Chapter III: Part 3

He lugged it up and leaped straight at the flaming projector, with all of his mass and strength going into the swing of his “space-hatchet.” The monster did not dodge, but merely threw up a hand to flick the toy aside with his gun-barrel. Cloud grinned fleetingly as he realized what the other must be thinking—that the man must be puny indeed to be making such ado about wielding such a trifle—for to anyone not familiar with dureum it is sheerly unbelievable that so much mass and momentum can possibly reside in a bulk so small.

Thus when fiercely-driven cutting edge met opposing ray-gun it did not waver or deflect. It scarcely even slowed. Through the metal of the gun that vicious blade sliced resistlessly, shearing flesh as it sped. On down, urged by everything Cloud’s straining muscles could deliver. Through armor it slashed, through the bony plating covering that tremendous double shoulder, deep into the flesh and bone of the shoulder itself; being stopped only by the impact of the hatchet’s haft against the armor.

Then, planting one steel boot on the helmet’s dome, he got a momentary stance with the other between barrel body and flailing arm, bent his back, and heaved. The deeply-embedded blade tore out through bone and flesh and metal, and as it did so the two rear cabled arms dropped useless. That mighty rear shoulder and its appurtenances were out of action. The monster still had one good hand, however, and he was still full of fight.

That hand flashed out, to seize the weapon and to wield it against its owner. It came fast, too, but the man, strongly braced, yanked backward. Needle point and keen edge tore through flesh and snicked off fingers. Cloud swung his axe aloft and poised, making it limpidly clear that the next blow would be straight down into the top of the head.

That was enough. Darjeeb backed away, every eye glaring, and Cloud stepped warily over to Luda. A couple of strokes of his blade gave him a length of chain. Then, working carefully to keep his foe threatened at every instant, he worked the chain into a tight loop around the monster’s front neck, pulled it unmercifully taut around a stanchion, and welded it there with his DeLameter. He did not trust the other monster unreservedly, either, bound as she was. In fact, he did not trust her at all. In spite of family rows, like sticks to like in emergencies and they’d gang up on him if they could. Since she wasn’t wearing armor, however, she didn’t stand a chance with a DeLameter, so he could take time now to look around.

The pilot, lying flat upon the floor, was beginning to come to. Not quite flat, either, for a shapely Chickladorian girl, wearing the forty one square inches of covering which were _de rigueur_ in her eyes, had his bandaged head in her lap—or, rather, cushioned on one bare leg—and was sobbing gibberish over him. That wouldn’t help. Cloud started for the first-aid locker, but stopped; a white-wrapped figure was already bending over the injured man with a black bottle in her hand. He knew what it was. Kedeselin. That was what he was after, himself; but he wouldn’t have dared give a hippopotamus the terrific jolt she was pouring into him. She must be a nurse, or maybe a doctor; but Cloud shivered in sympathy, nevertheless.

The pilot stiffened convulsively, then relaxed. His eyes rolled; he gasped and shuddered; but he came to life and sat up groggily.

“What the hell goes on here?” Cloud demanded urgently, in spaceal.

“I don’t know,” the pink man replied. “All the ape said, as near as I could get it, was that I had to give him our free drive.” He then spoke rapidly to the girl—his wife, Cloud guessed; if she wasn’t, she ought to be—who was still holding him fervently.

The pink girl nodded. Then, catching Cloud’s eye, she pointed at the two monstrosities, then at the nurse standing calmly near by. Startlingly slim, swathed to the eyes in billows of glamorette, she looked as fragile as a wisp of straw; but Cloud knew Manarkans. She, too, nodded at the Tellurian, then “talked” rapidly with her hands to a short, thick-set, tremendously muscled woman of some race entirely strange to the Blaster. She was used to going naked; that was very evident. She had been wearing a light “robe of convention,” but it had been pretty well demolished in the melee and she did not realize that what was left of it was hanging in tatters down her broad back. The “squatty” eyed the gesticulating Manarkan and spoke, in a beautifully modulated deep bass voice, to a supple, lithe, pantherish girl with vertically-slitted yellow eyes, pointed ears, and a long and sinuous, meticulously-groomed tail. The Vegian—by no means the first of her race Cloud had seen—spoke to the Chickladorian eyeful, who in turn passed the message along to her husband.

“The bonehead you had the argument with says to hell with you,” the pilot translated to Cloud in spaceal. “He says his mob will be out here after him directly, and if you don’t cut him loose and give him the dope he wants they’ll burn us all to cinders.”

Luda was, meanwhile, trying to attract attention. She was bouncing up and down, rattling her chains, rolling her eyes, and in general demanding notice. More communication ensued, culminating in:

“The one with fancy-worked skull—she’s a frail, but not the other bonehead’s frail, I guess—says pay no attention to the ape. He’s a murderer, a pirate, a bum, a louse, and so forth, she says. Says to take your axe—it’s _some_ cleaver, she says, and I check her to ten decimals on that—cut his goddam head clean off, chuck his stinking carcass out the port, and get the hell out of here as fast as you can blast.”

That sounded to Cloud like good advice, but he didn’t want to take such drastic action without more comprehensive data.

“Why?” he asked.

