Instead of arguing he got out a soldering iron and started it heating.
"You scared of me?" he asked ominously.
"No, Mike. Of course not. We're shipmates." But it was a lie, a damned
big lie. He knew it and I knew it, and I knew that he knew it.
He touched a wet forefinger to the iron. It sizzled.
"My!" he said, sounding like the smooth menace from some telaudio
spooky-show. "What a nice red nose you're going to have--if you don't
start talking!"
"Mike!" I begged. "You can't do that to me! We're old friends!
Remember?"
But he did it. The tip of the iron on the tip of my nose, and it hurt.
I yowled, mostly in utter panic rather than pain. My phobia was working
overtime.
"Enough?" he asked. "I'll keep it up if I have to."
I thought it over. Crazy as he was, he might throw a dead short across
the secondaries. Fission packs won't stand that without exploding. So
I talked. Once I tried to give him a bum steer that would cut down the
current, but he sensed it and waved the soldering iron at me again.
When he had all the dope he needed he took time out to smear ointment
on my nose. It made me look cross-eyed and I still wanted to touch the
burn, but he refused to reduce the pressure even enough for me to work
one arm loose.
"Sorry, Swede," he chuckled. "It's for your own good. You're insane, so
I can't take chances."
"Me?" I bellowed, for a moment forgetting even my blistered nose. I
called him several names.
Mike laughed--like crazy.
"Now to get Bill back here. We'll even leave the port open for him."
I thought that was good, until he removed a tank of sleep gas from its
brackets and dragged it to the entry.
"You can't reach Bill on the Hustic," I reminded him. "Use the radio."
"And let him know who's making like a caterpillar in a cocoon?" Once
more I thought of the supernormal cleverness of lunacy.
He made some painstaking adjustments on the Hustic and flicked the
changeover switch to _send_.
Through the open port I could see three of the Marties watching the
_Banshee_. If they'd been humans I'd have yelled for help, but with
Marties I'd have been wasting my breath.
Mike kept stepping up the power. His lips were tight and his eyes
squinted in concentration. And then I saw one of the Marties move.
Actually make an aimless movement. He shifted from one foot to the
other. The second turned his hand from side to side as though uneasy.
The third took a few steps back and forth. And Martians just didn't
act like that.
"Secondary effects," Mike grunted. "I'm not tuned on them, but the wave
spills over."
"Huh?"
Mike didn't answer. He just sat there _thinking_ into the Hustic.
* * * * *
An hour passed that way. Then I heard a sound like a whole forest full
of infuriated parrots. It came from the direction of T'lith, and it
grew louder by the minute.