Motioning hastily for silence, von Steiffel filled a bowl and placed it upon the floor
beneath Kromodeor’s grotesque nose. The twitching increased, until finally one dull,
glazed eye brightened somewhat and curled slowly out upon its slender pedicle, toward
the dish. His mouth opened sluggishly and a long, red tongue reached out, but as his
perceptions quickened he became conscious of the strangers near him. The mouth
snapped shut, the eye retracted, and heaving, rippling surges traversed that powerful
body as he struggled madly against the unbreakable shackles of steel binding him to
the floor.
“Ach, kindlein!” The surgeon bent anxiously over that grotesque but frightened
head; soothing, polysyllabic German crooning from his bearded lips.
“Here, let’s try this—I’m good on it,” Stevens suggested, bringing up the
Callistonian thought exchanger. All three men donned headsets, and sent wave after
wave of friendly and soothing thoughts toward that frantic and terrified brain.
“He’s got his brain shut up like a clam!” Brandon snorted. “Open up, guy—we
ain’t going to hurt you! We’re the best friends you’ve got on Earth, if you only knew it!”
“Himmel, und he iss himself killing!” moaned von Steiffel.
“One more chance that might work,” and Brandon stepped over to the
communicator, demanding that Verna Pickering be brought at once. She came in as
soon as the air-locks would permit, and the physicist welcomed her eagerly.
“This fellow’s fighting so he’s tearing himself to pieces. We can’t make him
receive a thought, and von Steiffel’s afraid to use an anaesthetic. Now it’s barely
possible that he may understand hexan. I thought you wasted time learning any of it, but
maybe you didn’t—see if you can make him understand that we’re friends.”
The girl flinched and shrank back involuntarily but forced herself to approach that
awful head. Bending over, she repeated over and over one harsh, barking syllable. The
effect of that word was magical. Instantly Kromodeor ceased struggling, an eye curled
out, and that long, supple tongue flashed down and into the syrup. Not until the last
sticky trace had been licked from the bowl did his attention wander from the food. Then
the eye, sparkling brightly now, was raised toward the girl. Simultaneously four other
eyes arose, one directed at each of the men and the other surveying his bonds and the
room in which he was. Then the Vorkul spoke, but his whistling, hissing manner of
speech so garbled the barking sounds of the hexan words he was attempting to utter
that Verna’s slight knowledge of the language was of no use. She therefore put on one
of the headsets, motioning the men to do the same, and approached Kromodeor with
the other, repeating the hexan word of friendly import. This time the Vorkul’s brain was
not sealed against the visitors and thoughts began to flow.
“You’ve used those things a lot,” Brandon turned to Stevens in a quick aside.
“Can you hide your thoughts ?”
“Sure—why?”
“All I can think of is that power system of theirs, and he’d know what we were
going to do, sure. And I’d better be getting at it anyway. So you can wipe that off your
mind with a clear conscience—the rest of us will get everything they’ve got there. Your
job’s to get everything you can out of this bird’s brain. All x?”
“All x.”
“Why, you didn’t put yours on!” Verna exclaimed.
“No, I don’t think I’ll have time. If I get started talking to him now, I’d be here from
now on, and I’ve got a lot of work to do. Steve can talk to him for me — see you later,”
and Brandon was gone.
He went directly to the Vorkulian fortress, bare now of hexan life and devoid of
hexan snares and traps. There he and his fellows labored day after day learning every
secret of every item of armament and equipment aboard the heptagon.
“Did you finish up today, Norm?” asked Stevens one evening. “Kromodeor’s
coming to life fast. He’s able to wiggle around a little now, and is insisting that we take
off the one chain we keep on him and let him use a plate, to call his people.”
“All done. Guess I’ll go in and talk to him—you all say he’s such an egg. With this
stuff off my mind I can hide it well enough. By the way, what does he eat ?” as the two
friends set out for the Venetian rooms.
