IV

When the time rolled around for my next visit to Akroida, I decided

to play it cool and careful. I was fortified with a snooze, a slug of

Scotch, and a meal, but I still wasn't busting out with courage. I made

a mental note to be damn cautious about that perfume. Maybe it was

necessary to overdo it that first time, with her shouting for my blood,

but that was all past I hoped.

I sprayed just a tiny bit on my suit, calculated to soothe and lure

but not to excite. I wanted no more cuddling with Akroida, please!

Then with my pal Attaboy, I stiffened my backbone and plunged out into

that poison gas they call atmosphere. I let Attaboy ferry me. He was

very hazy about our return trip from Akroida's chamber, so I decided to

leave him ignorant. No use to let even him know I could locomote the

scorpion way. I might need to make a getaway, and surprise might be of

the very essence.

But I didn't need to worry. Old Akroida had slept off her jag, and

right away I found out that she wasn't queen-scorp for nothing. The old

girl was real canny. She made Attaboy park me on a hassock just within

tapping distance, and sat there holding her head in a way that made me

soften with sympathy, knowing just how she felt. Many's the time....

Yes, sir, poor old Ak was nursing a real, ten-karat hangover. She waved

a claw so feebly it didn't even stir those ropes of jewels hung all

over her. "Casey Ritter," she tapped. "What did you do to me?"

All to myself, inside my hard-shell suit, I began to laugh; but it was

no laughing matter, because she was beginning to regain her strength.

She pointed a claw at me, and it was quite a bit steadier than the wave

had been. "You did something!" she accused, and very intelligently,

too, for a body that had never before had a hangover. "What was it?"

I didn't like the tone of that, and began tapping out a hasty denial.

"Not intentionally, noble queen, believe me! I simply brought you that

exquisite perfume as a gift from an admirer of yours whom I met on my

way here. I had no idea how strong it was. I should have tested it

first on your servant here." I pointed to Attaboy. "I can see that we

need to thin it some, but it's wonderful, isn't it, now?"

She didn't even flutter an antenna at this coyness. "Earthman," she

tapped out sternly, "you want something. Earthmen always bring trouble,

and they always want something! No Earthman brings presents to Akroida

from simple friendship. Tell me what you're after, Casey Ritter!"

I sighed. "O.K., noble queen. I just wanted to calm you down so I could

talk to you. I didn't have any idea that perfume would affect you that

way. I just thought you'd like it, and then you'd be pleasant and we

could talk."

She snorted like an old war horse, but that hurt her head. After a

minute of clutching it, she groaned, and then tapped carefully, "I'm

calm now. You can talk. What do you want?"

"Fine," I tapped out heartily. "I want to make a trade with you."

Her lack of enthusiasm would have chilled a wooden Indian. But I

figured that the time had come to get on with it, regardless. She just

wasn't going to stall, or let me, either.

"Ah, yes, a trade!" was all she said, but she gave it a nasty twist.

I plunge. "I want to swap your anti-gravity secret for a string of the

most magnificent emeralds you ever dreamed of, Akroida. Why, they'd

make that batch you're wearing look like little glass beads! You'll

have to see them to--"

She didn't let me finish. A sort of high-pitched cackle of amazement

issued from her bony jaws; but then she floored me by changing the

subject completely, I thought. That was just my little error. A man can

sure miss the boat when dealing with these foreign races. She began

to ask me questions about the Earth, and was she interested! She even

forgot about her hangover. And she completely ignored the emeralds.

You'd have thought I hadn't even mentioned the things.

* * * * *

This went on for about an hour, and then all of a sudden she leaned

back on her paris-green cushions, inhaled a pinch of arsenic, and began

to chuckle a sort of brassy chuckle that sent shivers down my back. The

chuckles got bigger and bigger until she busted out into a full-size

horse laugh that would have jangled the chandelier if there'd been one

to jangle.

Her head bounced back and forth on her skinny neck, and the Halcyon

Diamond bounced around on her chest like a loose headlight. All her

jewels began to bounce and jangle. Droves of servants swarmed around

to peek, while Attaboy just floated there with his mouth wide open.

I nudged him. "What's so funny?" I asked, but he only shook his head

dumfounded.

That awful laughing was sure giving me the creeping jeevies, and it

wasn't until she finally tapered off in a series of snorts and giggles

that I began to breathe again. I braced myself for what might come

next. But talk about unpredictable females! Human or scorpion, they're

all the same. She floored me again.

"It's a deal, Casey Ritter!" She tapped out the words with relish.

"Fair and open, straight across the board. Those emeralds for our

anti-gravity plans and formulae."

I was stunned. A statement like that after that laugh! And she hadn't

even seen the emeralds. You couldn't tell old horse trader Ritter that

there wasn't something phony. But she just snickered at my expression

and waved to the servants who were still hovering around. It took a

dozen of them to hoist her up.

