heads turn up by pure chance alone?
He didn’t dare move any closer, but he kept on looking and he kept on wondering.
Would she slug him or just slap him or maybe even accept it, he wondered, if he should
offer to buy the Miss Mannis a drink . . .
Miss Mannis was also being studied, much more intensively and from much closer
viewpoints, by two Jelmi in an immense new spaceship, the Mallidaxian, on the moon;
and the more they studied the Mannis costume the more baffled they became.
As had been said, the Jelmi had had to build this immense new spaceship because the
comparatively tiny Mallidax, in which they had escaped from the Realm of the Llurdi,
had proved too small by far to house the outsized gear necessary for accurately
controlled intergalactic work of any kind. The Mallidaxian, however-built as she was of
inoson and sister-ship as she was to the largest, heaviest, and most powerful space-
sluggers of the Realm was not only big enough to carry any instrumentation known to
the science of the ago, but also powerful enough to cope with any foreseeable
development or contingency.
The Jarman sub-Lunar base had been dismantled and collapsed. Its every
distinguishing feature had been reduced to moon-dust. The Mallidaxian’s slimly
powerful length now extended for a distance of two and one half miles from the
mountain’s foot out into the level-floored crater: in less than an hour she would take off
for Mallidax, the home world of Tammon, Mergon, Luloy, and several other top bracket
Jelmi of the fugitive eight hundred.
The vessel’s officers and crew were giving their instruments and mechanisms one last
pre-flight check. Tammon was still studying the offensive and defensive capabilities of
Cape Kennedy; Mergon and Luloy-among others-had been studying the human beings
of this hitherto unknown world. Everyone aboard, of course, had long since mastered
the principal languages of Earth.
That Madlyn Mannis should have been selected for observation was not very
astonishing. Some thousands of Earthmen-and Earthwomen, Earthchildren, even
Earthdogs and cats-had been. There was that about Madlyn Mannis, however, and to a
lesser degree about the male with whom she seemed in some way associated, that
seemed to deserve special study. For one thing, the Jelmi had been totally unable to
deduce any shred of evidence that might indicate her profession-not so surprising,
since the work of a stripper must seem pure fantasy to a world which habitually wears
no clothes at all! Madlyn, although used to being talked about, would have been quite
astonished to learn how interestedly she was being discussed on the far side of the
moon.
“Oh, let’s bring her up here, Meru,” Luloy said in disgust. “I want to talk to her-find out
what this idiocy means. We’d better bring that fellow along, too: she’d probably be
scared out of her wits-if any-alone.”
“Check,” Mergon said, and the two Tellurians appeared, standing close together, in the
middle of the room.
The girl screamed once; then, her eyes caught by the awesome moonscape so starkly
visible through the transparent wall, she froze and stared in terror. Then, finding that
she was not being hurt, she fought her terror down. She took one fleeting glance at
Mergon, blushed to the waist, and concentrated on Luloy. “Why, you must . . . you do
go naked!” she gasped. “All the time! How utterly, utterly shameless!”
“Shameless?” Luloy wrinkled her nose in perplexity. “That’s what I want to talk to you
about, this `shame’ concept. I can’t understand it and its dictionary definition is
senseless to the point of unsanity. I never heard of a concept before that so utterly
lacked sense, reason, and logic. What significant difference can there possibly be
between nakedness and one ribbon and two bits of gauze? And why in the name of All-
Seeing Llenderllon wear any clothing at all when you don’t have to? Against cold or
thorns or whatever? And especially when you swim? And you take o$ your clothes too .
. .”
“I do no such thing!” The dancer drew herself up haughtily. “I am an artiste. An exotic
dancer’s disrobing is a fine art, and I am Madlyn Mannis, the exotic dancer.”
“Be that as it may, just answer one question and we’ll put you back where you were, on
the beach. What possible logical, reasonable, or even comprehensible relationship can
there be between clothing and sex?”
While the girl was groping for an answer, the man took one step forward and said, “She
can’t answer that question. Neither can I, fully, but I can state as a fact that such a
relationship is a fact of our lives; of the lives of all the peoples–even the least civilized
peoples-of our world. It’s an inbred, ages-old, world-wide sexual taboo. Based, possibly
or even probably, upon the idea `out of sight, out of mind’. ”
“A sexual taboo?”. Luloy shook her head in complete, bafflement. “Why, I never heard
of anything so completely idiotic in my whole life! Will you wear these thought-caps with
me for a moment, please, so that we may explore this weird concept in depth?”
The girl flinched away from the helmet at first, but the man reached out for his, saying,
“I’ve always claimed to have an open mind, but this I’ve got to see.”
Since complete non-comprehension of motivation on one side met fundamental
ignorance on the other, however, thoughts were no more illuminating than words had
been.
“Neither she nor I know enough about the basics of that branch of anthropology,” the
man said, handing the helmet back to Luloy. “You’d better get a book. Mores and
Customs of Tellus, by David Lisser, in five volumes, is the most complete work I know
of. You can find it in any big bookstore. It’s expensive, though-it costs seventy-five
dollars.”
“Oh? And we haven’t any American money and we don’t steal . . . but I’ve noticed that
highly refractive bits of crystalline carbon of certain shades of color are of value here.”
Turning her back on the two Tellurians, Luloy went to the laboratory bench, opened a
drawer, glanced into it, and shook her head. She picked up a helmet, thought into it,
and there appeared upon the palm of her hand a perfectly cut, perfectly polished, blue-
white diamond half the size of an egg.
She turned back toward the two and held out her hand so that the man could inspect
the gem, saying, “I have not given any attention at all to your monetary system, but this
should be worth enough, I think, to leave in the place of the book of five volumes. Or
should if be bigger?”
Close up, the man .goggled at blue-white fire. “Bigger! Than that rock? Lady! Are you
kidding? If that thing will stand inspection it’ll buy you a library, buildings and all!”
“That’s all I wanted to know. Thank you.” Luloy turned to Mergon. “They don’t know any
more than . . .”
“Just a minute; please,” the man broke in. “If diamonds don’t mean any more than that
to you, why wouldn’t it be a good idea for you to make her some? To alleviate the shock
she has just had? Not as big, of course; none bigger than the end of my thumb.”
Luloy nodded. “I know. Various sizes, for full-formal array. She’s just about my size, so
eleven of your quarts will do it.”
“My God, no. . . :’ Madlyn began, but the man took smoothly over.
“Not quite, Miss Luloy. Our ladies don’t decorate their formats as lavishly as you
apparently do. One quart, or maybe a quart and a half, will do very nicely.”
“Very well,” Luloy looked directly at the man. “But you won’t want to be lugging them
around with you all the rest of the day-they’re heavy-so I’ll put them in the righthand top
drawer of the bureau in your bedroom. Good-by,” and Mergon’s hands began to move
toward his controls.
“Wait a minute!” the man exclaimed. “You can’t just dump us back where we were
without a word of explanation! While spaceships aren’t my specialty-I’m a petrochemical
engineer tee eight-I’ve never imagined anything as big as this vessel actually flying, and
I’m just about as much interested in that as I am in the way we got here which has to be
fourth-dimensional translation; it can’t be anything else. So if everything isn’t top secret,
how about showing us around a little?”
“The fourth-dimension device is top secret; so much so that only three or four of us
know anything about it. You may study anything else you please. Bearing in mind that
we have only a few seconds over three of your minutes left where would you like to
begin?”
“The engines first, please, and the drives.”
“And you, Miss Mannis? Arts? Crafts? Sciences? There is no dancing going on at the
moment.”
The dancer’s right hand flashed out, seized her fellow Earthman’s forearm and clung to