‘I should apologize to you instead, Captain Garlock,’ she thought, with a wide and friendly smile, ‘for knocking you down, and I thank you for catching me before I fell. I should not have been startled, of course. I would not have been, except that this it the first time that I, personally, have been attacked.’
‘But what are they?’ Garlock blurted.
‘I don’t know.’ The woman turned her head and glanced, in complete disinterest, at the two furiously-battling creatures. Garlock knew now that this was the first time, except for that instantly-dismissed thrill of surprise at being the actual target
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of an attack, that she had thought of either one of them. ‘Orange-yellow? It could be a … a fumapty, perhaps, but I’ve no idea, really. You see, such things are none of our business.’
She thought at him a half-shrug, half grimace of mild distaste – not at the personal contact with the man nor at the savage duel, but at even thinking of either the guardian or the yellow monster – and walked away into the crowd.
Oarlock’s attention flashed back to the fighters. The yellow thing’s neck had been stretched to twice its natural length and the guardian had eaten almost through it. There was a terrific crunch, a couple of smacking, gobbling swallows, and head parted from body. The orange beak still clashed open and shut, however, and the body thrashed violently.
Shifting his grips, the guardian proceeded to tear a hole into his victim’s body, just below its breast-bone. Thrusting two arms into the opening, he yanked out two organs – one of which, Garlock thought, could have been the heart – and ate them both; if not with extreme gusto, at least in a workmanlike and thoroughly competent fashion. He then picked up the head in one hand, grabbed the tip of a wing with another, and marched up the street for half a block, dragging the body behind him.
He lifted a manhole cover with his two unoccupied hands, dropped the remains down the hole, and let the cover slam back into place. He then squatted down, licked himself meticulously clean with a long, black, extremely agile tongue, and went on about his enigmatic business quite as though nothing had happened.
Garlock strolled around a few minutes longer, but could not recapture any interest in the doings of the human beings around him. He had filed away every detail of what had just happened, and it had so many bizarre aspects that he could not think of anything else. Wherefore he flagged down a ‘taxi’ and was taken out to the Pleiades. Belle and Lola were in the Main.
‘I saw the damndest thing, Clee!’ Lola exclaimed. ‘I’ve been gnawing all my fingernails off clear up to the knuckles, waiting for you I’
Lola’s experience had been very similar to Oarlock’s own, except that her monster was an intense green in color and looked something like a bat about four feet long, with six-inch
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canine teeth and several stingers…
‘Did you find out the name of the thing?’ Garlock asked.
‘No. I asked half a dozen people, but nobody would even listen to me except one half-grown boy, and the best he could do was that it might be something he had heard another boy say somebody had told him might be a “lemart”. And as to those lower-case Arpalones, the best I could dig out of anybody was just “guardians”. Did you do any better?’
‘No, I didn’t do as well,” and he told the girls all about his own experience.
‘But I didn’t find any detectors or receptors, Clee.’ Lola frowned. ‘Where were they?’
‘Way up – up here.’ He showed her. ‘Ill make a full tape tonight on everything I found out about the guardians and the Arpalones – besides my regular report, I mean – since they’re yours, and you can make me one about your friend the green bat. Meanwhile, how are you coming, Belle?’
‘Nice!’ Belle’s voracious mind had been so busy absorbing new knowledge that she had temporarily forgotten about her fight with her captain. T’m just about done here. I’ll be ready tomorrow, I think, to visit their library and tape up some planetographical and planetological – notice how insouciantly I toss off those two-credit words? – Data on this here planet Hodell.’
‘Good going. You’ve been listening to this stuff Lola and I were chewing on. Does any of it make sense to you?’
‘It does not. I never heard anything to compare with it.’
‘Excuse me for changing the subject,’ Lola said plaintively, ‘but when, if ever, do we eat? Do we have to wait until that confounded James boy gets back from wherever it was he went?’
‘If you’re hungry, we’ll eat now.’
‘Hungry? Look!’ Lola turned herself sidewise, placed one hand in the small of her back, and with the other pressed hard against her flat, taut belly. ‘See? Only a couple of inches from belt-buckle to backbone – dangerously close to the point of utter collapse.’
Garlock laughed and all three crossed the room to the dining alcove. While they were still ordering, James appeared beside them.
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r
‘Find out anything?’ Garlock asked.
‘Yes and no. Yes, in that they have an excellent observatory, with a hundred-eighty-inch reflector, on a mountain only seventy-five miles from here. No, in that I didn’t find any duplication of nebulary configurations with the stuff I had with me. However, it was relatively coarse. Tomorrow I’ll take a lot of fine stuff along. It’ll take some time – a full day, at least.’
‘I expected that. Good going, Jim.’
All four ate heartily, and later they taped up the day’s reports. Then, tired from their first real day’s work in weeks, all went to their rooms.
A few minutes later, Garlock tapped lightly at Lola’s door.
‘Come in.’ She stiffened involuntarily, then relaxed and smiled. ‘Oh, yes, Clee; of course. You’re…’
‘No, I’m not. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about you since last night, and I may have come up with an answer or two. Also, Belle knows we aren’t pairing, and if we don’t hide behind a screen at least once in a while, she’ll know we aren’t going to.’
‘Screen?’
‘Screen. Didn’t you know these four private rooms are solid. Haven’t you read your house-tape yet?’
‘No. But do you think Belle would actually peek?”
‘Do you think she wouldn’t?’
Well, I don’t like her very much, but I wouldn’t think she would do anything like that, Clee. It isn’t urbane.’
‘She isn’t urbane, either, whenever she thinks it might be advantageous not to be.’
‘What a terrible thing to say!’
‘Take it from me, if Belle Bellamy doesn’t know everything that goes on it isn’t from lack of trying. You wouldn’t know about room service, either, then – better scan that tape before you go to sleep tonight. Whatll you have in the line of a drink to while away enough time so she’ll know we’ve been playing games?’
‘Ginger ale, please. No, make it Chericol.’
We’ll make it both, and some ice cubes. I’ll have ginger beer. You do it like so.’ He slid a panel aside, and his finger played briefly on a typewriter-like keyboard. Drinks and ice appeared. ‘Anything you want – details on the tape.’
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He lighted two cigarettes, handed her one, stirred his drink. ‘Now, fair lady – or should I say beauteous dark lady? – we will follow the precept of that immortal Chinese philosopher, Chin On.’
‘You are a Prime Operator, aren’t you?’ She laughed, but sobered quickly. ‘I’m worried. You said I flaunted virginity like a banner, and now Belle… What am I doing wrong?’
‘There’s a lot wrong. Not so much what you’re doing as what you aren’t doing. You’re too aloof – detached – egg-headish. You know the score, words, and music, but you don’t sing; all you do is listen. Belle thinks you’re not only a physical virgin, but a psychic-blocked prude. I know better. You’re so full of conflict between what you want to do and what you think you ought to do that you’ve got no more degrees of freedom than a piston-rod. You haven’t been yourself for a minute since you came aboard. Right?’
‘You have been thinking, haven’t you? You may be right; except that it’s been longer than that … ever since the first preliminaries, I think. But what can I do about it, Clee?’
‘Contact. Three-quarters full, say; enough for me to give you what I think is the truth.’
‘But you said you never went screens-down with a woman.’
There’s a first time for everything. Come in.’
She did so, held contact for almost a minute, then pulled herself loose.
‘Ug-gh-gh.’ She shivered. ‘I’m glad I haven’t got a mind like that.’
‘And the same from me to you. Of course the real truth may lie somewhere in between. I may be as far off the beam on one side as you are on the other.’