“But why?” the old savant protested. “I don’t see any possible reason for any of it.”
Seaton grinned. “There isn’t any-any more than there was for your original brainstorm. If
there had been the Norlaminian would have worked this whole shebang out a hundred
thousand years ago. It’s nothing but a hunch, but it’s strong enough so I want to follow it
up-okay? Fine then, integrating that, we get . . .”
Five hours later, Tammon took his helmet off and stared at Seaton with wonder in his
eyes. “Do you realize just what you’ve done, young man? You have made a break
through at least equal to my own. Opened up a whole vast new field-a field parallel to
my own, perhaps, but in no sense the same.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Merely an enlargement. All I did was follow a hunch.”
“An intuition,” Tammon corrected him. “What else, pray, makes breakthroughs?”
And Luloy, on the way out of the laboratory hand in hand with Mergon, said, “I had no
idea that Tellus ever did or ever could produce anybody like him. He is their god’s fair-
haired child, for a fact. Sennlloy will have to know about this, Merg.”
“She will indeed-I was sure you’d think of that.”
And as soon as Dorothy could get Seaton alone that evening she stared at him with a
variety of emotions playing over her face. As though she had never seen him before; or
as though she were getting acquainted with him all over again. “I’ve been talking to
Sennlloy,” she announced. “Or, rather, she’s been talking to me. She didn’t lose much
time, did she?”
Seaton blushed to the roots of his hair. “I’ll say she didn’t. Not any. She knocked me for
a block-long row of ash cans.”
“Uh-huh. Me, too-and how! She told me you said I’d blow my red top and I just about
did, until she explained. She’s quite a gal, isn’t she? And what a shape! You know, I’m
awfully glad I’m not too bad in that shape department myself, or I’d die of mortification
looking at them? But Dick-don’t you suppose there are any people in this whole
cockeyed universe except us and the Rayseenians who don’t run around naked all the
time?”
“I wouldn’t know; but what has all that got to do with the price of hasheesh c.i.f.
Istanbul?”
“It ties in. She must have thought I was some kind of an idiot child, but she didn’t show
it. She couldn’t really understand my taboos, she said, since they were not in her own
heredity, but she could accept them as facts in mine and work within their limitations.”
Dorothy blushed, but went on, “I’d be the only Prime Operator-and so forth. You know
about the `and so forth’. Anyway, before she got done she actually made me feel
ashamed of myself! They really need your genes, Dick. You didn’t let on, did you, that
DuQuesne’s a Tellurian, too?”
“I’ll say I didn’t! The less they think that ape and I came from the same world, the better
I’ll like it.”
“You and me both. Well, she didn’t actually say so, but when she found out what kind of
genes you have she decided to pour every one of DuQuesne’s right down the drain.”
“Could be.” Seaton didn’t agree with that conclusion at all, but he was too smart to
argue the point.
At breakfast the following morning Seaton said, “You chirped it, birdie, about their
thinking us some kind of idiot children. Besides, the First Principle and Prime Tenet of
all diplomacy has always been, `When in Rome be a Roman candle’. So I think we’d all
better peel to the raw as of now. You and I had better, whether the rest do or not.
Check?”
“Check-but I think they will. We’re horribly conspicuous, dressed. People look at us as
though we were things that had escaped from a zoo. And all the Green System people
have always thought we were more than somewhat loco in the coco for covering up so
much. We’ll get used to it easily enough-look at the nudists. So lead on, my bold and
valiant-I follow thee to the bitter end of all my raiment.”
“I knew you would, ace. Let’s go spread the gospel.”
When they approached the Cranes and the Japanese on the subject, Margaret threw
back her black-thatched head and laughed. “We must be psychic-we were going to
spring the same thing on you. And after all, actually, how much do our bathing suits
hide? Yours or mine either one? And we have it to show, too-so here goes! The last
one undressed is Stinker of the Day!” She began to unzip, then paused and looked at
Lotus.
The Nisei girl shrugged. “We all should, of course, I won’t like it and I positively know I’ll
never get used to it, but if you two do I will too if it kills me.”
“‘At-a-girl, Lambie!” Margaret put her arm around the beautifully formed little body and
squeezed. “But you just wait-you’ll have it really made. None of them ever saw anything
like you before, you gorgeous little doll, you. With your size and build you’ll be the
absolute Queen of the May!”
25 ROMAN CANDLES
COUNTLESS parsecs away, Marc C. DuQuesne was carrying out his own plans-plans
which would have been a most unpleasant surprise for the Skylarkers had they known
about them.
DuQuesne moved the surviving Fenachrone into his DQ easily enough and without
incident. Housing was no problem. How could it be, with millions upon millions of cubic
kilometers of space available and with automatic high-order constructors to do the
work? Nor was atmosphere, nor food nor any other necessity or desideratum of
Fenachronian life and/or well-being a problem.
Fenachrone engineers did it all-by operating special keyboards and by thinking into
carefully limited headsets but none of them had any idea whatever of what it was that
did any given task or how it did it. None of this knowledge, of either practice or theory,
was in their science; and DuQuesne took great pains to be sure that none of them got
any chance to learn any iota of it. He taught them, and they learned, purely by rote.
Like high-school girls learning to drive automobiles. They can become excellent drivers;
but with only that type of instruction none of them will ever become able to design a
hypoid gear or to understand in detail the operation of an automatic clutch.
The Fenachrone did not like such treatment. Sleemet in particular, when he began to
recover some of the normal pugnaciously prideful spirit of his race, did not like it at all
and said so; but DuQuesne did not care a particle whether he liked it or not.
DuQuesne’s snapping black eyes stared, contemptuously unaffected, into the furiously
hypnotic, red-lighted black eyes of the Fenachrone. “You megalomaniacal cretin,” he
sneered. “How can you possibly figure that it makes any difference whatever to me,
what you like or don’t like? If you have any fraction of a brain you’d better start using it.
If you haven’t or can’t or won’t, I’ll build you a duplicate of your original ship and turn you
all loose today.”
“You will? In that case-” Sleemet got that far and stopped cold in mid-sentence.
“Yeah.” DuQuesne’s tone cut like a knife. “Exactly. We’re still within Klazmon’s range;
we will be for quite a while yet. Do you want to be turned loose here?”
“Well, no.” If the thought occurred to him that DuQuesne was lying, he didn’t show it.
That was just as well for Sleemet and for the Fenachrone race. DuQuesne wasn’t.
“Maybe you have a brain of sorts, at that. But if you don’t forget this Master Race
flapdoodle, all of it and fast, you’ll last quick. Remember how easily that self-styled
Overlord wiped out your navy and then volatilized your whole stinking world? And how
easily Klazmon of Llurdiax smacked your whole fleet down? And what a fool I made and
am still making of Klazmon? And I know of one race that is as much ahead of mine as I
am ahead of you; and of another race that may be somewhat ahead of us Xyhnnians in
some ways. As I said, you’re about eleven hundred thousand years behind. Have you
got brains enough to realize that instead of being top dog you’re just low man on the
totem pole?”
“If you’re so high and we’re so low,” Sleemet snarled, “why did you take us away from
the Llurd? Of what possible use can we be to you?”
“You have certain mental and physical qualities that may perhaps be of use in a project
I have in mind. You are not only able and willing to fight, you really like to fight. These
qualities should, theoretically, make you better in some respects than automatics in
operating the offensive weapons of a base as large as this one is.” DuQuesne studied