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unhurried, smoothly-flowing—most of the time—symbols. Vesta, throat-mike in place and yellow-eyed gaze nailed to the pencil’s point, kept pace effortlessly—most of the time.
‘That’s all. Play it back, Vesta. If you girls got half of that, you’re good.’
The speaker came to life, giving voice to a completely detailed and extremely technical report on the extinction of an imaginary atomic vortex, and as the transcription proceeded Cloud’s amazement deepened. It was evident, of course, that neither of the two translators knew anything at all about many of the scientific technicalities involved. Nevertheless the Manarkan had put down—and Vesta had recorded in good, idiomatic Galactic Spanish—an intelligent layman’s idea of what it was that had been left out. That impromptu, completely unrehearsed report would have been fully informative to any expert of the Vortex Control Laboratory!
‘Girls, you are good—very good.’ Cloud paid deserved tribute to ability. ‘First chance we get, I’ll split a bottle of fayalin with you. Now we’d better hit the sack. We land early in the morning, and since we’re going to stay here a while we’ll have to go through quarantine and customs. So pack your bags and have ’em ready for inspection.’
They landed at the spaceport of Tommie’s home town, which Cloud, after hearing Vesta’s literal translation of its native name, had entered in his log as ‘Mingia’. They passed their physicals and healths easily enough—the requirements for leaving a planet of warm-blooded oxygen-breathers are so severe and so comprehensive that the matter of landing on a similar one is always a matter of simple routine.
‘Manarkan doctors we know of old; you are welcome indeed. We see very few Tellurians or Vegians, but the standards of those worlds are. very high and we are glad to welcome you. But Chickladoria? I never heard of it—we’ve had no one from that planet since I took charge of this port of entry …’
The Tomingan official punched buttons, gabbled briefly, and listened.
‘Oh, yes. Excellent! The health, sanitation, and exit requirements of Chickladoria are approved by the Galactic Medical Society. We welcome you. You all may pass.’
They left the buildint? and boarded a copter for their hotel.
‘… and part of its name is “Forget-me-not”! Isn’t that a dilly
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of a name for a hotel?’ Vesta, who had been telepathing busily with Nadine, was giggling sunnily.
Suddenly, however, she stopped laughing and, eyes slitted, leaped for the door. Too late: the craft was already in the air.
‘Do you know what that … that clunker back there really thought of us?’ she flared. ‘That we’re weak, skinny, insipid, underdeveloped little runts! By Zevz and Tlazz and Jadkptn, I’ll show him—I’ll take a tail-wrap around his neck and …’
‘Pipe down, Vesta—listen!’ Cloud broke in sharply. ‘You’re smart enough to know better than to explode that way. For instance, you’re stronger than I am, and faster—admitted. So what? I’m still your boss. And Tommie isn’t, even though, as you ought to know by this time, she could pull your tail out by the roots and beat you to death with the butt end of it in thirty seconds flat.’
‘Huh?’ Vesta’s towering rage subsided miraculously into surprised curiosity. ‘But you’re admitting it!’ she marvelled. ‘Even that / am stronger and faster than you are!’
‘Certainly. Why not? Servos are faster still, and ordinary derricks are stronger. It’s brains that count. I’d much rather have your linguistic ability than the speed and strength of a Valerian.’
‘So would I, really,’ Vesta purred. ‘You’re the nicest man!’
‘So watch yourself, young lady,’ Cloud went on evenly, ‘and behave yourself. If you don’t, important as you are to this project, I’ll send you back to the ship in irons. That’s a promise.’
‘P-f-z-t-k!’ Vesta fairly spat the expletive. Her first thought was sheer defiance, but under the Blaster’s level stare she changed her mind visibly. ‘I’ll behave myself Captain Neel-cloud.’
‘Thanks, Vesta. You’ll be worth a whole platoon of Tomin-gans if you do.’
The copter landed on the flat roof of the hotel. The guests were registered and shown to their rooms. The Forget-Me-Not’s air was hot and humid, and the visitors wore the only clothing to be seen. Nevertheless, Cloud was too squeamish to go all the way, so he still wore shorts and sandals, as well as the side-arm of his rank, when he went back up to the lobby to meet his crew.
