Chapter IV

When the time rolled around for my next visit to Akroida, I decided to play it cool and careful. I was fortified with a snooze, a slug of Scotch, and a meal, but I still wasn't busting out with courage. I made a mental note to be damn cautious about that perfume. Maybe it was necessary to overdo it that first time, with her shouting for my blood, but that was all past I hoped.

I sprayed just a tiny bit on my suit, calculated to soothe and lure but not to excite. I wanted no more cuddling with Akroida, please! Then with my pal Attaboy, I stiffened my backbone and plunged out into that poison gas they call atmosphere. I let Attaboy ferry me. He was very hazy about our return trip from Akroida's chamber, so I decided to leave him ignorant. No use to let even him know I could locomote the scorpion way. I might need to make a getaway, and surprise might be of the very essence.

But I didn't need to worry. Old Akroida had slept off her jag, and right away I found out that she wasn't queen-scorp for nothing. The old girl was real canny. She made Attaboy park me on a hassock just within tapping distance, and sat there holding her head in a way that made me soften with sympathy, knowing just how she felt. Many's the time.... Yes, sir, poor old Ak was nursing a real, ten-karat hangover. She waved a claw so feebly it didn't even stir those ropes of jewels hung all over her. "Casey Ritter," she tapped. "What did you do to me?"

All to myself, inside my hard-shell suit, I began to laugh; but it was no laughing matter, because she was beginning to regain her strength. She pointed a claw at me, and it was quite a bit steadier than the wave had been. "You did something!" she accused, and very intelligently, too, for a body that had never before had a hangover. "What was it?"

I didn't like the tone of that, and began tapping out a hasty denial. "Not intentionally, noble queen, believe me! I simply brought you that exquisite perfume as a gift from an admirer of yours whom I met on my way here. I had no idea how strong it was. I should have tested it first on your servant here." I pointed to Attaboy. "I can see that we need to thin it some, but it's wonderful, isn't it, now?"

She didn't even flutter an antenna at this coyness. "Earthman," she tapped out sternly, "you want something. Earthmen always bring trouble, and they always want something! No Earthman brings presents to Akroida from simple friendship. Tell me what you're after, Casey Ritter!"

I sighed. "O.K., noble queen. I just wanted to calm you down so I could talk to you. I didn't have any idea that perfume would affect you that way. I just thought you'd like it, and then you'd be pleasant and we could talk."

She snorted like an old war horse, but that hurt her head. After a minute of clutching it, she groaned, and then tapped carefully, "I'm calm now. You can talk. What do you want?"

"Fine," I tapped out heartily. "I want to make a trade with you."

Her lack of enthusiasm would have chilled a wooden Indian. But I figured that the time had come to get on with it, regardless. She just wasn't going to stall, or let me, either.

"Ah, yes, a trade!" was all she said, but she gave it a nasty twist.

I plunge. "I want to swap your anti-gravity secret for a string of the most magnificent emeralds you ever dreamed of, Akroida. Why, they'd make that batch you're wearing look like little glass beads! You'll have to see them to--"

She didn't let me finish. A sort of high-pitched cackle of amazement issued from her bony jaws; but then she floored me by changing the subject completely, I thought. That was just my little error. A man can sure miss the boat when dealing with these foreign races. She began to ask me questions about the Earth, and was she interested! She even forgot about her hangover. And she completely ignored the emeralds. You'd have thought I hadn't even mentioned the things.

* * * * *

This went on for about an hour, and then all of a sudden she leaned back on her paris-green cushions, inhaled a pinch of arsenic, and began to chuckle a sort of brassy chuckle that sent shivers down my back. The chuckles got bigger and bigger until she busted out into a full-size horse laugh that would have jangled the chandelier if there'd been one to jangle.

Her head bounced back and forth on her skinny neck, and the Halcyon Diamond bounced around on her chest like a loose headlight. All her jewels began to bounce and jangle. Droves of servants swarmed around to peek, while Attaboy just floated there with his mouth wide open. I nudged him. "What's so funny?" I asked, but he only shook his head dumfounded.

That awful laughing was sure giving me the creeping jeevies, and it wasn't until she finally tapered off in a series of snorts and giggles that I began to breathe again. I braced myself for what might come next. But talk about unpredictable females! Human or scorpion, they're all the same. She floored me again.

"It's a deal, Casey Ritter!" She tapped out the words with relish. "Fair and open, straight across the board. Those emeralds for our anti-gravity plans and formulae."

I was stunned. A statement like that after that laugh! And she hadn't even seen the emeralds. You couldn't tell old horse trader Ritter that there wasn't something phony. But she just snickered at my expression and waved to the servants who were still hovering around. It took a dozen of them to hoist her up.

With me following on Attaboy, we flew down a serpentine hallway for half a mile until we came to a room even bigger than her audience chamber, only this one was filled with machinery suspended in the air just like the furniture was up above. It was big machinery, too, but it didn't seem to matter.

Akroida waved a feeler at it all. "Just to show you that I'm not holding anything back," she tapped out. "Here it all is, and there on the wall are the plans and descriptions."

Attaboy flew me over, and I stared at them. They were a real neat job, and the mathematics were the same old math we use on Earth, or I was even more of a sucker than I thought I was. I shook the old bean to clear it, but I still couldn't get a glimmer about the caper she was staging. But I could still hear that laugh....

Well, the rest is history, as the books say. With me still not believing a word of it, we made the trade, fair and open, as Akroida had said. She even let me stand by while her scorps copied the plans, and then I checked and rechecked a dozen times. Not a phony mark anywhere. When I handed over the emeralds, she cooed in rapture. A thing like that coo? Well, she did.

Akroida didn't hardly know I was going. She just waved me, her lover-for-a-day, carelessly away and went on stroking those beauties, while the hopper-scorps hovered around in such crowds that Attaboy and I had to elbow our way out of there. As a parting gift, out at the edge of that hellish Red Spot, I reached out of the lock and handed Attaboy the little bottle with what was left of the perfume.

"Here you are, pal," I tapped. "This'll promote you to Court Lover number one. Kiss the old girl for me."