Chapter III

That palace was like nothing on earth. Naturally, you'll say, it's on Jupiter. But I mean it was even queerer than that. It was like no building on any planet at all. And, in fact, it wasn't on a planet; it was floating up there only two hundred miles in from the raw edge of space.

In that building everything stayed right where it was put. If it was put twelve or fifty feet up off the floor, it stayed there. Not that there wasn't gravity. There was plenty of gravity to suit me--just right, in fact--and still they had furniture sitting around in the air as solid as if on a floor. Which was fine for flying hopper-scorps, but what about Casey Ritter, who hadn't cultivated even a feather?

Attaboy, however, had the answers for everything. Towing me from the airlock to the window ledge, he again sniffed that delectable odor on my chest, caressed me with his front pair of legs while I manfully endured, and then without warning tossed me onto his back above the little box and flew off with me along a tunnel with luminous red walls.

We finally came to the central hall of the palace, and at the sight of all that space dropping away, I clutched at his shell and nearly dropped the arsenic. But he didn't have any brakes I could grab, so he just flew out into mid-air in a room that could have swallowed a city block, skyscrapers and all. It was like a mammoth red cavern, and it glowed like the inside of a red light.

No wonder those scorpions like green and purple. What a relief from all that red!

A patch in the middle of the hall became a floating platform holding up a divan twenty feet square covered with stuff as green as new spring grass, and in the center of this reclined Akroida. It had to be. Who else could look like that? No one, believe me, boys and girls, no one!

Our little Akroida was a pure and peculiarly violent purple--not a green edge anywhere. She was even more purple than my fancy enameled space suit, and she was big enough to comfortably fill most of that twenty-foot couch. To my shrinking eyes right then she looked as big as a ten-ton cannon and twice as mean and dangerous. She was idly nipping here and there as though she was just itching to take a hunk out of somebody, and the way the servants were edging away out around her, I could see they didn't want to get in range. I didn't blame them a bit. Under the vicious sag of her Roman nose, her mandibles kept grinding, shaking the jewels that were hung all over her repulsive carcass, and making the Halcyon Diamond on her chest blaze like a bonfire.

Attaboy dumped me onto a floating cushion where I lay clutching and shuddering away from her and from the void all around me, and went across to her alone with the arsenic.

Akroida rose up sort of languidly on an elbow that was all stripped bone and sharp as a needle. She pulled an eyeball out about a yard and scanned Attaboy and the box. He closed in to the couch all hunched over, ducked his head humbly half-a-dozen times, and pushed the box over beside her. Akroida eased her eyeball back, opened the box and sniffed, and then turned to Attaboy with a full-blown Satanic grin. I could hear her question reverberate away over where I was.

"Who from?" asked Akroida.

That conversation was telegraphed to me blow by blow by the actions of those hopper-scorps. I didn't need their particular brand of Morse Code at all.

"Who from?" Attaboy cringed lower and blushed a purple all-over blush. "Dear lady, it is from an interspace trader who possesses some truly remarkable jewels," he confessed coyly.

Akroida toyed with the Halcyon Diamond and ignored the bait. "His name?" she demanded. And when he told her, with a bad stutter in his code, she reared up higher on her skinny elbow and glared in my direction. "Casey Ritter? Never heard of him. Where's he from?"

Well, after all, she wasn't blind. He had to confess. "I--uh--the stones were so amazing, Royal Akroida, that I didn't pay much attention to the--uh--trader. He does seem to resemble an--ah--earthman." He ducked his head and fearfully waited.

A sort of jerking quiver ran through Akroida. She reared up even higher. Her mean Roman nose twitched. "An earthman? Like Pard Hoskins?"

Attaboy shrank smaller and smaller. He could only nod dumbly.

The storm broke, all right. That old dame let out a scream like a maddened stallion and began to thrash around and flail her couch with that dragon's tail of hers.

* * * * *

I began to quake all over. My nice little jail, I thought frantically. My cozy little cell. Those dear sweet guards. I'd left them all to be eaten alive by that purple devil. Why didn't I bat my silly brains out on my cell wall when this idea first sneaked in? Marooned on that damned hassock a hundred feet above the floor I began to think, and fast.

