Cloud studied the Tomingan narrowly. She wasn’t bragging, he decided finally. She was simply voicing what to her were simple truths.
‘Your arguments have weight. Why do you want the job?’
‘Several reasons. I’ve never done anything like this before, and it’ll be fun. Main reason, though, is that I think I’ll be able to talk you into doing a job on Tominga that has needed doing for a long time. I was a passenger, not an officer, on my way to talk to a party about ways of getting it done. You changed my mind. You and I, with some others who’ll be glad to help, will be able to do it better.’
Tommie volunteered no more information, and Cloud asked no more questions. Explanation would probably take more time than could be spared.
‘Now you, Thlaskin,’ the Blaster said in spaceal. ‘What have you got to say for yourself?’
‘You’ve got me on a hell of a spot, boss,’ the pilot admitted, ruefully. ‘You’ve got to have a pilot, no question about that. You already know I’m one. I know automatics, and communicators, and detectors—the works. Ordinarily I’d say you’d have to have me. But this ain’t a regular case. I wasn’t a pilot on the heap that got knocked out of the ether, but a passenger. Malu-leme—she’s my … say, ain’t there no word for …’
He broke off and spoke rapidly to his wife, who relayed it to Vesta.
‘They’re newlyweds,’ the Vegian translated. ‘He was off duty and they were on their honeymoon …’
Vesta’s wonderfully expressive face softened, saddened. She appeared about to cry. ‘I wish I were old enough to be a newly-wed,’ she said, plaintively.
‘Huh? Aren’t you?’ the Blaster demanded. ‘You look old enough to me.’
‘Oh, I’m as big as I ever will be, and I won’t change outside. It’s inside. About half a year yet. But she’s saying—
‘We know that pilots on duty, in regular service, can’t have
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their wives aboard. But this isn’t a regular run, I know, so couldn’t you—just this once—keep Thlaskin on as pilot and let me come too? Please, Mr. Neelcloud—she didn’t know your name, but asked me to put it in—I can work my way. I’ll do any of the jobs nobody else wants to do—I’ll do anything, Mr. Neelcloud!’
The pink girl jumped up and took Cloud’s left hand in both her own. Simultaneously Vesta took his right hand in her left, brought it up to her face, and laid the the incredibly downy softness of her cheek against the five-hour bristles of his; sounding the while a soft, low-pitched but unmistakable purr!
‘Just this once wouldn’t do any harm, would it, Captain Neelcloud?’ Vesta purred. ‘You zmell zo wonderful, and she zmells nice, too. Pleeze keep her on!’
‘QX. You win!’ The Blaster pulled himself loose from the two too-demonstrative females and addressed the group at large. ‘I think I ought to have my head examined, but I’m signing all of you on as crew. But nobody else. I’ll get the book.’
He got it. He signed them on. Chief Pilot Thlaskin. Chief Engineer Tommie. Linguist Vesta. Doctor … what? He tried to call her attention by thinking at her, but couldn’t. Then, through Vesta: Manarkans didn’t have names, but were known by their personality patterns. Didn’t they sign something to documents? No, they used finger-prints only, without signatures.
‘But we’ve got to have something we can put in the book!’ Cloud protested. ‘Tell her to pick one.’
‘No preference,’ Vesta reported. ‘I’m to do it. I knew a lovely Tellurian named “Nadinevandereckelberg” once. Let’s call her that?’
‘Nadine van der Eckelberg? Better not. Not common enough —there might be repercussions. We can use part of it, though. “Nadine”, bracketed with her prints ..’. there. Now how about Maluleme?’ He turned to the ‘Classification’ listing and frowned. ‘What to class her as I’ll never know. She’s got just about as much business aboard this bucket as I would have in a sultan’s harem.’
‘You might find quite a lot—and that I’d like to see!’ Vesta snickered. ‘But look under ‘Mizzelaneouz”, there.”
Her stiff, sharp fingernail ran down the column almost to the end. ‘”Zupercargo”? We have no cargo. “Zupernumerary”?
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That’s it! See? I read: “Zupernumerary—Perzonnel beyond the nezezzary or uzhual; ezpedjially thoze employed not for regular zervize, but only to fill the plazez of otherz in caze of need.” Perfect!’