But this was too much for the communications relays to handle. Cloud did not know spaceal any too well, since he had not been out in deep space very long. Also, spaceal is a very simple language, not well adapted to the accurate expression of subtle nuances of thought; and all those intermediate translations were garbling things up terrifically. Hence Cloud was not surprised that nothing much was coming through, even though the prettied-up monster was, by this time, just about throwing a fit.

“She’s quit trying to spin her yarn,” the pilot said finally. “She says she’s been trying to talk to you direct, but she can’t get through. Says to unseal your ports—cut your screens—let down your guard—something like that, anyway. Don’t know what she does mean, exactly. None of us does except maybe the Manarkan, and if she does she can’t get it across on her fingers.”

“Perhaps my thought-screen?” Cloud cut it.

“More yet,” the Chickladorian went on, shortly. “She says there’s another one, just as bad or worse. On your head, she says. . . . No, on your head-bone—what the hell! Skull? No, _inside_ your skull, she says now. . . . Hell’s bells! I don’t know what she _is_ trying to say!”

“Maybe I do—keep still a minute, all of you.” A telepath undoubtedly, like the Manarkans—that was why she had to talk to her first. He’d never been around telepaths much—never tried it. He walked a few steps and stared directly into one pair of Luda’s eyes—large, expressive eyes, now soft and gentle.

“That’s it, chief! Now blast away . . . baffle your jets . . . relax, I guess she means. Open your locks and let her in.”

Cloud did relax, but gingerly. He didn’t like this mind-to-mind stuff at all, particularly when the other mind belonged to such a monster. He lowered his mental barriers skittishly, ready to revolt at any instant; but as soon as he began to understand the meaning of her thoughts he forgot completely that he was not talking man to man. And at that moment—such was the power of Luda’s mind and the precision of her telepathy—every nuance of thought became sharp and clear.

“I demand Darjeeb’s life!” Luda stormed. “Not because he is the enemy of all my race—that would not weigh with you—but because he has done what no one else, however base, has ever been so lost to shame as to do. In our city upon Lune he kindled an atomic flame which is killing us in multitudes. In case you do not know, such flames can never be extinguished.”

“I know. We call them loose atomic vortices; but they can be extinguished. In fact, putting them out is my business.”

“Oh—incredible but glorious news. . . .” Luda’s thought seethed, became incomprehensible for a space. Then: “To win your help for my race I perceive that I must be completely frank. Observe my mind closely, please—see for yourself that I withhold nothing. Darjeeb wants at any cost the secret of your vessel’s speed. With it, his race would destroy mine utterly. I want it too, of course—with it we would wipe out the Nhalians. However, since you are so much stronger than would be believed possible—since you defeated Darjeeb in single combat—I realize my helplessness. I tell you, therefore, that both Darjeeb and I have long since summoned help. Warships of both sides are approaching, to capture one or both of these vessels. The Nhalians are the nearer, and these secrets _must not_, under any conditions, go to Nhal. Dash out into space with both of these ships, so that we can plan at leisure. First, however, kill that unspeakable murderer—you have scarcely injured him the way it is—or give me that so-deceptive little axe and I’ll be only too glad to do it myself.”

A chain snapped ringingly; metal clanged against metal. Only two of Darjeeb’s major arms had been incapacitated; his two others had lost only a few fingers apiece from their hands. His immense bodily strength was almost unimpaired. He could have broken free at any time, but he had waited; hoping to take Cloud by surprise or that some opportunity would arise for him to regain control of the lifeboat. But now, feeling sure that Luda’s emminently sensible advice would be taken, he decided to let inertialessness go, for the moment, in the interest of saving his life.

“Kill him!” Luda shrieked the thought and Cloud swung his weapon aloft, but Darjeeb was not attacking. Instead, he was rushing into the airlock—escaping!

“Go free, pilot!” Cloud commanded, and leaped; but the inner valve swung shut before he could reach it.

As soon as he could operate the lock Cloud went through it. He knew that Darjeeb could not have boarded the scout, since her ports were locked. He hurried to his control room and scanned space. There the Nhalian was, falling like a plummet. There also were a dozen or so space-ships, too close for comfort, blasting upward.

Cloud cut in his Bergenholm, kicked on his driving blasts, cut off, and went back into the lifeboat.

“Safe enough now,” he thought. “They’ll never get out here inert. I’m surprised he jumped—didn’t figure him as a suicidal type.”

“He isn’t. He didn’t,” Luda thought, dryly.

“Huh? He must have. That was a mighty long flit he took off on, and his suit wouldn’t hold air.”

“He would stuff something into the holes. If necessary he could have made it without air—or armor, either. He’s tough. He still lives, curse him! But it is of no use for me to bewail that fact now. Let us make plans. You must put out the flame, and the leaders of our people will convince you. . . .”

“Just a second—some other things come first.” He fell silent.

First of all, he had to report to the Patrol, so they could get some Lensmen and a task force out here to straighten up this mess. With ordinary communicators, that would take some doing—but wait, he had a double-ended tight beam to the laboratory. He could get through on that, probably, even from here. He’d have to mark the lifeboat as a derelict and get these people aboard his cruiser. No space-tube. The women could wear suits, but this Luda. . . .

