"I will see."
He murmured to Wyk in Martian, then left us.
* * * * *
The small triangular room had no windows and only the single door. Wyk
touched a mechanism and it slid closed. The place was a queer
apartment indeed. The floor was convex, curving upward to the walls.
The light radiance dimly glowed, as though inherent to the metal
ceiling. There was strange metal furniture: a table and chairs, high
and large; bunks of a size evidently for the ten-foot workers.
The door opened, and a worker brought us food and drink. Wyk sat apart
and watched us while we consumed the meal. I noticed that he seldom
let himself get close to us. He sat stiffly upright, with his jointed
legs bent double under him, his many arms and pincers hanging inert,
save the one short shoulder-arm with flexible fingers gripping his
weapon. At his waist, and upon several hook-like protuberances of his
chest, other weapons and devices were hanging.
Snap gazed up from where, on the floor, we were ravenously eating and
drinking. "Aren't you hungry?" he asked Wyk.
"No."
"You eat often?"
"No."
An incurious, taciturn creature, this insect-like being. Snap
whispered, "Got to talk to him; make him let us get close. That
weapon...."
How the weapon operated, we did not know; but that a flash from it
would bring instant death we well imagined.
Half of that hour of waiting was past.
I said to Wyk, "You would call this night on your world; the sun
obviously is on the other hemisphere. When will it be day?"
His gaze swung on me. His hollow voice, deep from the capacious shell
of chest, echoed and blurred in the room.
"I think Wandl has no rotation now. Or almost none."
He was not as taciturn, as he had seemed, and presently we had him
talking. We learned several things regarding the gravity-controls of
Wandl, by which at will the planet could be rotated on its axis; and
by which also it could navigate space. We learned that the great
control station contained these gravitational mechanisms, as well as
the mechanism by which the Earth had been attacked. But we could not
discover where on Wandl that station was located.
Then, with our meal finished, Snap rose to his feet. "Those arms of
yours, seem very strange to us. But they must be mighty useful."
Snap had taken a cautious, shoving step. It wafted him directly toward
the guard.
The weird, brown-scaled face of Wyk, with its popping eyes upon stems
and its upended mouth, contorted with surprise.
"Back! Don't come near me!"
He flung himself back, but struck the wall of the room. All his arms
were writhing. Alarm was in his voice. It was the first time either
Snap or I had made an unexpected move, and it startled Wyk.
"Wait! Let me go!" Snap cried.
Wyk's longest arms were around Snap, like the tentacles of an octopus,
and Snap was struggling, fighting. We had not intended this at this
time, but the opportunity was here.
I scrambled from the floor. Now, with the need for powerful action,
the lack of gravity was a tremendous handicap. I went up with
flailing arms into the air. Wyk fired his weapon, but it missed me, a
soundless, dimly-white bolt. It hissed along the curving wall of the
room. The smell of it was a stench in my nostrils.
I hit the concave ceiling, shoved down, and like a swimmer in water
struck against the struggling bodies of Snap and the guard. The waving
little shoulder arm with the weapon came at me.