‘We found a way,’ put in Pol. ‘If you assume —’
‘Quiet infants. Nothing to it, Roger. By dint of superhuman effort Our Hero extricated himself from his predicament and—’
‘That’s no answer.’
‘You don’t understand. I open the next episode on Ganymede. John Sterling is telling Special Agent Dolores O’Shanahan about his adventure. He’s making light of it, see? He’s noble so he really wouldn’t want to boast to a girl. Just as he is jokingly disparaging his masterly escape the next action starts and it’s so fast and so violent and so bloody that our unseen audience doesn’t have time to think about it until the commercial. And by then they’ve got too much else to think about.’
Roger shook his head. ‘That’s literary cheating.’
‘Who said this was literature? It’s a way to help corporations take tax deductions. I’ve got three new sponsors.’
‘Hazel,’ asked Pollux, ‘where have you got them now? What’s the situation?’
Hazel glanced at the chronometer. ‘Roger, does that schedule take effect today? Or can we start fresh tomorrow?’
He smiled feebly. ‘Tomorrow, I guess.’
‘If this is going to degenerate into a story conference, I’d better get Lowell. I get my best ideas from Lowell; he’s just the mental age of my average audience.’
‘If I were Buster, I would resent that.’
‘Quiet!’ She slithered to the hatch and called out, ‘Edith! May I borrow your wild animal for a while?’
Meade said, ‘I’ll get him, Grandmother. But wait for me.’
She returned quickly with the child. Lowell said, ‘What do you want, Grandma Hazel? Bounce tag?’
She gathered him in an arm. ‘No, son — blood. Blood and gore. We’re going to kill off some villains.’
‘Swell!
‘Now as I recall it — and mind you, I was only there once — I left them lost in the Dark Nebula. Their food is gone and so is the Q-fuel. They’ve made a temporary truce with their Arcturian prisoners and set them free to help — which is safe enough because they are silicon-chemistry people and can’t eat humans. Which is about what they are down to; the real question is — who gets barbecued for lunch? They need the help of the Arcturian prisoners because the Space Entity they captured in the last episode and imprisoned in an empty fuel tank has eaten its way through all but the last bulkhead and it doesn’t have any silly previous prejudices about body chemistry. Carbon or silicon; it’s all one to it.’
‘I don’t believe that’s logical,’ commented Roger stone. ‘If its own chemistry was based—’
‘Out of order,’ ruled Hazel. ‘Helpful suggestions only, please. Pol? You seem to have a gleam in your eye’
‘This Space Entity jigger can he stand up against radar wave lengths?’
‘Now we’re getting somewhere. But we’ve got to complicate it a bit Well, Meade?’
The twins started moving their bicycles outside the following day. The suits they wore were the same ones they had worn outdoors on the Moon, with the addition of magnetic boots and small rocket motors. These latter were strapped to their backs with the nozzles sticking straight out from their waists. An added pressure bottle to supply the personal rocket motor was mounted on the shoulders of each boy but, being weightless, the additional mass was little handicap.
‘Now remember,’ their father warned them, ‘those boost units are strictly for dire emergency. Lifelines at all times. And don’t depend on your boots when you shift lines, snap on the second line before you loose the first.’
‘Shucks, Dad, we’ll be careful.’
‘No doubt. But you can expect me to make a surprise inspection at any time. One slip on a safety precaution and it’s the rack and thumb screws, plus fifty strokes of bastinado.’
‘No boiling oil?’
‘Can’t afford it. See here, you think I’m joking. If one of you should happen to get loose and drift away from the ship, don’t expect me to come after you. One of you is a spare anyway.’
‘Which one?’ asked Pollux. ‘Cas, maybe?’
‘Sometimes I think it’s one, sometimes the other. Strict compliance with ship’s orders will keep me from having to decide at this time.’