‘Whose place could she fill?’
‘The cook’s—if the automatics break down,’ Vesta explained, gleefully. ‘She says she can really cook—so even if they didn’t break down she can tape lots of nice things to eat that aren’t in your kitchen banks.’
‘Could be. I can get away with that. “Supernumerary (cook 1/c) Maluleme” and her prints … there. Now we’re organized —let’s flit. Ready, Thlaskin?’
•Ready, sir,’ and the good ship Vortex Blaster I took off.
‘Now, Vesta, I s’pose you’ve all picked out your cabins and got located?’
‘Yes, sir,’
‘QX. Tell ’em all, except Tommie, to go and do whatever they think they ought to be doing. Tell Tommie to sit down at the chart-table. We’ll join her. I want to find out what she’s got on her mind.’
Pulling a chart and rolling it out flat on the table, Cloud went on: ‘We’re in this unexplored region, here, about thirty two dash twenty five.* We’re headed for Nixson II, about sixty one dash forty six.”
‘Nixson? Why, that’s only three thousand parsecs—a day and a half, say—from Tominga, where I want you to go!’ Tommie exclaimed.
‘Check. That’s why I’m going to listen to what you have to say. We can pick Manarka up—sixty five dash thirty five, here; they’ve got two really bad ones—on the way back. It’s a long flit to Chickladoria—’way over there, one seventy seven dash thirty four—but I’ve got to go there pretty quick, anyway. It’s way up on the A list. So, Tommie, start talking.’
The run to Nixson II was uneventful, and Cloud rid that planet of its loose atomic vortices in a few hours. The cruiser then headed directly for Tominga, one man short, for Tommie
* Rough locations are expressed in degrees of galactic longitude and hundredths of the distance from Centralia to the Arbitrary Rim of the galaxy. This convention ignores the galaxy’s thickness and is used only in first approximations. E.E.S.
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was not aboard.
‘Now remember, no matter what happens, you don’t know any one of us,’ had been the Blaster’s parting instructions to her. ‘After we’ve checked in at the hotel we’ll meet in the lobby. Be sure you’re sitting—or standing—some place where Vesta can pass a couple of words with you without anybody catching on. Check?’
‘Check.’
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8: Vesta the Vegian
Immediately after supper Cloud called Vesta and Nadine into his cabin.
‘You first, Nadine.’ He caught her eyes and stopped talking, but went on thinking. He was amazed at how easy it had been to learn the knack of telepathy with both Luda and the Manarkan. ‘How did you make out with Tommie? Can’t she read you at all?’
. ‘Not at all. I can read her easily enough, but she can neither send nor receive.’
‘How about Vesta, then? Any more progress?’
‘No. Just like you. She learned very quickly to receive, but that is all. She cannot tune her mind; I have to do it all.’ It also amazed the Blaster that, after learning one half of telepathy so easily, he had been unable even to get a start on the other half. ‘We might try it again, though, all three of us together?’
They tried, but it was no use. Think as they would, of even the simplest things—squares, crosses, triangles, and circles— staring eye to eye and even holding hands, neither the Blaster nor the Vegian could touch the other’s mind. Nor could the Manarkan tell them or show them what to do.
‘Well, that’s out, then.’ Cloud frowned in concentration, the fingers of his left hand drumming almost soundlessly on the table’s plastic top. ‘Nadine, you can’t send simultaneously to both Vesta and me, because we can’t tune ourselves into resonance with you, as a real telepath could. However, could you read me and send my thoughts to Vesta, and do it fast enough to keep up? As fast as I talk, say?’
‘Oh, easily. I don’t have to tune sharply to receive—unless there’s a lot of interference, of course—and even then, Vesta can read my shorthand. She learned it before we met you.’
‘Hm … m. Interesting. Let’s try it out. I’ll think at you, you put it down in shorthand. You, Vesta, tape it in Spanish. Get your notebook and recorder .. ready? Let’s go!’
There ensued a strange spectacle. Cloud, leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed, mumbled to himself in English, to slow his thoughts dow nto approximately two hundred words per minute. Nadine, paying no visible attention to the man, wrote