it. “Wherever he goes I go along!” she said, very positively.
Since neither of the two Earthpeople had even been projected before, they were both
very much surprised at how much can be learned via projection, and in how short a
time. They saw tremendous receptors and generators and propulsors; they saw the
massed and banked and tiered keyboards and instrumentation of the control stations;
they saw how the incredibly huge vessel’s inoson structural members were trussed and
latticed and braced and buttressed to make it possible for such a titanic structure to fly.
Since everything aboard the original Jelman vessel had been moved aboard this vastly
larger one before the original had been reduced to moon-dust, the dancer and her
companion also saw beautiful, splendid, and magnificent-if peculiarly unearthly-
paintings and statues and tapestries and rugs. They heard music, ranging from vast
orchestral recordings down to the squeakings and tootlings of beginners learning to
play musical instruments unknown to the humanity of Earth.
And above all they saw people. Hundreds and hundreds of people; each one
completely naked and each one of a physical perfection almost never to be found on
Earth.
At time zero minus twenty seconds Mergon cut off the projectors and the Earthman
looked at Luloy.
She not only had swapped the diamond for the five-volume set of books; she had
already read over a hundred pages of Volume One. She was flipping pages almost as
fast as her thumb and forefinger could move, and she was absorbing the full content of
the work at the rate of one glance per page.
“You people seem to be as human as we are,” Madlyn said, worriedly, “but outside of
that you’re nothing like us at all in any way. Where did you come from anyway?”
“I can’t tell you,” Mergon said, flatly. “Not that I don’t want to, I can’t. We’re what you call
human, yes; but our world Mallidax is a myriad of galaxies away from here -so far away
that the distance is completely incomprehensible to the mind. Good-by.”
And Madlyn Mannis found herself-with no lapse of time and with no sensation whatever
of motion-standing in her former tracks under the big umbrella on the beach. The only
difference was that she was now standing still instead of digging her toes into the sand.
She looked at her fellow moon-traveler. He, too, was standing in the same place as
before, but he now looked as though he had been struck by lightning. She swallowed
twice, then said, “Well, I’m awfully glad I wasn’t alone when that hap . . .” she broke off
abruptly, licked her lips, and went on in a strangely altered tone, “Or am I nuttier than a
fruit-cake? Vas you dere, Shar-lee?”
“I vas dere, Madlyn.” He walked toward her. He was trying to grin, but was not having
much success with it. “And my name is Charley-Charles K. van der Gleiss.”
“My God! That makes it even worse=or does it?”
“I don’t see how anything could; very well or very much . . . but I need a drink. How
about you?”
“Brother! Do I! But we’ll have to dress. You can’t get anything on the beach here that’s
strong enough to cope with anything like that!”
“I know. City owned. Teetotal. I’ll see you out in front in a couple of minutes. In a taxi.”
“Make it five minutes, or maybe a bit more. And if you run out on me, Charles K. van
der Gleiss, I’ll . . . I’ll hunt you up and kill you absolutely dead, so help me!”
“Okay, I’ll wait, but make it snappy. I need that drink.”
She had snatched up her robe and had taken off across the sand like a startled doe;
her reply came back over one shoulder. “You need a drink? Oh, brother!”
11 BLOTTO
THE world had come a long way from the insular, mudbound globe of rock and sea of
the 1950s and 1970s; Seaton and Crane had seen to that. Norlaminian observers were
a familiar sight to most humans-if not in person, then surely through the medium of TV
or tapefax. A thousand worlds had been photographed by Tellurian cameramen and
reporters; the stories of the Osnomians, the Fenachrone, the Valeronians, even the
Chlorans and the other weirdly non-human races of the outer void were a matter of
public record.
Nevertheless, it is a far different thing from knowing that other races exist to find
yourself a guest of one of them, a quarter of a million miles from home; wherefore
Madlyn and Charles’s expressed intentions took immediate and tangible form.
Madlyn Mannis and Charles K. van der Gleiss were facing each other across a small
table in a curtained booth; a table upon which a waiter was placing a pint of bonded
hundred-proof- bourbon and the various items properly accessory thereto. As soon as
the curtain fell into place behind the departing waiter the girl seized the bottle, raised it
to her mouth, and belted down a good two fingers-as much as she could force down
before her coughing, choking, and strangling made her stop.
“Hey! Take it easy!” the man protested, taking the bottle from her hand and putting it
gently down on the table. “You’re not used to guzzling it like that; that’s for plain damn
sure.”
She gulped and coughed a few times; wiped her streaming eyes. “I’ll tell the world I’m
not; two little ones is always my limit, ordinarily. But I needed that jolt, Charley, to keep
from flipping my lid completely. Don’t you need one, too?”
“I certainly do. A triple, at least, with a couple of snowflakes of ice and about five drops
of water.” He built the drink substantially as specified, took it down in three swallows,
and drew a profoundly deep breath. “You heard me tell them I’m a petrochemical
engineer, tee eight. So maybe that didn’t hit me quite as hard as it did you, but bottled
courage helps, believe me.” He mixed another drink-a single—and cocked an eyebrow
at the girl. “That’ll you have as a chaser for that God-awful belt?”
“A scant jigger-three-quarters, about-in a water glass,” she said, promptly. “Two ice-
cubes and fill it up with acceptor.” He mixed the drink and she took a sip. “Thanks,
Charley. This is much better for drinking purposes. Now maybe I can talk about what
happened without blowing my top. I was going to wonder why we’ve been running into
each other all the time lately, but that doesn’t amount to anything compared to . . . I
actually thought . . . in fact, I know very well . . . we were on . . . weren’t we? Both of
us?”
“We were both on the moon,” he said flatly. “To make things worse, we were inside a
spaceship that I still don’t believe can be built. Those are facts.”
“Uh-uh; that’s what I mean. Positively nobody ever went to the moon or anywhere else
off-Earth without being in something, and we didn’t have even the famous paddle. And
posi-damn-tively nobody-but nobody!-ever got into and out of a tightly closed, vacuum-
tight spaceship without anybody opening any doors or ports or anything. How do you
play them tunes on your piccolo, friend?”
“I don’t; and the ship itself was almost as bad. Not only was it impossibly big; it was full
of stuff that makes the equipment of the General Hoyt S. Vandenberg look like picks
and shovels.” She raised an eyebrow questioningly and he went on, “One of the
missile-tracking vessels-the hairiest hunks of electronic gadgetry ever built by man.
What it all adds up to is a race of people somewhere who know as much more than
even the Norlaminians do as we do than grasshoppers. So I think we had better report
to the cops.”
“The cops!” she spat the word out like an oath. “Me? Madlyn Mannis? Squeal to the
fuzz? When a great big gorilla slugs me in the brisket and heists fifteen Brands’ worth of
diamonds off of me and I don’t get . . .”
She broke off suddenly. Both had avoided mentioning the diamonds, but now the word
was accidentally out. She shook her head vigorously, then said, “Uh-uh. They aren’t
there. Who ever heard of diamonds by the quart? Anyway, even if that Luloy could have
done it and did, I’ll bet they evaporated or something.”
“Or they’ll turn out to be glass,” he agreed. “No use looking, hardly, I don’t think. Even if
they are there and are real, you couldn’t sell ’em without telling where they came from-
and you can’t do that.”
“I couldn’t? Don’t be naive, Charley. Nobody ever asks me where I got any diamonds I
sell-I’d slap his silly face off. I can peddle your half, too, at almost wholesale. Not all at
once, of course, but a few at a time, here and there.”
“Half, Uh-uh,” he objected. “I was acting as your agent on that deal. Ten per cent.”