There was no woodwork whatever. Doors, panels, tables and chairs were made of metal. A closer inspection of one of the tapestries showed that it, too, was of metal, its threads numbering thousands to the inch. Of vivid but harmonious colors, of a strange and intricate design, it seemed to writhe as its colors changed with every variation in the color of the light.
“Oh . . . isn’t that stuff just too perfectly gorgeous?” Dorothy breathed. “I’d give anything for a dress made out of it.”
“Order noted,” Seaton said. “I’ll pick up ten yards of it when we get the copper.”
“We’d better watch the chow pretty close, Seaton,” DuQuesne said, as Nalboon waved them to the table.
“You chirped it. Copper, arsenic, and so forth. Very little here we can eat much of, I’d say.”
“The girls and I will wait for you two chemists to approve each dish, then,” Crane said.
The guests sat down, the light-skinned slaves standing behind them, and servants brought in heaping trays of food. There were joints and cuts of many kinds of meat; birds and fish, raw and cooked in various ways; green, pink, brown, purple, black and near-white vegetables and fruits. Slaves handed the diners peculiar instruments—knives with razor edges, needle-pointed stilettoes, and wide, flexible spatulas which evidently were to serve as both forks and spoons.
“I simply can’t eat with these things!” Dorothy exclaimed.
“That’s where my lumberjack training comes in handy,” Seaton grinned. “I can eat with a spatula four times as fast as you can with a fork. But we’ll fix that.”
Reaching out, apparently into the girls’ hair, he brought out forks and spoons, much to the surprise of the natives.
DuQuesne and Seaton waved away most of the proferred foods without discussion. Then, tasting cautiously and discussing fully, they approved a few of the others. The approval, however, was very strictly limited.
“These probably won’t poison us too much,” DuQuesne said, pointing out the selected few. “That is, if we don’t eat much now and don’t eat any of it again too soon. I don’t like this one little bit, Seaton.”
“You and me both,” Seaton agreed “I don’t think there’ll be any next time.”
Nalboon took a bowl full of blue crystals, sprinkled his food liberally with the substance, and passed the bowl to Seaton.
“Copper sulphate,” Seaton said. “Good thing they put it on at the table instead of the kitchen, or we couldn’t eat a bite of anything.”
Seaton, returning the bowl, reached behind him and came up with a pair of salt- and pepper-shakers which, after seasoning his own food with them, he passed to his host. Nalboon tasted the pepper cautiously, then smiled in delight and half-emptied the shaker onto his plate. He then sprinkled a few grains of salt into his palm, studied them closely with growing amazement, and after a few rapid sentences poured them into a dish held by an officer who had sprung to his side. The officer also studied the few small crystals, then carefully washed Nalboon’s hand. Nalboon turned to Seaton, plainly asking for the salt-cellar.
“Sure, my ripe and old.” In the same mysterious way he produced another set, which he handed to Crane.
The meal progressed merrily, with much sign-language conversation between the two parties, a little of which was understood. It was evident that Nalboon, usually stern and reticent, was in an unusually pleasant and jovial mood.
After the meal Nalboon bade them a courteous farewell; and they were escorted to a suite of five connecting rooms by the royal usher and a company of soldiers, who mounted guard outside the suite.
Gathered in one room, they discussed sleeping arrangements. The girls insisted that they would sleep together, and that the men should occupy the rooms on either side. As the girls turned away, four slaves followed.
“I don’t want these people and I can’t make them go away,” she protested again. “Can’t you do something, Dick?”
“I don’t think so. I think we’re stuck with ’em as long as we’re here. Don’t you think so, Mart?”
“Yes. And from what I have seen of this culture, I infer that they will be executed if we discard them.”
“Huh? How do . . . could be. We keep ’em, then, Dot.”
“Of course, in that case. You keep the men and we’ll take the women.”
“Hmmm.” He turned to Crane, saying under his breath, “They don’t want us sleeping in the same room with any of these gorgeous gals, huh? I wonder why?”
Seaton waved all the women into the girls’ room; but they hung back. One of them ran up to the man wearing the belt and spoke rapidly as she threw her arms around his neck in a perfectly human gesture. He shook his head, pointing toward Seaton several times as he reassured her. He then led her tenderly into the girls’ room and the other women followed. Crane and DuQuesne having gone to their rooms with their attendants, the man with the belt started to help Seaton take off his clothes.
Stripped, Seaton stretched vigorously, the muscles writhing and rippling under the skin of mighty arms and broad shoulders as he twisted about, working off the stiffness of comparative confinement. The slaves stared in amazement at the display of musculature and talked rapidly among themselves as they gathered up Seaton’s discarded clothing.
Their chief picked up a salt-shaker, a silver fork, and a few other items that had fallen from the garments, apparently asking permission to do something with them. Seaton nodded and turned to his bed. He heard a slight clank of arms in the hall and began to wonder. Going to the window, he saw that there were guards outside as well. Were they honored guests or prisoners?
Three of the slaves, at a word from their leader, threw themselves on the floor and slept; but he himself did not rest. Opening the apparently solid metal belt he took out a great number of small tools, many tiny instruments, and several spools of insulated wire. He then took the articles Seaton had given him, taking extreme pains not to spill a single crystal of salt, and set to work. As he worked, hour after hour, a strange, exceedingly complex device took form under his flying fingers.
Chapter 17
Seaton did not asleep well. It was too hot. He was glad after eight hours, to get up. No sooner had he started to shave, however, than one of the slaves touched his arm, motioning him into a reclining chair and showing him a keen blade, long and slightly curved. Seaton lay down and the slave shaved him with a rapidity and smoothness he had never before experienced, so wonderfully sharp was the peculiar razor. Then the barber began to shave his superior, with no preliminary treatment save rubbing his face with a perfumed oil.
“Hold on a minute,” said Seaton, “Here’s something that helps a lot. Soap.” He lathered the face with his brush, and the man with the belt looked up in surprised pleasure as his stiff beard was swept away with no pulling at all.
Seaton called to the others and soon the party was assembled in his room. All were dressed very lightly because of the unrelieved and unvarying heat, which was constant at one hundred degrees. A gong sounded and one of the slaves opened the door, ushering in servants bearing a table, ready set. The Earthlings did not eat anything, deciding that they would rather wait an hour or so and then eat in the Skylark. Hence the slaves had a much better meal than they otherwise would have had.
During that meal, Seaton was very much surprised at hearing Dorothy carrying on a labored conversation with one of the women.
“I knew you were a language shark, Dottie, but I didn’t s’pose you could pick one up in a day.”
“Oh, I can’t. Just a few words. I can understand very little of what they’re trying to tell me.”
The woman spoke rapidly to the man with the belt, who immediately asked Seaton’s permission to speak to Dorothy. Running across to her, he bowed and poured out such a stream of words that she held up her hand to silence him.
“Go slower, please,” she said, and added a couple of words in his own language.
There ensued a very strange conversation between the slave couple and Dorothy, with much talking between the man and the woman, both talking at once to Dorothy, and much use of signs and sketches. Dorothy finally turned to Seaton with a frown.
“I can’t make out half of what he tried to tell me, and I’m guessing at part of that. He wants you to take him somewhere, another room of the palace here, I think. He wants to get something. I can’t quite make out what it is, or whether it was his and they took it away from him, or whether it’s something of theirs that he wants to steal. He can’t go alone. Martin was right, any of them will be shot if they stir without us. And he says—I’m pretty sure of this part—when you get there don’t let any guards come inside”