that dragon's tail of hers.
* * * * *
I began to quake all over. My nice little jail, I thought frantically.
My cozy little cell. Those dear sweet guards. I'd left them all to be
eaten alive by that purple devil. Why didn't I bat my silly brains
out on my cell wall when this idea first sneaked in? Marooned on that
damned hassock a hundred feet above the floor I began to think, and
fast.
"Bring him here!" roared Akroida, tapping it out so fast it sounded
like gunfire. She gnashed her mandibles and glared until I started
shriveling. "Bring him here! He'll dare to come around and insult me,
will he? I'll flail him limb from limb and chew his bones to shreds!
I'll bite him into chunks! I'll.... Bring him here!"
She made a furious lunge at Attaboy. Trembling and blanching to a
muddy lavender, he got out of there and scrambled over to me with big
tears rolling down his stiff shell cheeks. Why the poor purple sap, I
thought, he really cares! These things really have feelings! I looked
at him with new respect and even a little affection.
"Look, kid," I admonished, trying to keep my fingers from shaking as
I tapped. "Just don't worry about a thing. I still think I can handle
this. Just take me across slow and easy, and we'll hope for the best."
With a mournful sigh he picked me up, tossed me onto his shoulder, and
as per instructions, drifted over to the floating platform.
All I had was the little bottle of Pard's scorp-scent. "This had better
be good!" I confided to the image of Pard Hoskins, which somehow
managed to get between me and that raging she-dragon on the couch.
"This had sure better be good, son!"
I waited until Akroida was leaning forward practically gnashing her
mandibles in my face while her front pair of legs grabbed and pawed
for me. She was too fat and bulky to jump at me, or I'd have been a
dead planet-bo right there. But I had to take the chance. There wasn't
a drop of perfume to waste. At the last moment I lifted that precious
little bottle and squirted the stuff right in her face.
Her mandibles flew open and stayed there. Slowly her front legs
dropped; a film of ecstasy formed over those wild glittering eyes. She
sank back and began to croon. Yes, croon! My helmet vibrated with it.
Then her long skinny front legs made beckoning motions to me. Frosts of
romance! She wanted me to share her couch!
Attaboy didn't ask if I was willing. Delightedly he dumped me beside
her. And then, having inhaled some of that perfume himself and not
being able to tear himself away, he forgot all about etiquette and
curled up beside us to bask some more in those luscious mists.
* * * * *
What's more revolting than a hopper-scorp in a tantrum? I'll tell you,
chums: a hopper-scorp in the throes of infatuation! Especially when the
hopper-scorp in question is Akroida. For one thing, she's so big. And
for another, she's so unmentionably thorough. She was infatuated from
the spike on her repulsive forehead down to the devilish sting on her
tail. With me!
I tried to tell her it was Attaboy she must love, not me. She merely
wallowed her hideous head, as big as a bucket, in my suffering lap,
clattering it against my enameled space suit; she rolled her horrible
eyes while her whole monstrosity of a body twitched and quivered with
emotion. I tried to turn the conversation to the emeralds. She wasn't
even interested. We hadn't needed the emeralds at all; we'd only needed
Pard's special concoction. Furtively, behind the horseplay, I began to
plan to salvage those emeralds for myself.
That stuff must have been making me delirious, too.
I don't know how long that blood-curdling love scene went on. That
awful she-scorp picked me up and rocked me while I scraped diamonds
and rubies along my visor and chest. She signalled servants who were
hovering on all sides taking in the show, and they rushed to bring
tidbits that I had to hide behind cushions because I couldn't open my
helmet in that atmosphere. Then the servants, getting whiffs of that
cursed perfume, would snuggle up with us, until there wasn't elbow room
on that big couch. Akroida would churn her tail around and knock them
all off so that she could cuddle me better. Then she got the idea of
singing to me. And my air was running out.
Finally, while I still had a bit of air left, the jag began to wear
off, and Akroida slumped over and went to sleep holding me tenderly
against her breast-shell. The moment I felt her grip relax, I wiggled
out of there. Attaboy was fast asleep too. Desperately I decided that
I could row through the air if those scorps could. Grabbing Attaboy's
arm, I stepped off into nothing. Sure enough, the anti-grav worked for
me, too. Sweating with the thought of what would have been left of
Casey Ritter if it hadn't, I sort of swam away from there, towing my
guide. Out at the boat, I anchored him outside the airlock and crawled
inside. I'm not ashamed to admit that I got out of my helmet, gasped in
some good old oxygen, and collapsed. What a day!