‘All right – but suppose we do find somebody who out-Gun-thers us?’
‘I’d a lot rather have it that way than the way it is now. I’ll do the hopping, you the checking. Here’s the first one – what do you read?’
‘No good.’
‘And this one?’
The same.’
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‘And this?’
‘Ditto.’
Until, finally: ‘Clee, just how long are you going to keep this up?’
‘Until we find something or run out of time for the meeting. Belle, I really want to find somebody who amounts to something.’
‘So do I, really, so go ahead.’
But they did not run out of time. At planet number four-hundred-something Belle suddenly emitted a shriek-vocally as well as mentally.
‘Clee! Hold it! There’s something here, I think!’
‘I’m sure there is, and I’m gladder to see you two people than can possibly be expressed.’
Belle whirled; so did Garlock. A man stood in the middle of the Main – a man shaped very much like Garlock, but with long, badly-tousled fiery-red hair and a bushy wilderness of fiery-red whiskers.
‘Please excuse this intrusion, Admiral – or should it be plural? Improper address, I’m sure, but your joint tenure is a concept so new and so vast that I am not yet able to grasp it fully – but you are working at such high speed that I had to do something drastic. You will, I trust, remain here long enough to discuss certain matters with my wife and me?’
‘We’ll be very glad to.’
Thank you. I will return, then, more decorously, and bring her along. One moment.’ He disappeared.
‘Wife!’ Belle exclaimed, more than half in dismay. Then they must be…’
‘Yeah.’ The thought of a wife did not bother Garlock at all. Talk about power! And speed! To get all that stuff and ‘port up here in a fraction of a second? There’s a guy who is what a Prime Operator ought to be!’
In a few seconds the man reappeared, accompanied by a woman who was very obviously pregnant – eight months or so. Like the man, she was dressed in tight-fitting coveralls. Her hair, however – it was a natural red, too – was cut to a uniform length of eight inches, and each hair individually stood out, perfectly straight and perfectly perpendicular to the element of the scalp from which it sprang.
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‘Friends Belle and Clee of Tellus, I present Therea, my wife … and Alsyne, myself … of this planet Thaker. We have numbers, too, but they are never used among friends.’
Acknowledgments were made and a few minutes of conversation ensued, during which the two couples studied each other.
“This looks mighty good to me,’ Garlock said then. ‘Shall we go screens half-down, Alsyne, and cry in each other’s beer?’
In thirty seconds of flashing communication each became thoroughly informed. Those minds could send, and could receive, an incredibly vast amount of information in an incredibly brief space of time.
‘Your ship should work and doesn’t,’ Garlock said. ‘Show me, in detail.’
Alsyne showed him.
‘Oh, I see. You didn’t work out quite all the theory. It has to be activated. Like this …’ Garlock showed Alsyne.
‘I see. Thanks.’ Alsyne disappeared and was gone for some ten minutes. He reappeared, grinning hugely behind his flaming wilderness of beard. ‘It works perfectly – for which our heartfelt thanks. And now that my mind is at complete peace with the universe, we will consider the utterly fascinating subject of your proposed Galactic Service. You two Tellurians, immature although you are, have made two tremendous contributions to the advancement of the Scheme of Things – three, if you count this starship, which is comparatively unimportant – each of such import that no human mind can foresee any fraction of its consequences. First, your Prime Field, the probe and its screen…’
‘Clee!’ Belle drove the thought. ‘You didn’t give him that, surely!’
‘Tut-tut, my child,’ Therea soothed her. ‘You are alarming yourself about nothing.’
“The only trouble with you two youngsters is that you aren’t quite – very nearly, of course, but very definitely not quite -grown up.’ Alsyne smiled again … not only with mouth and eyes, but with his whole hairy face. ‘To the mature mind there is no such thing as status. Each knows what he can do best and does it as a matter of course.