“Don’t worry about me!” that entity cut in. “You saw how I came aboard. I don’t _enjoy_ breathing vacuum, but I’m as tough as Darjeeb is. So _hurry_! During every moment you delay, more of my people are dying!”

“QX. While we’re transferring, give me the dope.”

Luda did so. Darjeeb’s coup had been carefully planned and brilliantly executed. Drugged by one of her own staff, she had been taken without a struggle. She did not know how far-reaching the stroke had been, but she was pretty sure that most, if not all, of the Dhilian fortresses were now held by the enemy.

Nhal probably had the advantage in numbers and in firepower then upon Lune—Darjeeb would not have made his bid unless he had found a way to violate the treaty of strict equality. Dhil was, however, much the nearer of the two worlds. Hence, if this initial advantage could be overcome, Dhil’s reenforcements could be brought up much sooner than the enemy’s. If, in addition, the vortex could be extinguished before it had done irreparable damage, neither side would have any real advantage and the conflict would subside instead of flaring into another tri-world holocaust.

Cloud pondered. He would have to do something, but what? That vortex had to be snuffed; but, with the whole Nhalian army to cope with, how could he make the approach? His vortex-bombing flitter was screened against radiation, not war-beams. His cruiser was clothed to stop anything short of G-P primaries, but it would take a month at a Patrol base to adapt her for vortex work . . . and he’d have to analyze it, anyway, preferably from the ground. He had no beams, no ordinary bombs, no nega-bombs. How could he use what he had to clear a station?

“Draw me a map, will you, Luda?” he asked.

She did so. The cratered vortex, where an immense building had been. The ring of fortresses: two of which were unusually far apart, separated by a parkway and a shallow lagoon.

“Shallow? How deep?” Cloud interrupted. She indicated a depth of a couple of feet.

“That’s enough map, then. Thanks.” Cloud thought for minutes. “You seem to be quite an engineer. Can you give me exact details on your defensive screen? Power, radius, weave-form, generator type, phasing, interlocking, blow-off, and so on?”

She could. Complex mathematical equations and electrical formulae flashed through his mind, each leaving a residue of fact.

“Maybe we can do something,” the Blaster said finally, turning to the Chickladorian. “Depends pretty much on our friend here. Are you a pilot, or just an emergency assignment?”

“Master pilot, Rating unlimited, tonnage or space.”

“Good! Think you’re in shape to take three thousand centimeters of acceleration?”

“Pretty sure of it. If I was right I could take three thousand standing on my head. I’m feeling better all the time. Let’s hot ’er up and find out.”

“Not until after we’ve unloaded these passengers somewhere,” and Cloud went on to explain what he had in mind.

“Afraid it can’t be done.” The pilot shook his head glumly. “Your timing has got to be too ungodly fine. I can do the piloting, meter the blast, and so on. I can balance her down on her tail, steady to a hair, but piloting’s only half what you got to have. Pilots never land on a constant blast, and your leeway here is damn near zero. To hit it as close as you want, your timing has got to be accurate to a tenth of a second. You don’t know it, mister, but it’d take a master computer half a day to. . . .”

“I know all about that. I’m a master computer and I’ll have everything figured. I’ll give you a zero exact to plus-or-minus a hundredth.”

“QX, then. Let’s dump the non-combatants and flit.”

“Luda, where shall we land them? And maybe you’d better call out your army and navy—we can’t blow out that vortex until we control both air and ground.”

“Land them there.” Luda swung the plate and pointed. “The call was sent long since. They come.”

They landed; but four of the women would not leave the vessel. The Manarkan _had_ to stay aboard, she declared, or be disgraced for life. What would happen if the pilot passed out again, with only laymen around? She was right, Cloud conceded, and she could take it. She was a Manarkan, built of whalebone and rubber. She’d bend under 3 + G’s, but she wouldn’t break.

The squatty insisted upon staying. Since when had a woman of Tominga hidden from danger or run away from a fight? She could hold the pilot’s head up through an acceleration that would put any damn-fragile Tellurian into a pack—or give her that funny axe and she’d show him how it _ought_ to be swung!

The Chickladorian girl, too, stayed on. Her eyes—not pink, but a deep, cool green, brimming with unshed tears—flashed at the idea of leaving her man to die alone. She just knew they were all going to die. Even if she couldn’t be of any use, what of it? If her Thlaskin died she was going to die too, right then, and that was all there was to it. If they made her go ashore she’d cut her own throat that very minute, so there! So that was that.

So did the Vegian. Tail-tip twitching slightly, eyes sparkling, she swore by three deities to claw the eyes out of, and then to strangle with her tail, anyone who tried to put her off ship. She had come on this trip to _see_ things, and did Cloud think she was going to miss seeing _this_? Hardly!

Cloud studied her briefly. The short, thick, incredibly soft fur—like the fur on the upper lip of a week-old kitten, except more so—did not conceal the determined set of her lovely jaw; the tight shorts and the even tighter, purely conventional breastband did not conceal the tigerish strength and agility of her lovely body. It’d be better, the Blaster decided, not to argue the point.