"Bring him here!" roared Akroida, tapping it out so fast it sounded like gunfire. She gnashed her mandibles and glared until I started shriveling. "Bring him here! He'll dare to come around and insult me, will he? I'll flail him limb from limb and chew his bones to shreds! I'll bite him into chunks! I'll.... Bring him here!"

She made a furious lunge at Attaboy. Trembling and blanching to a muddy lavender, he got out of there and scrambled over to me with big tears rolling down his stiff shell cheeks. Why the poor purple sap, I thought, he really cares! These things really have feelings! I looked at him with new respect and even a little affection.

"Look, kid," I admonished, trying to keep my fingers from shaking as I tapped. "Just don't worry about a thing. I still think I can handle this. Just take me across slow and easy, and we'll hope for the best."

With a mournful sigh he picked me up, tossed me onto his shoulder, and as per instructions, drifted over to the floating platform.

All I had was the little bottle of Pard's scorp-scent. "This had better be good!" I confided to the image of Pard Hoskins, which somehow managed to get between me and that raging she-dragon on the couch. "This had sure better be good, son!"

I waited until Akroida was leaning forward practically gnashing her mandibles in my face while her front pair of legs grabbed and pawed for me. She was too fat and bulky to jump at me, or I'd have been a dead planet-bo right there. But I had to take the chance. There wasn't a drop of perfume to waste. At the last moment I lifted that precious little bottle and squirted the stuff right in her face.

Her mandibles flew open and stayed there. Slowly her front legs dropped; a film of ecstasy formed over those wild glittering eyes. She sank back and began to croon. Yes, croon! My helmet vibrated with it.

Then her long skinny front legs made beckoning motions to me. Frosts of romance! She wanted me to share her couch!

Attaboy didn't ask if I was willing. Delightedly he dumped me beside her. And then, having inhaled some of that perfume himself and not being able to tear himself away, he forgot all about etiquette and curled up beside us to bask some more in those luscious mists.

* * * * *

What's more revolting than a hopper-scorp in a tantrum? I'll tell you, chums: a hopper-scorp in the throes of infatuation! Especially when the hopper-scorp in question is Akroida. For one thing, she's so big. And for another, she's so unmentionably thorough. She was infatuated from the spike on her repulsive forehead down to the devilish sting on her tail. With me!

I tried to tell her it was Attaboy she must love, not me. She merely wallowed her hideous head, as big as a bucket, in my suffering lap, clattering it against my enameled space suit; she rolled her horrible eyes while her whole monstrosity of a body twitched and quivered with emotion. I tried to turn the conversation to the emeralds. She wasn't even interested. We hadn't needed the emeralds at all; we'd only needed Pard's special concoction. Furtively, behind the horseplay, I began to plan to salvage those emeralds for myself.

That stuff must have been making me delirious, too.

I don't know how long that blood-curdling love scene went on. That awful she-scorp picked me up and rocked me while I scraped diamonds and rubies along my visor and chest. She signalled servants who were hovering on all sides taking in the show, and they rushed to bring tidbits that I had to hide behind cushions because I couldn't open my helmet in that atmosphere. Then the servants, getting whiffs of that cursed perfume, would snuggle up with us, until there wasn't elbow room on that big couch. Akroida would churn her tail around and knock them all off so that she could cuddle me better. Then she got the idea of singing to me. And my air was running out.

Finally, while I still had a bit of air left, the jag began to wear off, and Akroida slumped over and went to sleep holding me tenderly against her breast-shell. The moment I felt her grip relax, I wiggled out of there. Attaboy was fast asleep too. Desperately I decided that I could row through the air if those scorps could. Grabbing Attaboy's arm, I stepped off into nothing. Sure enough, the anti-grav worked for me, too. Sweating with the thought of what would have been left of Casey Ritter if it hadn't, I sort of swam away from there, towing my guide. Out at the boat, I anchored him outside the airlock and crawled inside. I'm not ashamed to admit that I got out of my helmet, gasped in some good old oxygen, and collapsed. What a day!