“I think we all do, sir,” Hans told him.
“We wouldn’t expect you to sing a’ course, unless,” Seamus hastily added, not wishing to insult anyone, “you had a song you wanted to share with us.”
Luzon’s men looked totally out of their depth. Sally and Millard managed to keep their expressions merely receptive. but they dared not look at each other.
“Ah well, you can always listen,” Seamus said, “and eat some real good chow, and a’ course, Clodagh makes the best blurry on Petaybee.”
“Blurry?” Hans jumped on the word.
Everyone turned toward Seamus.
“Blurry’s a tradition here,” Seamus said, warming to his subject. “Drink it cold, warm, hot, and it soothes the cockles of the heart. Doesn’t take a man’s senses from him like al-ki-hall-ics do” He frowned, ” and no one’s ever had a hangover like the SpaceBasers get from that rot gut they drink. You could say …” He considered his next words carefully. “… that it’s a tonic for what ails you. Give it to the kids when they’re feeling puny, and next day they’re up and out again. ‘Bout the only thing it can’t cure is frostbite, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Clodagh’ll figure out how to do that soon, too.”
Sally and Millard exchanged significant glances. Marmion Algemeine would have to hear every detail of this.
“Is this blurry of yours good for indigestion?” Sally asked, seizing on the common complaint as the safest.
“Sure it is, and as good for labor pains as it is for flatulence, heartburn, and yer all-purpose bellyache,” Seamus assured her, turning his face toward her so that she alone saw the broad wink
‘Do you use many … Local remedies here, Mr. Rourke?” Ivan asked, his eyes sharp on the old man’s face.
“We’ve not much else to use, laddie,” Seamus said, hitching his hands up under the slight sag of his belly on his thighs. “And I’m not criticizing SpaceBase folk if they keep their own medicine for their own people. We got ours and it works for us. Petaybee takes care of us real well, you know.”
“That’s exactly what we’re here to decide,” Hans said, setting his jaw at an obstinate angle.
Inwardly Sally groaned. Maybe kidnapping these young men out from under Matthew’s rigid authority had not been such a good idea after all. Certainly having Seamus Rourke as a guide was turning disastrous, since he had already implied the existence of one questionable substance in the “blurry.” The wink had indicated that perhaps he was simply having a joke on them, but people like Matthew Luzon had no sense of humor, and Sally knew that Luzon would be delighted to learn of blurry’s “miraculous” properties and suggest the possibility of “drug-induced hallucinations.” First thing she would do when they returned to SpaceBase would be to get herself some blurry and run it through exhaustive tests, just to be safe. Sometimes even innocuous elements, when combined, produced potent, if not lethal, results.
A glance at Millard told her he was thinking the same thing.
Fortunately, before any other dangerous subjects could be raised, the helicopter went into hover mode and began its descent. The cliff loomed over them higher and higher, rock crags like upturned claws avoided by inches as Rick Amaluk O’Shay neatly put the skids in the footprint of his previous landing.
There was the bustle of disembarkation, with Rick and Millard distributing hand torches, a blanket“to sit on during the show”and a packet of rations, so that Sally didn’t have a chance to report to Marmion. When Seamus enthusiastically urged them to follow him into the cave, there was no option to refuse or hang back, especially with Rick acting as rear guard.
One of Luzon’s lads was talking into a handheld recorder, but when Sally got close enough to hear him, he was merely mumbling about the composition of the rock surfaces and reminding himself to look up examples of luminescent rock types.
Suddenly they were in a cavern that stretched incredibly far in all directions, with Seamus chivvying them to find themselves a comfortable spot, in case they had to wait a bit.
“What? No blurry?”’ one of the lads murmured.