A dozen armed Dhilians came aboard, as pre-arranged, and the cruiser blasted off. Then, while Thlaskin was maneuvering inert, to familiarize himself with the controls and to calibrate the blast, Cloud brought out the four semi-portable projectors. They were frightful weapons, designed for tripod mounting; so heavy that it took a very strong man to lift one on Earth. They carried no batteries or accumulators, but were powered by tight beams from the mother ship.

Luda was right; such weapons were unknown in that solar system. They had no beam transmission of power. The Dhilians radiated glee as they studied the things. They had stronger stuff, but it was fixed-mount and far too heavy to move. This was wonderful—these were magnificent weapons indeed!

High above the stratosphere, inert, the pilot found his spot and flipped the cruiser around, cross-hairs centering the objective. Then, using his forward, braking jets as drivers, he blasted her straight downward.

She struck atmosphere almost with a thud. Only her fiercely-driven meteorite-screens and wall-shields held her together.

“I hope to Klono you know what you’re doing, chum,” the Chickladorian remarked conversationally as the fortress below leaped upward with appalling speed. “I’ve made hot landings before, but I always had a hair or two of leeway. If you don’t hit this to a couple of hundredths we’ll splash when we strike. We won’t bounce, brother.”

“I can compute it to a thousandth and I can set the clicker to within five, but it’s _you_ that’ll have to do the real hitting.” Cloud grinned back at the iron-nerved pilot. “Sure a four-second call is enough to get your rhythm, allow for reaction time and lag, and blast right on the click?”

“Absolutely. If I can’t get it in four I can’t get it at all. Got your stuff ready?”

“Uh-huh.” Cloud, staring into the radarscope, began to sway his shoulders. He knew the exact point in space and the exact instant of time at which the calculated deceleration must begin; by the aid of his millisecond timer—two full revolutions of the dial every second—he was about to set the clicker to announce that instant. His hand swayed back and forth—a finger snapped down—the sharp-toned instrument began to give out its crisp, precisely-spaced clicks.

“Got it!” Cloud snapped. “Right on the middle of the click! Get ready, Thlaskin—seconds! Four! Three! Two! One! Click!”

Exactly with the click the vessel’s brakes cut off and her terrific driving blasts smashed on. There was a cruelly wrenching shock as everything aboard acquired suddenly a more-than-three-times-Earthly weight.

Luda and her fellows merely twitched. The Tomingan, standing behind the pilot, supporting and steadying his wounded head in its rest, settled almost imperceptibly, but her firmly gentle hands did not yield a millimeter. The Manarkan sank deeply into the cushioned bench upon which she was lying; her quick, bright eyes remaining fixed upon her patient.

The Chickladorian girl, in her hammock, fainted quietly.

The Vegian, who had flashed one hand up to an overhead bar at the pilot’s first move, stood up—although she seemed to shorten a good two inches and her tight upper garment parted with a snap as back- and shoulder-muscles swelled to take the strain. _That_ wouldn’t worry her. Cloud knew—what _was_ she stewing about? Oh—her tail! It was too heavy for its own strength, great as it was, to lift! Her left hand came down, around, and back; with its help the tail came up. To the bar above her head, around it, tip pointing stiffly straight upward. Then, smiling gleefully at both Thlaskin and the Blaster, she shouted something that neither could understand, but which was the war-cry of her race:

“Tails high, brothers!”

Downward the big ship hurtled, toward the now glowing screens of the fortress. Driving jets are not orthodox weapons, but properly applied, they can be deadly ones indeed: and these were being applied with micromatric exactitude.

Down! DOWN!! The threatened fortress and its neighbors hurled their every beam; Nhalian ships dived frantically at the invader and did their useless best to blast her down.

Down she drove, the fortress’ screens flaming ever brighter under the terrific blast.

Closer! Hotter! Still closer! Hotter still! Nor did the furious flame waver—the Chickladorian was indeed a master pilot.

“Set up a plus ten, Thlaskin,” Cloud directed. “Air density and temperature are changing. Their beams, too, you know.”

“Check. Plus ten, sir—set up.”

“Give it to her on the fourth click from . . . this.”

“On, sir.” The vessel seemed to pause momentarily, to stumble; but the added weight was almost imperceptible.

A bare hundred yards now, and the ship of space was still plunging downward at terrific speed. The screens were furiously incandescent, but were still holding.

A hundred feet, velocity appallingly high, the enemy’s screens still up. Something _had_ to give now! If that screen stood up the ship would vanish as she struck it, but Thlaskin the Chickladorian made no move and spoke no word. If the skipper was willing to bet his own life on his computations, who was he to squawk? But . . . he must have miscalculated!

No! While the vessel’s driving projectors were still a few yards away the defending screens exploded into blackness; the awful streams of energy raved directly into the structures beneath. Metal and stone glared white, then flowed—sluggishly at first, but ever faster and more mobile—then boiled coruscantly into vapor.

The cruiser slowed—stopped—seemed to hang for an instant poised. Then she darted upward, her dreadful exhausts continuing and completing the utter devastation.

“That’s computin’, mister,” the pilot breathed as he cut the fierce acceleration to a heavenly one thousand. “To figure a dive like that to three decimals and have the guts to hold to it cold—skipper, that’s com-pu-_tation_!”

