It’s going well, thought Alen drowsily: going very well indeed.
He awoke abruptly, but made no move. It was dark in the double room, and there were stealthy, furtive little noises nearby. A hundred thoughts flashed through his head of Lyran treachery and double-dealing. He lifted his eyelids a trifle and saw a figure silhouetted against the faint light of the big window. If a burglar, he was a clumsy one.
There was a stirring from the other hammock, the trader’s. With a subdued roar that sounded like “Thieving villains!” blackbeard launched himself from the hammock at the intruder. But his feet tangled in the hammock cords and he belly-flopped on the floor.
The burglar, if it was one, didn’t dash smoothly and efficiently for the door. He straightened himself against the window and said resignedly: “You need not fear. I will make no resistance.”
Alen rolled from the hammock and helped the trader to his feet. “He said he doesn’t want to fight,” he told the trader.
Blackbeard siezed the intruder and shook him like a rat.
“So the rogue is a coward too!” he boomed. “Give us a light, Herald.”
Alen uncovered the slow-match, blew it to a flame, squeak-fly pumped up a pressure torch until a jet of pulverized coal sprayed from its nozzle and ignited it. A dozen strokes more and there was enough heat feeding back from -the jet to maintain the pressure cycle.
Through all of this the trader was demanding in his broken Lyran: “What make here, thief? What reason thief us room?”
The Herald brought the hissing pressure lamp to the window. The intruder’s face was not the unhealthy, neurotic face of a criminal. Its thin lines told of discipline and thought.
“What did you want h’ere?” asked Alen.
“Metal,” said the intruder simply. “I thought you might have a bit of iron.”
It was the first time a specific metal had been named by any Lyran. He used, of course, the Vegan word for iron.
“You are particular,” remarked the Herald. “Why iron?”
“I have heard that it possesses certain properties—perhaps you can tell me before you turn me over to the police. Is it true, as we hear, that a mass of iron whose crystals have been aligned by a sharp blow will strongly attract another piece of iron with a force related to the distance between them?”
“It is true,” said the Herald, studying the man’s face. It was lit with excitement. Deliberately Alen added: “This alignment is more easily and uniformly effected by placing the mass of iron in an electric field—that is, a space surrounding the passage of an electron stream through a conductor.” Many of the words he used had to be Vegan; there were no Lyran words for “electric,” “electron” or “conductor.”
The intruder’s face fell. “I have tried to master the concept you refer to,” he admitted. “But it is beyond me. I have questioned other interstar voyagers and they have touched on it, but I cannot grasp it— But thank you, sir; you have been very courteous. I will trouble you no further while you summon the watch.”
“You give up too easily,” said Alen. “For a scientist, much too easily. If we turn you over to the watch, there will be hearings and testimony and whatnot. Our time is limited here on your planet; I doubt that we can spare any for your legal processes.”
The trader let go of the intruder’s shoulder and grumbled:
“Why you no ask we have iron, I tell you no. Search, search, take all metal away. We no police you. I sorry hurted you arms. Here for you.” Blackboard brought out a palmful of his sample gems and picked out a large triple-fire stone. “You not be angry me,” he said, putting it, in the Lyran’s hand.
“I can’t—” said the scientist.
Blackbeard closed his fingers over the stone and growled: “I give, you take. Maybe buy iron with, eh?”
“That’s so,” said the Lyran. “Thank you both, gentlemen. Thank you—”
“You go,” said the trader. “You go, we sleep again.”
The scientist bowed with dignity and left their room.
“Gods of space,” swore the trader. “To think that Jukkl, the Starsong’s wiper, knows more about electricity and magnetism than a brainy fellow like that.”