Father Moontree and the little girl named West entered the room. They
were the other two pinlighters. The human complement of the Fighting
Room was now complete.
Father Moontree was a red-faced man of forty-five who had lived the
peaceful life of a farmer until he reached his fortieth year. Only
then, belatedly, did the authorities find he was telepathic and agree
to let him late in life enter upon the career of pinlighter. He did
well at it, but he was fantastically old for this kind of business.
Father Moontree looked at the glum Woodley and the musing Underhill.
"How're the youngsters today? Ready for a good fight?"
"Father always wants a fight," giggled the little girl named West. She
was such a little little girl. Her giggle was high and childish. She
looked like the last person in the world one would expect to find in
the rough, sharp dueling of pinlighting.
Underhill had been amused one time when he found one of the most
sluggish of the Partners coming away happy from contact with the mind
of the girl named West.
Usually the Partners didn't care much about the human minds with which
they were paired for the journey. The Partners seemed to take the
attitude that human minds were complex and fouled up beyond belief,
anyhow. No Partner ever questioned the superiority of the human mind,
though very few of the Partners were much impressed by that
superiority.
The Partners liked people. They were willing to fight with them. They
were even willing to die for them. But when a Partner liked an
individual the way, for example, that Captain Wow or the Lady May
liked Underhill, the liking had nothing to do with intellect. It was a
matter of temperament, of feel.
Underhill knew perfectly well that Captain Wow regarded his,
Underhill's, brains as silly. What Captain Wow liked was Underhill's
friendly emotional structure, the cheerfulness and glint of wicked
amusement that shot through Underhill's unconscious thought patterns,
and the gaiety with which Underhill faced danger. The words, the
history books, the ideas, the science--Underhill could sense all that
in his own mind, reflected back from Captain Wow's mind, as so much
rubbish.
Miss West looked at Underhill. "I bet you've put stickum on the
stones."
"I did not!"
Underhill felt his ears grow red with embarrassment. During his
novitiate, he had tried to cheat in the lottery because he got
particularly fond of a special Partner, a lovely young mother named
Murr. It was so much easier to operate with Murr and she was so
affectionate toward him that he forgot pinlighting was hard work and
that he was not instructed to have a good time with his Partner. They
were both designed and prepared to go into deadly battle together.
One cheating had been enough. They had found him out and he had been
laughed at for years.
Father Moontree picked up the imitation-leather cup and shook the
stone dice which assigned them their Partners for the trip. By senior
rights, he took first draw.
* * * * *
He grimaced. He had drawn a greedy old character, a tough old male
whose mind was full of slobbering thoughts of food, veritable oceans
full of half-spoiled fish. Father Moontree had once said that he
burped cod liver oil for weeks after drawing that particular glutton,
so strongly had the telepathic image of fish impressed itself upon his
mind. Yet the glutton was a glutton for danger as well as for fish. He
had killed sixty-three Dragons, more than any other Partner in the
service, and was quite literally worth his weight in gold.
The little girl West came next. She drew Captain Wow. When she saw who
it was, she smiled.
"I _like_ him," she said. "He's such fun to fight with. He feels so
nice and cuddly in my mind."
"Cuddly, hell," said Woodley. "I've been in his mind, too. It's the
most leering mind in this ship, bar none."
"Nasty man," said the little girl. She said it declaratively, without
reproach.
Underhill, looking at her, shivered.
He didn't see how she could take Captain Wow so calmly. Captain Wow's
mind _did_ leer. When Captain Wow got excited in the middle of a
battle, confused images of Dragons, deadly Rats, luscious beds, the
smell of fish, and the shock of space all scrambled together in his
mind as he and Captain Wow, their consciousnesses linked together
through the pin-set, became a fantastic composite of human being and
Persian cat.
That's the trouble with working with cats, thought Underhill. It's a
pity that nothing else anywhere will serve as Partner. Cats were all
right once you got in touch with them telepathically. They were smart
enough to meet the needs of the fight, but their motives and desires
were certainly different from those of humans.
They were companionable enough as long as you thought tangible images
at them, but their minds just closed up and went to sleep when you
recited Shakespeare or Colegrove, or if you tried to tell them what
space was.
It was sort of funny realizing that the Partners who were so grim and
mature out here in space were the same cute little animals that people
had used as pets for thousands of years back on Earth. He had
embarrassed himself more than once while on the ground saluting
perfectly ordinary non-telepathic cats because he had forgotten for
the moment that they were not Partners.
He picked up the cup and shook out his stone dice.
He was lucky--he drew the Lady May.
* * * * *
The Lady May was the most thoughtful Partner he had ever met. In her,
the finely bred pedigree mind of a Persian cat had reached one of its
highest peaks of development. She was more complex than any human
woman, but the complexity was all one of emotions, memory, hope and
discriminated experience--experience sorted through without benefit of
words.
When he had first come into contact with her mind, he was astonished at
its clarity. With her he remembered her kittenhood. He remembered every
mating experience she had ever had. He saw in a half-recognizable
gallery all the other pinlighters with whom she had been paired for the
fight. And he saw himself radiant, cheerful and desirable.