“All yours, pilot,” Cloud demurred. “All I did was give you the dope. You’re the guy that made it good. Hurt, anybody?”

Nobody was. “QX. We’ll repeat, then, on the other side of the lagoon.”

As the ship began to descend on the new course the vengeful Dhilian fleet arrived. Looping, diving, beaming, oftentimes crashing in suicidal collision, the two factions went maniacally to war. There were no attacks, however, against the plunging Tellurian ship. The Nhalians had learned that they could do nothing about that vessel.

The second fortress fell exactly as the first had fallen. The pilot landed the cruiser in the middle of the shallow lakelet. Cloud saw that the Dhilians, overwhelmingly superior in numbers now, had cleared the air of Nhalian craft.

“Can you fellows and your ships keep them off of my flitter while I take my readings?”

“We can,” the natives radiated happily.

Four of the armored boneheads were _wearing_ the semi-portable. They had them perched lightly atop their feeding heads, held immovably in place by two arms apiece. One hand sufficed to operate the controls, leaving two hands free to do whatever else might prove in order.

“Let us out!”

The lock opened, the Dhilian warriors sprang out and splashed away to meet the enemy, who were already dashing into the lagoon.

Cloud watched pure carnage. He hoped—yes, there they were! The loyalists, seeing that their cause was not lost, after all, had armed themselves and were smashing into the fray.

The Blaster broke out his flitter then, set it down near the vortex, and made his observations. Everything was normal. He selected three bombs from his vast stock, loaded them into the tubes, and lofted. He set his screens, adjusted his goggles, and waited; while far above him and wide around him his guardian Dhilian war-vessels toured watchfully, their drumming blasts a reassuring thunder.

He waited, eyeing the sigma curve as it flowed backward from the recording pen, until he got a ten-second prediction. He shot the flitter forward, solving instantaneously the problems of velocity and trajectory. At exactly the correct instant he released a bomb. He cut his drive and went free.

The bomb sped truly, striking the vortex dead center. It penetrated deeply enough. The carefully-weighed charge of duodec exploded; its energy and that of the vortex combining in a detonation whose like no inhabitant of that solar system had ever even dimly imagined.

The noxious gases and the pall of smoke and pulverized debris blew aside; the frightful waves of lava quieted down. The vortex was out and would remain out. The Blaster drove back to the cruiser and put his flitter away.

“Oh—you did it! Thanks! I didn’t believe that you—that anybody—really could!” Luda was almost hysterical in her joyous relief.

“Nothing to it,” Cloud deprecated. “How are you doing on the mopping up?”

“Practically clean,” Luda answered, grimly. “We now know who is who. Those who fought against us or who did not fight for us are, or very soon will be, dead. But the Nhalian fleet comes. Does yours? Ours takes off in moments.”

“Wait a minute!” Cloud sat down at his plate, made observations and measurements, calculated mentally. He turned on his communicator and conferred briefly.

“The Nhalian fleet will be here in seven hours and eighteen minutes. If your people go out to meet them it will mean a war that not even the Patrol can stop without destroying most of the ships and men both of you have in space. The Patrol task force will arrive in seven hours and thirty one minutes. Therefore, I suggest that you hold your fleet here, in formation but quiescent, under instructions not to move until you order them to, while you and I go out and see if we can’t stop the Nhalians.”

“_Stop_ them!” Luda’s thought was not at all ladylike. “What with, pray?”

“I don’t know,” Cloud confessed, “but it wouldn’t do any harm to try, would it?”

“Probably not. We’ll try.”

All the way out Cloud pondered ways and means. As they neared the onrushing fleet he thought at Luda:

“Darjeeb is undoubtedly with that fleet. He knows that this is the only inertialess ship in this part of space. He wants it more than anything else in the universe. Now if we could only make him listen to reason . . . if we could make him see. . . .”

He broke off. No soap. You couldn’t explain “green” to a man born blind. These folks didn’t know and wouldn’t believe what real firepower was. The weakest vessel in this oncoming task force could blast both of these boneheads’ fleets into a radiant gas in fifteen seconds flat—and the superdreadnoughts’ primaries would be starkly incredible to both Luda and Darjeeb. They simply _had_ to be seen in action to be believed; and then it would be too late.

These people didn’t stand the chance of a bug under a sledgehammer, but they’d have to be killed before they’d believe it. A damned shame, too. The joy, the satisfaction, the real advancement possible only through cooperation with each other and with the millions of races of Galactic Civilization—if there were only some means of _making_ them believe. . . .

“We—and they—_do_ believe.” Luda broke into his somber musings.

“Huh? What? You do? You were listening?”

“Certainly. At your first thought I put myself en rapport with Darjeeb, and he and our peoples listened to your thoughts.”

“But . . . you really believe me?”

“We all believe. Some will cooperate, however, only as far as it will serve their own ends to do so. Your Lensmen will undoubtedly have to kill that insect Darjeeb and others of his kind in the interest of lasting peace.”

The insulted Nhalian drove in a protesting thought, but Luda ignored it and went on:

“You think, then, Tellurian, that your Lensmen can cope with even such as Darjeeb of Nhal?”

