Next morning, Garlock was the last one, by a fraction of a minute, into
the Main. "Good morning, all," he said, with a slight smile.
"Huh? How come?" James demanded, as all four started toward the dining
nook.
Garlock's smile widened. "Lola. She brought me a pot of coffee and
wouldn't let me out until I drank it."
"_Brought?_"
"Yeah. They haven't read their room-tapes yet, so they don't know that
room-service is practically unlimited."
"Why didn't I think of that coffee business a couple of years ago?"
"Well, why didn't I think of it myself, ten years ago?"
Belle's eyes had been going from one, man to the other. "Just _what_ are
you two talking about? If it's anybody's business except your own?"
"He is an early-morning grouch," James explained, as they sat down at
the table. "Not fit to associate with man or beast--not even his own
dog, if he had one--when he first gets up. How come you were smart
enough to get the answer so quick, Brownie?"
"Oh, the pattern isn't too rare." She shrugged daintily, sweeping the
compliment aside. "Especially among men on big jobs who work under
tremendous pressure."
"Then how about Jim?" Belle asked.
"Clee's the Big Brain, not me," James said.
"You're a lot Bigger Brain than any of the men Lola's talking about,"
Belle insisted.
"That's true," Lola agreed, "but Jim probably is--must be--an icebox
raider. Eats in the middle of the night. Clee probably doesn't. It's a
good bet that he doesn't nibble between meals at all. Check, Clee?"
"Check. But what has an empty stomach got to do with the case?"
"Everything. Nobody knows how. Lots of theories--enzymes, blood sugar,
endocrine balance, what have you--but no proof. It isn't always true.
However, six or seven hours of empty stomach, in a man who takes his job
to bed with him, is very apt to uglify his pre-breakfast disposition."
Breakfast over and out in the Main:
"But when a man's disposition is ugly all the time, how can you tell the
difference?" Belle asked, innocently.
"I'll let that pass," Garlock's smile disappeared, "because we've got
work to do. Have any of you thought of any improvement on Lola's
monogamous society?"
No one had. In fact--
"There may be a loop-hole in it," Lola said, thoughtfully. "Did any of
you happen to notice whether they know anything about artificial
insemination?"
"D'you think I'd stand for _that_?" Belle blazed, before Garlock could
begin to search his mind. "I'd scratch anybody's eyes out--if you'd
thought of that idea as a woman instead of as a near-Ph.D. in
anthropology you'd've thrown it into the converter before it even
hatched!"
"Invasion of privacy? That covers it, of course, but I didn't think it
would bother you a bit." Lola paused, studying the other girl intently.
"You're quite a problem yourself. Callous--utterly savage humor--yet
very sensitive in some ways--fastidious...."
"I'm not on the table for dissection!" Belle snapped. "Study me all you
please, but keep the notes in your notebook. I'd suggest you study
Clee."
"Oh, I have been. He baffles me, too. I'm not very good yet, you...."
"That's the unders...."
"_Cut_ it!" Garlock ordered, sharply. "I said we had work to do. Jim,
you're hunting up the nearest observatory."
"How about transportation? No teleportation?"
"Out. Rent a car or hire a plane, or both. Fill your wallet--better have
too much money than not enough. If you're too far away tonight to make
it feasible to come back here, send me a flash. Brownie, you'll work
this town first. Belle and I will have to work in the library for a
while. We'll all want to compare notes tonight...."
"Yeah," James said into the pause, "I could tune in remote, but I don't
know where I'll be, so it might not be so good."
"Check. You can 'port, but be _damn_ sure nobody sees or senses you
doing it. That buttons it up, I guess."
* * *
James and Lola left the ship; Garlock and Belle went into the library.
"If I didn't know you were impotent, Clee," Belle shivered affectedly
and began to laugh, "I'd be scared to death to be alone with you in this
great big spaceship. Lola hasn't realized yet what she really hatched
out--the screamingest screamer ever pulled on anybody!"
"It isn't _that_ funny. You have got a savage sense of humor."
"Perhaps." She shrugged her shoulders. "But you were on the receiving
end, which makes a big difference. She's a peculiar sort of duck.