With me following on Attaboy, we flew down a serpentine hallway for

half a mile until we came to a room even bigger than her audience

chamber, only this one was filled with machinery suspended in the air

just like the furniture was up above. It was big machinery, too, but it

didn't seem to matter.

Akroida waved a feeler at it all. "Just to show you that I'm not

holding anything back," she tapped out. "Here it all is, and there on

the wall are the plans and descriptions."

Attaboy flew me over, and I stared at them. They were a real neat job,

and the mathematics were the same old math we use on Earth, or I was

even more of a sucker than I thought I was. I shook the old bean to

clear it, but I still couldn't get a glimmer about the caper she was

staging. But I could still hear that laugh....

Well, the rest is history, as the books say. With me still not

believing a word of it, we made the trade, fair and open, as Akroida

had said. She even let me stand by while her scorps copied the plans,

and then I checked and rechecked a dozen times. Not a phony mark

anywhere. When I handed over the emeralds, she cooed in rapture. A

thing like that coo? Well, she did.

Akroida didn't hardly know I was going. She just waved me, her

lover-for-a-day, carelessly away and went on stroking those beauties,

while the hopper-scorps hovered around in such crowds that Attaboy and

I had to elbow our way out of there. As a parting gift, out at the

edge of that hellish Red Spot, I reached out of the lock and handed

Attaboy the little bottle with what was left of the perfume.

"Here you are, pal," I tapped. "This'll promote you to Court Lover

number one. Kiss the old girl for me."

V

Back on Earth I was still trancing around feeling the air with my

fingers and pinching myself here and there just to make sure I had

really got out of that inferno all in one piece, when they hauled

me out to the airport to present me with my ship. They even made

a ceremony of it and gave me a medal for distinguished service to

Mankind. And who do you think presented the medal?

I looked at the dapper little figure waltzing over all togged out

in the S.S.C. uniform, and then I did a double take. It was no

other than my old pal of the Iron College, perfume-manufacturer for

hopper-scorps, Pard Hoskins. He came over and clapped me on the back,

but I didn't feel a thing. I was paralyzed.

So I'd been taken for a ride right from the start. So they'd outsmarted

me all the way: out-fought and out-figured me, and even planted a

stoolie on me and made me like it.

I didn't hear a word they said, nor even notice when they pinned

the medal on. When they got through with me, I just crawled into my

beautiful new ship like it was an old tin can and headed out. I didn't

even care right then if I landed back in Akroida's bony lap. I'd have

stuck my head in her mandibles and told her, "Chew it up, Ak. It's just

a cabbage, anyway."

But a funny thing happened. Out there, mooning along all alone in the

dark with not a soul in a million miles, I heard Akroida laughing. It

was a horrible sound, a kind of metallic neighing and snorting, but

pretty soon I began laughing, too. I didn't know what the joke was, but

all of a sudden I knew I'd find out some day. It did me a lot of good.

I braced up and went on to Venus, where I made some real good trades.

I didn't try any more capers, though. I was all capered out.

It wasn't until a year later, in a joint on Mars, that I ran into Pard

Hoskins again. I gave him the old frost, but he only grinned sort of

sad and touched me for some of that filthy Martian beer. He looked real

seedy.

"What's the matter?" I asked, as sarcastic as I could manage. "They

sending you over the road again to nab another sucker?"

He shook his head, and sighed into his beer. "I got fired, Casey," he

confessed. "Over that there Killicut caper. Those plans--I might of

known." He shook his head again like a tired old man.

A shiver ran over me. "Here it comes," I thought.

"What about those plans?" I asked. "Weren't they all O.K.?"

He sighed again. "Nope. Oh, the plans was O.K. They was strictly bona

fide. Only they won't work on Earth. I told 'em about that anti-grav in

the first place. Then I almost caused an inter-world incident stealin'

the Killicut Emeralds. And now the damn thing won't work on Earth!" He

set to chewing his lip and staring into his beer.

I took him by his scrawny shoulder and shook. "Why won't it work?" I

yelled. "I knew there was something, the way she laughed! Why won't it

work?"

He stared dully at me. "Laugh, did she? Well, she sure had the last

laugh. It won't work in our atmosphere; just on a chlorine or methane

planet. It works like the poles of a battery. That Great Red Spot is

just the negative pole. All those there plants change the atmosphere

just enough to make it a strong negative field. Then all they have to

do is counter-balance that with enough positive, and there they are. It

works like anti-gravity, only it ain't. Only we ain't got an atmosphere

we can work that way. Cripes! So she laughed!" His hoarse voice stopped

and he stared bitterly at the wall. Then he cussed for two minutes

without stopping. He took a big swig of that rotten beer. "I'll bet

she's laughing herself fat, the old rip!"

Well, I hope she is. In the dead of night sometimes I can hear her; and

pretty soon I'm laughing, too....