“I’ll say they can!”

“It is well, then. Come aboard, Darjeeb—unarmed and unarmored, as I am—and we will together go to confer with these visiting Lensmen of Galactic Civilization. It is understood that there will be no warfare until our return.”

“Holy Klono!” Cloud gasped. “He wouldn’t do _that_, would he?”

“Certainly.” Luda was surprised at the question. “Although he is an insect, and morally and ethically beneath contempt, he is, after all, a reasoning being.”

“QX.” Cloud was dumbfounded, but tried manfully not to show it.

Darjeeb came aboard. He was heavily bandaged and most of his hands were useless, but he seemed to bear no ill-will. Cloud gave orders; the ship flashed away to meet the Patrolmen.

The conference was held. The boneheads, after being taken through a superdreadnought and through a library by Lensmen as telepathic as themselves, capitulated to Civilization immediately and whole-heartedly.

“You won’t need me any more, will you, admiral?” Cloud asked then.

“I don’t think so—no. Nice job, Cloud.”

“Thanks. I’ll be on my way, then; the people I picked up must be off my ship by this time. Clear ether.”

_Chapter 7_
▂▂▂▂▂▂THE BLASTER ACQUIRES A CREW

CLOUD, RETURNING to his cruiser, found that most of his shipwrecked passengers had departed. Five of them, however—the two Chickladorians, the Manarkan, the squatty, and the Vegian—were still on board. Thlaskin, now back to normal, came to attention and saluted crisply; the women bowed or nodded and looked at him with varying degrees of interrogation.

“How come, Thlaskin? I thought all the passengers were going back with the task force.”

“They are, boss. They’ve gone. We followed your orders, boss—chivied ’em off. I checked with the flagship about more crew besides us, and he says QX. Just tell me how many you want of what, and I’ll get ’em.”

“I don’t want anybody!” Cloud snapped. “Not even you. Not _any_ of you.”

“Jet back, boss!” Spaceal was a simple language, and inherently slangy and profane, but there was no doubt as to the intensity of the pilot’s feelings. “I don’t know why you were running this heap alone, or how long, but I got a couple questions to ask. Do you know just how many million ways these goddam automatics can go haywire in? Do you know what to do about half of ’em when they do? Or are you just simply completely nuts?”

“No. Not too much. I don’t think so.” As he answered the three questions in order Cloud’s mind flashed back to what Phil Strong and several other men had tried so heatedly to impress upon him—the stupidity, the lunacy, the sheer, stark idiocy of a man of _his_ training trying to go it solo in deep space. How did one say “You have a point there, but before I make such a momentous decision we should explore the various possibilities of what is a completely unexpected development” in spaceal? One didn’t! Instead:

“Maybe QX, maybe not. We’ll talk it over. Tell the Manarkan to try to work me direct—maybe I can receive her now, after working the boneheads.”

She could. Communication was not, perhaps, as clear as between two Manarkans or two Lensmen, but it was clear enough.

“You wish to know why I have included myself in your crew,” the white-swathed girl began, as soon as communication was established. “It is the law. This vessel, the _Vortex Blaster I_, of Earth registry, belonging to the Galactic Patrol, is of a tonnage which obligates it to carry a medical doctor; or, in and for the duration of an emergency only, a registered graduate nurse. I am both R.N. and M.D. If you prefer to employ some other nursing doctor or doctor and nurse that is of course your right; but I can not and will not leave this ship until I am replaced by competent personnel. If I did such a thing I would be disgraced for life.”

“But I haven’t got a payroll—I never have had one!” Cloud protested.

“Don’t quibble, please. It is also the law that any master or acting master of any ship of this tonnage is authorized to employ for his owner—in this case the Galactic Patrol—whatever personnel is necessary, whenever necessary, at his discretion. With or without pay, however, I stay on until replaced.”

“But I don’t _need_ a doctor—or a nurse, either!”

“Personally, now, no,” she conceded, equably enough. “I checked into that. As the chief of your great laboratory quoted to you, ‘This too, shall pass.’ It is passing. But you _must_ have a crew; and any member of it, or you yourself, may require medical or surgical attention at any time. The only question, then, is whether or not you wish to replace me. Would you like to examine my credentials?”

“No. Having been en rapport with your mind, it is not necessary. But are you, after your position aboard the ship which was lost, interested in such a small job as this?”

“I would like it very much, I’m sure.”

“Very well. If any of them stay, you can—at the same pay you were getting.”

“Now, Thlaskin, the Vegian. No, hold it! We’ve got to have something better than spaceal, and a lot of Vegians go in for languages in a big way. She may know English or Spanish, since Vegia is one of Tellus’ next-door neighbors. I’ll try her myself.”

Then, to the girl, “Do you speak English, miss?”

“No, eggzept in glimzzez only,” came the startling reply. “Two Galactic Zdandard yearzz be pazz—come? Go?—’ere I mazzter zhe, zo perverze mood and tenze. Zhe izz zo difficult and abzdruze.”