Brainy, but impersonal--academic. She knows all the words and all their
meanings, all the questions and all the answers, but she doesn't apply
any of them to herself. She's always the observer, never the
participant. Pure egg-head ... pure? _That's_ it. She looks, acts,
talks, and thinks like a _virgin_.... Well, if that's all, she isn't
any--or is she? Even though you've started calling her 'Brownie,' like
my now-tamed tomcat, you might not...." She stared at him.
"Go ahead. Probe."
"Why waste energy trying to crack a Prime's shield? But just out of
curiosity, are you two pairing, or not?"
"Tut-tut; don't be inurbane. Let's talk about Jim instead. I thought
he'd be gibbering."
"No, I'm working under double wraps--full dampers. I don't want him in
love with me. You want to know why?"
"I think I know why."
"Because having him mooning around underfoot would weaken the team and I
want to get back to Tellus."
"I was wrong, then. I thought you were out after bigger game."
Belle's face went stiff and still. "What do you mean by that?"
"Plain enough, I would think. Wherever you are, you've got to be the
Boss. You've never been in any kind of a party for fifteen minutes
without taking it over. When you snap the whip everybody jumps--or
else--and you swing a wicked knife. For your information I don't jump, I
am familiar with knives, and you will never run this project or any part
of it."
* * *
Belle's face set; her eyes hardened. "While we're putting out
information, take note that I'm just as good with actual knives as with
figurative ones. If you're still thinking of blistering my fanny, don't
try it. You'll find a rawhide haft sticking up out of one of those
muscles you're so proud of--clear enough Mr. Garlock."
"Why don't you talk sense, instead of such yak-yak?"
"Huh?"
"I know you're a Prime, too, but don't let it go to your head. I've got
more stuff than you have, so you can't Gunther me. You weigh one
thirty-five to my two seventeen. I'm harder, stronger, and faster than
you are. You're probably a bit limberer--not too much--but I've
forgotten more judo than you ever will know. So what's the answer?"
Belle was breathing hard. "Then why don't you do it right now?"
"Several reasons. I couldn't brag much about licking anybody I outweigh
by eighty-two pounds. I can't figure out your logic--if any--but I'm
pretty sure now it wouldn't do either of us any good. Just the
opposite."
"From your standpoint, would that be bad?"
"What a _hell_ of a logic! You have got the finest brain of any woman
living. You're stronger than Jim is by a lot more than the
Prime-to-Operator ratio--you've got more initiative, more drive, more
guts. You know as well as I do what your brain may mean before we get
back. Why in all hell don't you start _using_ it?"
"_You_ are complimenting _me_?"
"No. It's the truth, isn't it?"
"What difference does that make? Clee Garlock, I simply can't understand
you at all."
"That makes it mutual. I can't understand a geometry in which the
crookedest line between any two given points is the best line. Let's get
to work, shall we?"
"Uh-huh, let's. One more bit of information, though, first. Any such
idea as taking the Project away from you simply _never_ entered my
mind!" She gave him a warm and friendly smile as she walked over to the
file-cabinets.
For hours, then, they worked; each scanning tape after tape. At mid-day
they ate a light lunch. Shortly thereafter, Garlock put away his reader
and all his loose tapes. "Are you getting anywhere, Belle? I'm not
making any progress."
"Yes, but of course planets are probably pretty much the same
everywhere--Tellus-type ones, I mean, of course. Is all the Xenology as
cockeyed as I'm afraid it must be?"
"Check. The one basic assumption was that there are no human beings
other than Tellurians. From that they derive the secondary assumption
that humanoid types will be scarce. From there they scatter out in all
directions. So I'll have to roll my own. I've got to see Atterlin,
anyway. I'll be back for supper. So long."
* * *
At the Port Office, Grand Lady Neldine met him even more
enthusiastically than before; taking both his hands and pressing them
against her firm, almost-bare breasts. She tried to hold back as Garlock
led her along the corridor.
"I have an explanation, and in a sense an apology, for you, Grand Lady
Neldine, and for you, Governor Atterlin," he thought carefully. "I would
have explained yesterday, but I had no understanding of the situation
here until our anthropologist, Lola Montandon, elucidated it very
laboriously to me. She herself, a scientist highly trained in that
specialty, could grasp it only by referring back to somewhat similar
situations which may have existed in the remote past--so remote a past
that the concept is known only to specialists and is more than half
mythical, even to them."
