Capital D into a parking orbit around Earth, and began to pick up his tremendous order
of machine tools and supplies. It went well; Brookings had done his job. There was,
however, one job DuQuesne had to do for himself. During the loading, accordingly, he
went in person to Washington, D.C., to the Rare Metals Laboratory, and to Room 1631.
That room’s door was open. He tapped lightly on it as he entered the room. He closed
the door gently behind him.
“Park it,” a well-remembered contralto voice said. “Be with you in a moment.”
“No rush.” DuQuesne sat down, crossed his legs, lighted a cigarette, and gazed at the
woman seated at her electronics panel. Both her eyes were buried in the light-shield of
a binocular eyepiece; both her hands were manipulating vernier knobs in tiny arcs.
“Oh! Hi, Blackie! Be with you in half a moment.”
“No sweat, Hunkie. Finish your obs.”
“Natch.” Her attention had not wavered for an instant from her instruments; it did not
waver then.
In a minute or so she pressed a button, her panel went dark, and she rose to her feet.
“It’s been a long time, Blackie,” she said, stepping toward him and extending her hand.
“It has indeed.” He took her hand and began an encircling action with his left-a
maneuver which she countered, neatly but still smilingly, by grasping his left hand and
holding it firmly.
“Tsk, tsk,” she tsked. “The merchandise is on display, Blackie, but it is not to be
handled. Remember?”
“I remember. Still untouchable,” he said.
“That’s right. You’re a hard-nosed, possessive brute, Blackie-any man to interest me
very much would have to be, I suppose-but no man born is ever going to tell me what I
can or can’t do. Selah. Butlet’s skip that.” She released his hands, waved him to a chair,
sat down, crossed her legs, accepted the lighted cigarette he handed her, and went on,
“Thanks. The gossip was that you were all washed up and had, as Ferdy put it, `taken it
on the lam.’ I didn’t believe it then and I don’t believe it now. I’ve been wanting to tell
you; you’re a good enough man so that whatever you’re really after, you’ll get.”
This woman could reach DuQuesne as no other woman ever had. “Thanks, Hunkie,” he
said; and, reaching out, he pressed her right hand hard then dropped it. “What I came
up here for-have you a date for Thursday evening that you can’t or won’t break?”
Her smile widened; her two lovely dimples deepened. “Don’t tell me; let me guess.
Louisa Vinciughi in Lucia.”
“Nothing else but. You like?”
“I love. With the usual stipulation-we `Dutch’ it.”
“Listen, Hunkie!” he protested. “Aren’t you ever going to get off of that `Dutch’ thing?
Don’t you think a man can take a girl out without having monkey-business primarily in
mind?”
She considered the question thoughtfully, then nodded.
“As stated, yes. Eliding the one word `primarily’, no. I’ve heard you called a lot of things,
my friend, but `stupid’ was never one of them. Not even once.”
“I know.” DuQuesne smiled, a trifle wryly. “You are not going to be obligated by any jot
or iota or tittle to any man living or yet to be born.”
Her head went up a little and her smile became a little less warm. “That’s precisely
right, Marc. But I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I enjoy your company a lot.
So, on that basis, okay and thanks.”
“On that basis, then, if that’s the way it has to be, and thanks to you, too,” DuQuesne
said, and took his leave.
And Thursday evening came; and all during that long and thoroughly pleasant evening
the man was, to the girl’s highly sensitive perception . . . well, different, although very
subtly so. He was not quite, by some very small fraction, his usual completely poised
and urbane self. Even Vinciughi’s wonderful soprano voice did not bring him entirely
back from wherever it was he was. Wherefore, just before saying goodnight at the door
of her apartment, she said:
“You have something big on your mind, Blackie. Tremendously big. Would it help to
come in and talk a while?” This was the first time in all their long acquaintance that she
had ever invited him into her apartment. “Or-wouldn’t it?”
He thought for a moment. “No,” he decided. “There are so many maybes and ifs and
buts in the way that talking would be even more futile than thinking. But I’d like to ask
you this: how much longer will you be here in Washington, do you think?”
She caught her breath. “The Observer says it’ll take me a year and a half to get what I
should have.”
“That’s fine,” DuQuesne said. His thoughts were racing, but none of them showed.
What were those observers doing? And why? He knew the kind of mind Stephanie de
Marigny had-they were feeding with a teaspoon a mind fully capable of gulping it down
by the truckload . . . why? Why? So as not to play favorites, probably-that was the only
reason he could think of. DuQuesne was playing for very high stakes; he could not
afford to overlook any possibility, however remote. Had his interest in Hunkie de
Marigny been deduced by the Norlaminians? Was it, in fact, possible-even likely-that he
was under observation even now? Was their strange slowdown in her training
meaningful? He could not answer; but he decided on caution. He went on with scarcely
a noticeable pause, “I’ll see you well before that-if I may?”
“Why, of course you may! I’d get an acute attack of the high dudgeons if you ever came
to Washington without seeing me!”
He took his leave then, and she went into her apartment and closed the door . . . and
stood there, motionless, listening to his receding footsteps with a far-away, brooding
look in her deep brown eyes.
19 THE COUP
As the days had passed, more and more of the Skylarkers had come to ground in
Seaton’s temporary home on the planet Ray-See-Nee; until many of them, especially
Dorothy, were spending most of their nights there. On this particular evening they were
all there.
Since the personal gravity-controls had been perfected long since, Dunark and Sitar
were comfortable enough as far as gravity was concerned. The engineers, however,
had not yet succeeded in incorporating really good ambient atmosphere temperature-
controllers into them; wherefore he was swathed in wool and she wore her fabulous
mink coat. They each wore two Osnomian machine pistols instead of one, and they sat
a couple of feet apart-in instant readiness for any action that might become necessary.
Lotus and Shiro, a little closer together than the two Osnomians but not enough so to
get into each other’s way, sat cross-legged on the floor. He was listening intently, while
she wasn’t. Almost everything that was being said was going completely over her head.
Dorothy, Margaret, and Crane sat around a small table, fingering tall glasses in which
ice-cubes tinkled faintly.
Seaton paced the floor, with his right hand in his breeches pocket and his left holding
his pipe, which he brandished occasionally in the air to emphasize a point.
“Considering that we can’t do anything at all on unmuffled high-order stuff except when
an ore-scow is here, masking our emanations,” Seaton was saying, “we haven’t done
too bad. However, I wouldn’t wonder if we’d just about run out of time and we’re right
between the devil and the deep blue sea. Mart, what’s your synthesis?”
Crane sipped his drink and cleared his throat. “You’re probably right in one respect,
Dick. They apparently make a spectacle of these destructions of cities; not for the
Chlorans’ amusement-I doubt very much if they enjoy or abhor anything, as we
understand the term-but to keep the rest of the population of this world in line. Whether
or not the quisling dictator of this world arranged for this city to be the next sacrifice, it is
certain that we have interfered with the expected course of events to such an extent
that the powers-that-be will at least investigate. But I can’t quite see the dilemma.”
“I can,” Dorothy said. “They have to have a grisly example, once every so often; and
since this one didn’t develop on schedule maybe they’ll go crying, to mama instead of
trying to handle us themselves. You see, they may know more about us than we think
they do.”
“That’s true, of course-” Crane began, but Seaton broke in.
“So I say it’s time to let Ree-Toe Prenk in on the whole deal and add him to our Council
of War,” he declared, and talk went on.
They were still discussing the situation twenty minutes later, when someone tapped
gently on the front door.
The Osnomians leaped to their feet, pistols in all four hands. The two Japanese leaped
to their feet and stood poised, knees and elbows slightly flexed, ready for action. Forty-