Switching to Galactic Spanish, which language was threatening to become the common tongue of Galactic Civilization, she went on:

“But I heard you say ‘Zbanidge.’ I know Galactic Spanish very well. I speak it well, too, except for the sounds of ‘ezz’ and ‘zeta,’ which all we Vegians must make much too hard—z-z-z-, zo. One hears that nearly all educated Tellurians have the Spanish, and you are educated, of a certainty. You speak it, no?”

“Practically as well as I do English,” Cloud made relieved reply. “You have very little accent, and that little is charming. My name is Neal Cloud. May I ask yours?”

“Neelcloud? I greet you. Mine is Vezzptkn . . . but no, you couldn’t pronounce it. ‘Vezzta,’ it would have to be in your tongue.”

“QX. We have a name very close to that—Vesta.”

“That’s exactly what I said—Vezz-ta.”

“Oh—excuse me, please. You were talking to this lady—Tomingan, she said? What language were you using?”

“Fourth-continent Tomingan, Middle Plateau dialect. Hers. She was an engineer in a big power plant on Manarka, is how she came to learn their sign language. Tomingans don’t go in for linguistics much.”

“And you very evidently do. How many languages do you know, young lady?”

“Only fifty so far—plus their dialects, of course. I’m only half-way to my Master of Languages degree. Fifty more to learn yet, including your cursed _Englidge_. P-f-zt-k!” Vesta wrinkled her nose, bared her teeth, and emitted a noise very similar to that made by an alley cat upon meeting a strange dog. “I don’t know whether spaceal will count for credit or not, but I’m going to learn it anyway.”

“Nice going, Vesta. Now, why did _you_ appoint yourself a member of this party?”

“I wanted to go, and since I can’t pay fare. . . .”

“You wouldn’t have had to!” Cloud interrupted. “If you lost your money aboard that ship, the Patrol would take you anywhere. . . .”

“Oh, I didn’t mean _that_.” She dipped into her belt-bag and held out for the man’s inspection a book of Travelers’ Cheques good for fifty thousand G-P credits! “I wanted to continue with you, and I knew this wasn’t a passenger ship. I can be useful—who do you think lined up that translation relay?—and besides, I can work. I can cook—keep house—and I can learn any other job fast. You believe me?”

Cloud looked at her. She was as tall as he was, and heavier; stronger and faster. “Yes, you can work, if you want to, and I think you would. But you haven’t said why you want to go along.”

“Mostly because it’s the best chance I’ll ever have to learn English. I went to Tellus once before to learn it—but there are too many Vegians there. Young Vegians, like me, like to play too much. You know?”

“I’ve heard so. But teachers, courses. . . ?”

“I need neither teachers nor courses. What I need is what you have in your library—solid English.”

“QX. I’ll reserve judgment on you, too. Now let’s hear what the Tomingan has to say. What’s _her_ name?”

“You’d be surprised!” Vesta giggled in glee. “Literally translated, it’s ‘Little flower of spring, dwelling bashfully by the brook’s damply sweet brink.’ And that’s an _exact_ transliteration, so help me—believe it or not!”

“I’ll take your word for it. What shall we call her?”

“Um . . . m . . . ‘Tommie’ would be as good as anything, I guess.”

“QX. Tommie of Tominga. Ask her why she thinks she has to be a member of our crew.”

“Who else do you have who can repair one of your big atomic engines if it lets go?” came the answering question, in Vesta’s flawlessly idiomatic Galactic Spanish.

Cloud was amazed at Tommie’s changed appearance. She was powdered, perfumed, and painted: made up to the gills. Her heavy blonde hair was elaborately waved. If it wasn’t for her diesel-truck build, Cloud thought—and for the long black Venerian cigar she was smoking with such evident relish—she’d be a knockout on anybody’s tri-di screen!

“I can.” The profoundly deep, but pleasantly and musically resonant voice went on; the fluent translation continued. “What I don’t know about atomic engines hasn’t been found out yet. I don’t know much about Bergenholms and a couple of other things pertaining solely to flight, and I don’t know _anything_ about communicators or detectors, which aren’t engineers’ business. I’ve laid in a complete supply of atomic service manuals for class S-C ships, and I tell you this—if anything with a motor or an engine in it aboard this vessel ever has run, I can take it apart and put it back together so it’ll run again. And by the way, you didn’t have half enough spare parts aboard, but you have now. Besides, you might need somebody to really swing that axe of yours, some day.”

Cloud studied the Tomingan narrowly. She _wasn’t_ bragging, he decided finally. She was simply voicing what to her were simple truths.

“Your arguments have weight. Why do you want the job?”

“Several reasons. I’ve never done anything like this before, and it’ll be fun. Main reason, though, is that I think I’ll be able to talk you into doing a job on Tominga that has needed doing for a long time. I was a passenger, not an officer, on my way to talk to a party about ways of getting it done. You changed my mind. You and I, with some others who’ll be glad to help, will be able to do it better.”

Tommie volunteered no more information, and Cloud asked no more questions. Explanation would probably take more time than could be spared.

“Now you, Thlaskin,” the Blaster said in spaceal. “What have you got to say for yourself?”