He went on to give in detail the sexual customs, obligations, and
limitations of Lola's purely imaginary civilization.
"Then it isn't that you don't want to, but you _can't_?" the lady asked,
incredulously.
"Mentally, I can have no desire. Physically, the act is impossible," he
assured her.
"What a shame!" Her thought was a peculiar mixture of disappointment and
relief: disappointment in that she was not to bear this man's
super-child; relief in that, after all, she had not personally
failed--if she couldn't have this perfectly wonderful man herself, no
other woman except his wife could ever have him, either. But what a
shame to waste such a man as that on _any_ one woman! It was really too
bad.
"I see ... I see--wonderful!" Atterlin's thought was not at all
incredulous, but vastly awed. "It is of course logical that as the power
of mind increases, physical matters become less and less important. But
you will have much to give us; we may perhaps have some small things to
give you. If we could visit your Tellus, perhaps...?"
"That also is impossible. We four in the _Pleiades_ are lost in space.
This is the first planet we have visited on our first trial of a new
method--new to us, at least--of interstellar travel. We missed our
objective, probably by many millions of parsecs, and it is quite
possible that we four will never be able to find our way back. We are
trying now, by charting the galaxies throughout billions of cubic
parsecs of space, to find merely the direction in which our own galaxy
lies."
"What a concept! What stupendous minds! But such immense distances, sir
... what can you possibly be using for a space-drive?"
"None, as you understand the term. We travel by instantaneous
translation, by means of something we call 'Gunther'.... I am not at all
sure that I can explain it to you satisfactorily, but I will try to do
so, if you wish."
"Please do so, sir, by all means."
* * *
Garlock opened the highest Gunther cells of his mind. There was nothing
as elementary as telepathy, teleportation, telekinesis, or the like; it
was the pure, raw Gunther of the Gunther Drive, which even he himself
made no pretense of understanding fully. He opened those cells and
pushed that knowledge at the two Hodellian minds.
The result was just as instantaneous and just as catastrophic as Garlock
had expected. Both blocks went up almost instantly.
"Oh, no!" Atterlin exclaimed, his face turning white.
The girl shrieked once, covered her face with her hands, and collapsed
on the floor.
"Oh, I'm _so_ sorry ... excuse my ignorance, please!" Garlock implored,
as he picked the girl up, carried her across the room to a sofa, and
assured himself that she had not been really hurt. She recovered
quickly. "I'm very sorry, Grand Lady Neldine and Governor Atterlin, but
I didn't know ... that is, I didn't realize...."
"You are trying to break it gently." Atterlin was both shocked and
despondent. "This being the first planet you have visited, you simply
did not realize how feeble our minds really are."
"Oh, not at all, really, sir and lady." Garlock began deftly to repair
the morale he had shattered. "Merely younger. With your system of
genetics, so much more logical and efficient than our strict monogamy,
your race will undoubtedly make more progress in a few centuries than we
made in many millennia. And in a few centuries more you will pass
us--will master this only partially-known Gunther Drive.
"Esthetically, Lady Neldine, I would like very much to father you a
child." He allowed his coldly unmoved gaze to survey her charms. "I am
sorry indeed that it cannot be. I trust that you, Governor Atterlin,
will be kind enough to spread word of our physical shortcomings, and so
spare us further embarrassment?"
"Not shortcomings, sir, and, I truly hope, no embarrassment," Atterlin
protested. "We are immensely glad to have seen you, since your very
existence gives us so much hope for the future. I will spread word, and
every Hodellian will do whatever he can to help you in your quest."
"Thank you, sir and lady," and Garlock took his leave.
"What an act, my male-looking but impotent darling!" came Belle's clear,
incisive thought, bubbling with unrestrained merriment. "For our Doctor
Garlock, the Prime Exponent and First Disciple of Truth, _what_ an act!
_Esthetically_, he'd like to father her a child, it says here in fine
print--Boy, if she only knew! One tiny grain of truth and she'd chase
you from here to Andromeda! Clee, I _swear_ this thing is going to kill
me yet!"