‘Second, the unimaginably important contribution of the
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ability to combine two dissimilar but intimately compatible minds into one tremendously effective fusion. While Therea and I have had only a few moments to play with it, we realize some of its possibilities. Thus, since she is a Doctor of the Humanities…’
‘Oh,’ Belle interrupted. ‘That’s why you knew what I was thinking about, even though I tight-beamed the thought and my screens were tight?”
‘Exactly so. But to continue. With her sympathy and empathy, and my driving force and so on, the job of licking these young Primes into shape is precisely right for us. It is a truly delicious thought.
‘You two, on the other hand, have much that we lack. Breadth and depth and scope of imagination and of vision; yet almost incredible will-power and stamina and resolve…’
‘That’s the word I was trying to think of – will-power!’ Belle flashed a thought at Garlock.
‘… qualities virtually always mutually exclusive; but the combination of which makes your fusion uniquely qualified to lead and direct this new and magnificent movement. But Therea and I have been idle and frustrated far too long. We can be of most use, at the moment, on Margonia, working with the Fao-Deggi unit. Therefore, with renewed deep thanks, we go.’
Man and wife disappeared; and, then seconds later, the Thakern starship vanished from its world.
‘Well, what do you think of that?’ Belle gasped. ‘I was actually afraid to think, even behind a Prime screen. I don’t know yet whether I want to kiss ’em or kill ’em.’
‘I do. That guy is really a Prime, Belle. He’s older, bigger, and a lot better than I am.’
‘Oh no,’ she said-positively. ‘Older, yes. More mature – you baby, you!’ She laughed. ‘If he hadn’t included you in that crack I’d’ve stabbed him, so help me, even though it wasn’t true. He said himself it’s you who has got what it takes to lead and direct, not him.’
‘The two of us, not just me.’
‘Right – the two of us, now and forever. Anyway, he wants us to, and we want to, so everything’s lovely – let’s get to work on Fatso and his Foster. I think we ought to have some fun for
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a change and that’ll be a lot. When do we want to hit him?’ ‘Any day Monday through Friday. Nine-fifteen A.M.
Eastern Daylight Time. Plus or minus one minute.’ ‘Nice! Catch him in flagrante delicto. Lovely!’
On a Wednesday morning, then, at twelve minutes past nine EDT, the Pleiades hung poised high over the Chancellory of Solar System Enterprises, Incorporated.
‘Remember, Belle!’ Garlock was pacing the Main. To keep ’em staggering we’ll have to land slugging and beat ’em to every punch. You did a wonderful job on her last time, and it’s been eating on her ever since. She’s probably been rehearsing in front of a mirror just how she’s going to tear you apart next time and just how she’s going to spit out the pieces. Last time, you were cold, stiff, rigidly formal, and polite. So this time it’ll be me, and I’ll be hot and bothered, dirty, low, coarse, lewd, and very, very rough.’
Belle threw back her head and laughed. ‘Rough? Yes. Vicious contemptuous, or ugly; yes. A master of profanity; yes. But low or dirty or coarse or lewd, Clee? Or any one of the four, to say nothing of them all? Oh no. Ferber’s a filthy beast, of course; but even he knows you’re one of the cleanest men that ever lived. They’d know it was an act.’
‘Not unless I give ’em time to think – or unless you do, before he fires Jim – in which case we’ll lose the game anyway. But how about you? If I can knock ’em too groggy to think, can you carry on hard enough to keep ’em that way?’
‘Oh, just watch me! I never tried anything like that, but I’ll guarantee to be just as low, dirty, coarse, lewd, and crude as you are. Probably more so, because in this particular case it’ll be fun. You see, you’re a man – you can’t possibly despise and detest that slimy Ferber either in the same way or as much as I do.’
‘This ought to be good. Cut the rope, Jim.’
Even before the starship came to rest, Garlock drove a probe into the sanctum sanctorum of the Chancellory – an utterly unheard-of act of insolence.
‘Foster! This is the Pleiades coming in. Garlock calling. Hot up the tri-di and the recorder, and put Fatso on – and snap into it!’