“Anything that’s sweet, apparently, with enough milk to furnish protein. Won’t eat
meat or vegetables at all—von Steiffel says they haven’t got much of a digestive tract,
and I know that they haven’t got any teeth. He’s already eaten most all the syrup we had
on board, all of the milk chocolate, and a lot of sugar. But none of us can get any kind of
a raise out of him at all—not even Nadia, when she fed him a whole box of chocolates.”
“No, I mean what does he eat when he’s home ?”
“It seems to be a sort of syrup, made from the juices of jungle plants, which they
drag in on automatic conveyors and process on automatic machinery. But he’s a funny
mutt —hard to get. Some of his thoughts are lucid enough, but others we can’t make out
at all—they are so foreign to all human nature that they simply do not register as
thoughts at all. One funny thing, he isn’t the least bit curious about anything. He doesn’t
want to examine anything, doesn’t ask us any questions, and won’t tell us anything
about anything, so that all we know about him we found out purely by accident. For
instance, they like games and sports, and seem to have families. They also have love,
liking, and respect for others of their own race—but they seem to have no emotions
whatever for outsiders. They’re utterly inhuman—I can’t describe it—you’ll have to get it
for yourself.”
“Did you find out about the Callistonians who went to see them ?” , “Negatively,
yes. They never arrived. They probably couldn’t see in the fog, and must have missed
the city. If they tried to land in that jungle, it was simply just too bad.”
“That would account for everything. So they’re strictly neutral, eh? Well, I’ll tell
him ‘hi’, anyway.” Now in the sick-room, Brandon picked up the headset and sent out a
wave of cheery greeting.
To his amazement the mind of the Vorkul was utterly unresponsive to his
thoughts. Not disdainful, not inimical; not appreciative, nor friendly—simply indifferent to
a degree unknown and incomprehensible to any human mind. He sent Brandon only
one message, which came clear and coldly emotionless.
“I do not want to talk to you. Tell the hairy doctor that I am now strong enough to
be allowed to go to the communicator screen. That is all.” The Vorkul’s mind again
became an oblivious maze of unintelligible thoughts. Not deliberately were Kromodeor’s
thoughts hidden; he was constitutionally unable to interest himself in the thoughts or
things of any alien intelligence.
“All x, pal.” A puzzled, thoughtful look came over Brandon’s face as he called von
Steiffel. “A queer duck, if there ever was one. However, their ships will never bother us,
that’s one good thing; and I think we’ve got about everything of theirs that we want,
anyway.”
The surgeon, after a careful examination of his patient, unlocked the heavy collar
with which he had been restraining the over-anxious Vorkul, and supported him lightly at
the communicator panel. As surely as though he had used those controls for years
Kromodeor shot the visiray beam out into space. One hand upon each of the several
dials and one eye upon each meter, it was a matter only of seconds for him to get in
touch with Vorkulia. To the Terrestrials the screen was a gray and foggy blank; but the
manifest excitement shrieking and whistling from the speaker in response to
Kromodeor’s signals made it plain that his message was being received with
enthusiasm.
“They are coming,” the Vorkul thought, and lay back, exhausted.
“Just as well that they’re coming out here, at that,” Brandon commented. “We
couldn’t begin to handle that structure anywhere near Jupiter—in fact, we wouldn’t want
to get very close ourselves, with passengers aboard.”
Such was the power of the Vorkulian vessels that in less than twenty hours
another heptagon slowed to a halt beside the Sirius and two of its crew were wafted
aboard.
They were ushered into the Venerian room, where they talked briefly with their
wounded fellow before they dressed him in a space-suit, which they filled with air to
their own pressure. Then all three were lifted lightly into the air, and without a word or a
sign were borne through the air-locks of the vessel, and into an opening in the wall of
the rescuing heptagon. A green tractor beam reached out, seizing the derelict, and both
structures darted away at such a pace that in a few minutes they had disappeared in the