"Anything that would do that I'm very much in favor of!" Garlock growled
the thought and snapped up his shield.
This one was, quite definitely, Belle's round.
* * *
Garlock took the Hodellian equivalent of a bus to the center of the
city, then set out aimlessly to walk. The buildings and their
arrangement, he noted--not much to his surprise now--were not too
different from those of the cities of Earth.
With his guard down to about the sixth level, highly receptive but not
at all selective, he strolled up one street and down another. He was not
attentive to detail yet; he was trying to get the broad aspects, the
"feel" of this hitherto unknown civilization.
The ether was practically saturated with thought. Apparently this was
the afternoon rush hour, as the sidewalks were crowded with people and
the streets were full of cars. It did not seem as though anyone, whether
in the buildings, on the sidewalks, or in the cars, was doing any
blocking at all. If there were any such things as secrets on Hodell,
they were scarce. Each person, man, woman, or child, went about his own
business, radiating full blast. No one paid any attention to the
thoughts of anyone else except in the case of couples or groups, the
units of which were engaged in conversation. It reminded Garlock of a
big Tellurian party when the punch-bowls were running low--everybody
talking at the top of his voice and nobody listening.
This whole gale of thought was blowing over Garlock's receptors like a
Great Plains wind over miles-wide fields of corn. He did not address
anyone directly; no one addressed him. At first, quite a few young
women, at sight of his unusual physique, had sent out tentative feelers
of thought; and some men had wondered, in the same tentative and
indirect fashion, who he was and where he came from. However, when the
information he had given Atterlin spread throughout the city--and it did
not take long--no one paid any more attention to him than they did to
each other.
Probing into and through various buildings, he learned that groups of
people were quitting work at intervals of about fifteen minutes. There
were thoughts of tidying up desks; of letting the rest of this junk go
until tomorrow; of putting away and/or covering up office machines of
various sorts. There were thoughts of powdering noses and of repairing
make-up.
He pulled in his receptors and scanned the crowded ways for
guardians--he'd have to call them that until either he or Lola found out
their real name. Same as at the airport--the more people, the more
guardians. What were they? How? And why?
* * *
He probed; carefully but thoroughly. When he had talked to the Arpalone
he had read him easily enough, but here there was nothing whatever to
read. The creature simply was not thinking at all. But that didn't make
sense! Garlock tuned, first down, then up; and finally, at the very top
of his range, he found something, but he did not at first know what it
was. It seemed to be a mass-detector ... no, two of them, paired and
balanced. Oh, that was it! One tuned to humanity, one to the other
guardians--balanced across a sort of bridge--_that_ was how they kept
the ratio so constant! But why? There seemed to be some wide-range
receptors there, too, but nothing seemed to be coming in....
While he was still studying and still baffled, some kind of stimulus,
which was so high and so faint and so alien that he could neither
identify nor interpret it, touched the Arpalone's far-flung receptors.
Instantly the creature jumped, his powerful, widely-bowed legs sending
him high above the heads of the crowd and, it seemed to Garlock,
directly toward him. Simultaneously there was an insistent, low-pitched,
whistling scream, somewhat like the noise made by an airplane in a
no-power dive; and Garlock saw, out of the corner of one eye, a
yellowish something flashing downward through the air.
At the same moment the woman immediately in front of Garlock stifled a
scream and jumped backward, bumping into him and almost knocking him
down. He staggered, caught his balance, and automatically put his arm
around his assailant, to keep her from falling to the sidewalk.
* * *
In the meantime the guardian, having landed very close to the spot the
woman had occupied a moment before, leaped again; this time vertically
upward. The thing, whatever it was, was now braking frantically with
wings, tail, and body; trying madly to get away. Too late. There was a
bone-crushing impact as the two bodies came together in mid-air; a
jarring thud as the two creatures, inextricably intertwined, struck the
pavement as one.
The thing varied in color, Garlock now saw, shading from bright orange
at the head to pale yellow at the tail. It had a savagely-tearing curved
beak; tremendously powerful wings; its short, thick legs ended in
hawk-like talons.