Vesta, tail-tip waving gracefully a foot and a half above her head, was wearing only her sandals. Thlaskin wore shorts and space-boots. Maluleme had reduced her conventional forty one
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square inches of covering to a daring twenty five—two narrow ribbons and a couple of jewels. Nadine, alone of them all, had made no concession to that stickily sweltering climate. She’d be disgraced for life, Cloud supposed, if she cut down by even one the hundreds of feet of white glamorette in which she was swathed. But Manarkans didn’t sweat like Tellurians, he guessed—if they did, she’d either peel or smother before this job was over!
Cloud scanned the lobby carefully. Were they attracting too much attention? They were not. They had had to pose for Telenews shots, of course—the Chickladorians in particular had been held in the spots for all of five minutes—but that was all. Like any other space-port city, Mingia was used to outlandish forms of warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing life. Not counting his own group, he could see members of four different non-Tomin-gan races, two of which were completely strange to him. And Tommie, standing alone in front of one of the row of shop-windows comprising one wall of the lobby—and very close to a mirrored pillar—was intently studying a tobacconist’s display of domestic and imported cigars.
‘QX,’ the Blaster said then. ‘We aren’t kicking up any fuss. Do your stuff, Vesta.’
The girl sauntered over to the mirror, licked her forefinger, and began to smooth an imaginary roughness out of one perfect eyebrow. Thus, palm covering mouth—
‘He still hangs out here, Tommie?’
‘He eats supper here every night, in the same private room.’ Tommie did not move or turn her head; her voice could not be heard three feet away.
‘When he comes in, take one good look at him and think “This is the one”—Nadine’ll take over from there. Then sneak down to the chief’s suite and join us.’
Vesta, with a final approving pat at her sleek head, sauntered on; past a display of belt pouches in which she was not interested, pausing before one of ultra-fancy candies in which she very definitely was, and back to her own group.
‘On the green,’ she reported.
‘Then I’ll go about my business of getting things lined up to blow out vortices. You, Thlaskin and Maluleme, just run around and play. Act innocent—you’re just atmosphere for now. Nadine
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and Vesta, go down to my suite—here’s a key—and get your recorder and stuff ready. I’ll see you later.’
Cloud came back, however, rather sooner than he had intended.
‘I didn’t get far—I’ll have to take you along if I want to get any business done,’ he explained to Vesta. ‘Up to now, I’ve got along very nicely with English, Spanish, and spaceal, but not here. We’re a long ways from either Tellus or Vegia.’
‘We are indeed. I don’t know what they do use for an interstellar language here—I’ll have to find out and see if I know it yet.’ Vesta then switched to English. ‘While we wait, do you mind if I zpeak at you in Englizh? And will you ztop me and correct, please, the errors I will make? My pronunziazion is getting better, but I still have much trouble with your irregular verbs and pronouns. I come, but I am not yet arrive.’
‘I’ll say you’re better!’ Cloud knew that she had been studying hard; studying with an intensity of concentration comparable only to that of a cat on duty at a mouse-hole; but he had expected no such progress as this. ‘It’s amazing—you have scarcely any more accent now in English than in Spanish. I’ll be glad to coach you. What you just said was QX except for the last sentence. Idiomatically, you should have said “I’m coming along, but I’m not there yet”,’ and Cloud explained in detail. ‘Now, for practice, brief me on this job we’ve got here.’
‘Thankz a lot. Tommie’s brother, whom we’ll call Jim, runs a tobacco zhop here in town.’ Cloud had had to explain what ‘briefing’ meant, and he corrected many slight errors which are not given here. ‘A man who called himself “Number One” organized a Protective Azzoziazion. Anyone not joining, he zaid, would zuffer the conzequenzez of a looze atomic vortex in his power plant. When he zhowed he meant buzzinez by exploding one right where and when he zaid he would, many merchants joined and began to pay. Jim did not. Inztead, he … I forget the idiom?’
‘ “Stalled.” That means delayed, played for time.’