It was not hard for me to conjure up a picture of Holly Carter.
Unfortunately, I looked at Holly Carter through the eyes of love,
which rendered her perfect. If she had bridgework, I hadn't found it
out. Her features were regular and her hair fell loose without a part.
Her complexion was flawless ... at least the complexion that could
be examined whilst Holly sunned herself on a deck chair beside the
swimming pool.
I shook my head. Then I faced an unhappy fact. It hurt, because I
wanted my goddess to be perfect, and if she were made of weak, mortal
flesh, I did not want to find it out by asking the man who knew her
better than I did.
Still, I wanted her alive. So I turned to Frank Crandall.
"Do you?" I asked.
"Do I what?"
"Know of any scars or birthmarks?"
"Such as?"
"Oh, hell," I snapped. "Such as an appendix scar that might be used to
tell left from right."
"Look, Tom, I'm not her physician, you know. I can only give you the
old answer: 'Not until they wear briefer swim suits.'"
My heart bounced lightly. That Holly was still in mortal danger was not
enough to stop my elation at hearing Frank Crandall admit that he was
not Holly's lover, nor even on much better terms than I. It might have
been better to face the knowledge that Holly was all woman and all
human even though the information had to come from someone who knew her
well enough to get her home.
Then I came back to earth. I had my perfect goddess--in deadly
peril--instead of a human woman who really did not belong to any man.
* * * * *
I hadn't seen Saul Graben leave, but he must have been gone because now
he opened the door and came back. He was carrying a heavy rim gyroscope
that was spinning in a set of frictionless gymbals. He looked most
confused.
He said, "I've spent what seems like an hour. You can't tell me that
this gizmo is inseparable from the selfish, insular intellect of
terrestrial so-called homo sapiens."
He turned the base and we all watched the gymbal rings rotate to keep
the gyro wheel in the same plane. "It should be cosmic," he said. "But
every time I start, I find myself biting myself on the back of the
neck. Look. If you make the axle horizontal in front of you and rotate
the gyro with the top edge going away from you, you can define a common
reference. But motion beyond that cannot be explained. If the axle is
depressed on the right side, the gyro will turn so the far edge looks
to the right. But that's defining A in terms of A. So I'm licked."
Frank Crandall shook his head. "There's probably an absolute to that
thing somewhere, but I'm sure none of us know it. We haven't time to
find it. In fact, I think the cause is lost. Maybe we'd better spend
our time figuring out a plausible explanation."
"Explanation?" blurted Wallach.
"Let's face it," said Crandall. "Holly Carter's life is slipping away.
No one has yet come close to finding a common reference to describe
right from left to this Harla creature."
"So what's your point?"
"Death is for the dying," Crandall said in a monotone. "Let them have
their hour in peace and dignity. Life is for the living, and for the
living there is no peace. We who remain must make the best of it. So
now in about five minutes Holly will be at peace. The rest of us have
got to answer for her."
"How do you mean?"
"How do you propose to explain this unfortunate incident?" asked
Crandall. "Someone will want to know what happened to the remains of
Holly Carter. I can see hell breaking loose. And I can see the whole
lot of us getting laughed right off the Earth because we couldn't tell
right from left. And I can see us all clobbered for letting the affair
take place."
"You seem to be more worried about your professional reputation than
about Holly Carter's life!"
"I have a future," he said. "Holly doesn't seem to. Hell," he groaned,
"we can't even gamble on it."
"Gamble?"
"How successful do you think you'd be in getting this Venusian to risk
his life by closing his eyes and making a fifty-fifty stab in the dark
at one of those buttons?"
"Well--" started Wallach--"we'd be gambling too, you know. But--"
* * * * *
"Wait a moment," I said. "I've got a sort of half-cracked theory. May I
try?"
"Of course."
"Not 'of course.' I'll have to have quiet, with just Teresa to
communicate through."
"If you have any ideas, try them," said Wallach.
"Do you really know what you're doing?" demanded Frank Crandall.
"I think so," I replied. "If it works, it'll be because I happen to
feel close to Holly."
"Could be," he said with a shrug. I almost flipped. Duels have been
fought over less. But instead of taking offense, Crandall topped it
off by adding, "You could have been a lot closer if you'd tried. She
always said you had the alert, pixie-type mind that was pure relaxation
instead of a dead let-down after a period of deep concentration. But
you were always scuttling off somewhere. Well, go ahead and try, Tom.
And good luck!"