The guardian's bowed legs had already immobilized the yellow wings by
clamping them solidly against the yellow body. His two lower arms were
holding the frightful talons out of action. His third hand gripped the
orange throat, his fourth was exerting tremendous force against the
jointure of neck and body. The neck, originally short, was beginning to
stretch.
For several seconds Garlock had been half-conscious that his accidental
companion was trying, with more and more energy, to disengage his
encircling left arm from her waist. He wrenched his attention away from
the spectacular fight--to which no one else, not even the near-victim,
had paid the slightest attention--and now saw that he had his arm around
the bare waist of a statuesque matron whose entire costume would have
made perhaps half of a Tellurian sun-suit. He dropped his arm with a
quick and abject apology.
"I should apologize to you instead, Captain Garlock," she thought, with
a wide and friendly smile, "for knocking you down, and I thank you for
catching me before I fell. I should not have been startled, of course. I
would not have been, except that this is the first time that I,
personally, have been attacked."
"But what _are_ they?" Garlock blurted.
"I don't know." The woman turned her head and glanced, in complete
disinterest, at the two furiously-battling creatures. Garlock knew now
that this was the first time, except for that instantly-dismissed thrill
of surprise at being the actual target of an attack, that she had
thought of either of them. "Orange-yellow? It could be a ... a fumapty,
perhaps, but I've no idea, really. You see, such things are none of our
business."
She thought at him, a half-shrug, half-grimace of mild distaste--not at
the personal contact with the man nor at the savage duel; but at even
thinking of either the guardian or the yellow monster--and walked away
into the crowd.
Garlock's attention flashed back to the fighters. The yellow thing's
neck had been stretched to twice its natural length and the guardian had
_eaten_ almost through it. There was a terrific crunch, a couple of
smacking, gobbling swallows, and head parted from body. The orange beak
still clashed open and shut, however, and the body still thrashed
violently.
Shifting his grips, the guardian proceeded to tear a hole into his
victim's body, just below its breast-bone. Thrusting two arms into the
opening, he yanked out two organs--one of which, Garlock thought, could
have been the heart--and ate them both; if not with extreme gusto, at
least in a workmanlike and thoroughly competent fashion. He then picked
up the head in one hand, grabbed the tip of a wing with another, and
marched up the street for half a block, dragging the body behind him.
He lifted a manhole cover with his two unoccupied hands, dropped the
remains down the hole thus exposed, and let the cover slam back into
place. He then squatted down, licked himself meticulously clean with a
long, black, extremely agile tongue, and went on about his enigmatic
business quite as though nothing had happened.
Garlock strolled around a few minutes longer, but could not recapture
any interest in the doings of the human beings around him. He had filed
away every detail of what had just happened, and it had so many bizarre
aspects that he could not think of anything else. Wherefore he flagged
down a "taxi" and was taken out to the _Pleiades_. Belle and Lola were
in the Main.
* * *
"I saw the _damndest_ thing, Clee!" Lola exclaimed. "I've been gnawing
my fingernails off up to the knuckles, waiting for you!"
Lola's experience had been very similar to Garlock's own, except in that
her monster was an intense green in color and looked something like a
bat about four feet long, with six-inch canine teeth and several
stingers....
"Did you find out the name of the thing?" Garlock asked.
"No. I asked half-a-dozen people, but nobody would even listen to me
except one half-grown boy, and the best he could do was that it might be
something he had heard another boy say somebody had told him might be a
'lemart.' And as to those lower-case Arpalones, the best I could dig out
of anybody was just 'guardians.' Did you do any better?"
"No, I didn't do as well," and he told the girls about his own
experience.
"But I didn't find any detectors or receptors, Clee," Lola frowned.
"Where were they?"
"'Way up--up here," he showed her. "I'll make a full tape tonight on
everything I found out about the guardians and the Arpalones--besides my
regular report, I mean--since they're yours, and you can make me one
about your friend the green bat...."
* * *
"Hey, I _like_ that!" Belle broke in. "That _could_ be taken amiss, you
know, by such a sensitive soul as I!"
"Check." Garlock chuckled. "I'll have to file that one, in case I want
to use it sometime. How're you coming, Belle?"
"Nice!" Belle's voracious mind had been so busy absorbing new
knowledge that she had temporarily forgotten about her fight with
her captain. "I'm just about done here. I'll be ready tomorrow, I
think, to visit their library and tape up some planetological and
planetographical--notice how insouciantly I toss off those two-credit
words?--data on this here planet Hodell."
"Good going. You've been listening to this stuff Lola and I were chewing
on--does any of it make sense to you?"
"It does not. I never heard anything to compare with it."
"Excuse me for changing the subject," Lola put in, plaintively, "but
when, if ever, do we eat? Do we _have_ to wait until that confounded
James boy gets back from wherever it was he went?"
"If you're hungry, we'll eat now."
"_Hungry?_ Look!" Lola turned herself sidewise, placed one hand in the
small of her back, and pressed hard with the other her flat, taut belly.
"See? Only a couple of inches from belt-buckle to backbone--dangerously
close to the point of utter collapse."
"You poor, abused little thing!" Garlock laughed and all three crossed
the room to the dining alcove. While they were still ordering, James
appeared beside them.
"Find out anything?" Garlock asked.
"Yes and no. Yes, in that they have an excellent observatory, with a
hundred-eighty-inch reflector, on a mountain only seventy-five miles
from here. No, in that I didn't find any duplication of nebulary
configurations with the stuff I had with me. However, it was relatively
coarse. Tomorrow I'll take a lot of fine stuff along. It'll take some
time--a full day, at least."
"I expected that. Good going, Jim!"
All four ate heartily, and, after eating, they taped up the day's
reports. Then, tired from their first real day's work in weeks, all went
to their rooms.
* * *
A few minutes later, Garlock tapped lightly at Lola's door.
"Come in." She stiffened involuntarily, then relaxed and smiled. "Oh,
yes, Clee: of course. You're...."
"No, I'm not. I've been doing a lot of thinking about you since last
night, and I may have come up with an answer or two. Also, Belle knows
we aren't pairing, and if we don't hide behind a screen at least once in
a while, she'll know we aren't going to."
"Screen?"
"Screen. Didn't you know these four private rooms are solid? Haven't you
read your house-tape yet?"
"No. But do you think Belle would actually peek?"
"Do you think she wouldn't?"
"Well, I don't like her very much, but I wouldn't think she would do
anything like that, Clee. It isn't urbane."
"She isn't urbane, either, whenever she thinks it might be advantageous
not to be."
"What a _terrible_ thing to say!"
"Take it from me, if Belle Bellamy doesn't know everything that goes on
it isn't from lack of trying. You wouldn't know about room service,
either, then--better scan that tape before you go to sleep
tonight--what'll you have in the line of a drink to while away enough
time so she will know we've been playing games?"
"Ginger ale, please."
"I'll have ginger beer. You do it like so." He slid a panel aside, his
fingers played briefly on a typewriter-like keyboard. Drinks and ice
appeared. "Anything you want--details of the tape."
He lighted two cigarettes, handed her one, stirred his drink. "Now, fair
lady--or should I say beauteous dark lady?--we will follow the precept
of that immortal Chinese philosopher, Chin On."
"You _are_ a Prime Operator, aren't you?" She laughed, but sobered
quickly. "I'm worried. You said I flaunted virginity like a banner, and
now Belle.... What am I doing wrong?"
"There's a lot wrong. Not so much what you're doing as what you aren't
doing. You're too aloof--detached--egg-headish. You know the score,
words and music, but you don't sing. All you do is listen. Belle thinks
you're not only a physical virgin, but a psychic-blocked prude. I know
better. You're so full of conflict between what you want to do--what you
know is right--and what those three-cell-brained nincompoops made you
think you ought to do that you have got no more degrees of freedom than
a piston-rod. You haven't been yourself for a minute since you came
aboard. Check?"
"You _have_ been thinking, haven't you? You may be right; except that
it's been longer than that ... ever since the first preliminaries, I
think. But what can I _do_ about it, Clee?"
"Contact. Three-quarters full, say; enough for me to give you what I
think is the truth."
"But you said you _never_ went screens down with a woman?"
"There's a first time for everything. Come in."
* * *
She did so, held contact for almost a minute, then pulled herself loose.
"Ug-gh-gh." She shivered. "I'm glad I haven't got a mind like that."
"And the same from me to you. Of course the real truth may lie somewhere
in between. I may be as far off the beam on one side as you are on the
other."
"I hope so. But it cleared things up no end--it untied a million knots.
Even that other thing--brotherly love? It's a very nice concept--you
see, I never had any brothers."
"That's probably one thing that was the matter with you. Nothing warmer
than that, certainly, and never will be."
"And I suppose you got the thought--it must have jumped up and smacked
you--" Lola's hot blush was visible even through her heavy tan, "how
many times I've felt like running my fingers up and down your ribs and
grabbing a handful of those terrific muscles of yours, just to see if
they're as hard as they look?"
"I'm glad you brought that up; I don't know whether I would have dared
to or not. You've got to stop acting like a Third instead of an
Operator; and you've got to stop acting as though you had never been
within ten feet of me. Now's as good a time as any." He took off his
shirt and struck a strong-man's pose. "Come ahead."
"By golly, I'm _going_ to!" Then, a moment later, "Why, they're even
_harder_! How do you, a scientist, psionicist, and scholar, keep in such
hard shape as that?"
"An hour a day in the gym, three hundred sixty-five days a year. Many
are better--but a hell of a lot are worse."
"I'll say." She finished her ginger ale, sat down in her chair, leaned
back and put her legs up on the bed. "That was a relief of tension if
there ever was one. I haven't felt so good since they picked me as
home-town candidate--and that was a mighty small town and eight months
ago. Bring on your dragons, Clee, and I'll slay 'em far and wide. But I
can't actually _be_ like she is...."
"Thank God for that. Deliver me from _two_ such pretzel-benders aboard
one ship."
"... but I could have been a pretty good actress, I think."
"Correction, please. 'Outstanding' is the word."
"Thank you, kind sir. And women--men, too, of course--do bring up
certain memories, to ... to...."
"To roll 'em around on their tongues and give their taste-buds a treat."
"Exactly. So where I don't have any appropriate actual memories to bring
up, I'll make like an actress. Check?"
"Good girl! Now you're rolling--we're in like Flynn. Well, we've been in
screen long enough, I guess. Fare thee well, little sister Brownie,
until we meet again." He tossed the remains of their refreshments, trays
and all, into the chute, picked up his shirt, and started out.
"Put it _on_, Clee!" she whispered, intensely.
"Why?" He grinned cheerfully. "It'd look still better if I peeled down
to the altogether."
"You're incorrigible," she said, but her answering grin was wide and
perfectly natural. "You know, if I had had a brother something like you
it would have saved me a lot of wear and tear. I'll see you in the
morning before breakfast."
* * *
And she did. They strolled together to breakfast; not holding hands, but
with hip almost touching hip. Relaxed, friendly, on very cordial and
satisfactory terms. Lola punched breakfast orders for them both. Belle
drove a probe, which bounced--Lola's screen was tight, although her
brown eyes were innocent and bland.
But during the meal, in response to a double-edged, wickedly-barbed
remark of Belle's, a memory flashed into being above Lola's shield. It
was the veriest flash, instantly suppressed. Her eyes held clear and
steady; if she blushed at all it did not show.
Belle caught it, of course, and winked triumphantly at Garlock.
She knew, now, what she had wanted to know. And, Prime Operator
though he was, it was all he could do to make no sign; for that
fleetingly-revealed memory was a perfect job. He would not have--_could_
not have--questioned it himself, except for one highly startling fact.
It was of an event that had not happened and never would!
And after breakfast, at some distance from the others, "That is my girl,
Brownie! You're firing on all forty barrels. You're an Operator, all
right; and it takes a damn good one to lie like that with her mind!"
"Thanks to you, Clee. And thanks a million, really. I'm me again--I
think."
Then, since Belle was looking, she took him by both ears, pulled his
head down, and kissed him lightly on the lips. The spontaneity and
tenderness were perfect at that moment. Clee's appreciation was obvious.
"I know I said you'd have to kiss me next time," Lola said, very low,
"but this act needs just this much of an extra touch. Anyway, such
little, tiny, sisterly ones as this, and out in public, don't count."