“You’ve got me on a hell of a spot, boss,” the pilot admitted, ruefully. “You’ve _got_ to have a pilot, no question about that. You already know I’m one. I know automatics, and communicators, and detectors—the works. Ordinarily I’d say you’d _have_ to have _me_. But this ain’t a regular case. I wasn’t a pilot on the heap that got knocked out of the ether, but a passenger. Maluleme—she’s my . . . say, ain’t there no word for. . . .”

He broke off and spoke rapidly to his wife, who relayed it to Vesta.

“They’re newlyweds,” the Vegian translated. “He was off duty and they were on their honeymoon. . . .”

Vesta’s wonderfully expressive face softened, saddened. She appeared about to cry. “I wish _I_ were old enough to be a newlywed,” she said, plaintively.

“Huh? Aren’t you?” the Blaster demanded. “You look old enough to me.”

“Oh, I’m as big as I ever will be, and I won’t change outside. It’s inside. About half a year yet. But she’s saying—

“We know that pilots on duty, in regular service, can’t have their wives aboard. But this isn’t a regular run, I know, so couldn’t you—just this once—keep Thlaskin on as pilot and let me come too? _Please_, Mr. Neelcloud—she didn’t know your name, but asked me to put it in—I can work my way. I’ll do any of the jobs nobody else wants to do—I’ll do _anything_, Mr. Neelcloud!”

The pink girl jumped up and took Cloud’s left hand in both her own. Simultaneously Vesta took his right hand in her left, brought it up to her face, and laid the incredibly downy softness of her cheek against the five-hour bristles of his; sounding the while a soft, low-pitched but unmistakable _purr_!

“Just this once wouldn’t do any harm, would it, Captain Neelcloud?” Vesta purred. “You zmell _zo_ wonderful, and she zmells nice, too. _Pleeze_ keep her on!”

“QX. You win!” The Blaster pulled himself loose from the two too-demonstrative females and addressed the group at large. “I think I ought to have my head examined, but I’m signing all of you on as crew. But _nobody else_. I’ll get the book.”

He got it. He signed them on. Chief Pilot Thlaskin. Chief Engineer Tommie. Linguist Vesta. Doctor . . . what? He tried to call her attention by thinking at her, but couldn’t. Then, through Vesta: Manarkans didn’t have names, but were known by their personality patterns. Didn’t they sign something to documents? No, they used finger-prints only, without signatures.

“But we’ve got to have _something_ we can put in the book!” Cloud protested. “Tell her to pick one.”

“No preference,” Vesta reported. “I’m to do it. I knew a lovely Tellurian named “Nadinevandereckelberg” once. Let’s call her that.”

“Nadine van der Eckelberg? Better not. Not common enough—there might be repercussions. We can use part of it, though. ‘Nadine,’ bracketed with her prints . . . there. Now how about Maluleme?” He turned to the “Classification” listing and frowned. “What to class _her_ as I’ll never know. She’s got just about as much business aboard this bucket as I would have in a sultan’s harem.”

“You might find quite a lot—and _that_ I’d like to see!” Vesta snickered. “But look under ‘Mizzelaneouz,’ there.”

Her stiff, sharp fingernail ran down the column almost to the end. “‘Zupercargo’? We have no cargo. ‘Zupernumerary’? That’s it! See? I read: ‘Zupernumerary—Perzonnel beyond the nezezzary or uzhual; ezpedjially thoze employed not for regular zervize, but only to fill the plazez of otherz in caze of need.’ Perfect!”

“Whose place could _she_ fill?”

“The cook’s—if the automatics break down,” Vesta explained, gleefully. “She says she can really cook—so even if they didn’t break down she can tape lots of nice things to eat that aren’t in your kitchen banks.”

“Could be. I can get away with that. ‘Supernumerary (cook 1/c) Maluleme’ and her prints . . . there. Now we’re organized—let’s flit. Ready, Thlaskin?”

“Ready, sir,” and the good ship _Vortex Blaster I_ took off.

“Now, Vesta, I s’pose you’ve all picked out your cabins and got located?”

“Yes, sir.”

“QX. Tell ’em all, except Tommie, to go and do whatever they think they ought to be doing. Tell Tommie to sit down at the chart-table. We’ll join her. I want to find out what she’s got on her mind.”

Pulling a chart and rolling it out flat on the table, Cloud went on: “We’re in this unexplored region, here, about thirty two dash twenty five.[2] We’re headed for Nixson II, about sixty one dash forty six.”

“Nixson? Why, that’s only three thousand parsecs—a day and a half, say—from Tominga, where I want you to go!” Tommie exclaimed.

“Check. That’s why I’m going to listen to what you have to say. We can pick Manarka up—sixty five dash thirty-five, here; they’ve got two really bad ones—on the way back. It’s a long flit to Chickladoria—’way over there, one seventy seven dash thirty four—but I’ve got to go there pretty quick, anyway. It’s way up on the A list. So, Tommie, start talking.”

* * * * *

The run to Nixson II was uneventful, and Cloud rid that planet of its loose atomic vortices in a few hours. The cruiser then headed directly for Tominga, one man short, for Tommie was not aboard.

“Now remember, no matter what happens, you don’t know any one of us,” had been the Blaster’s parting instructions to her. “After we’ve checked in at the hotel we’ll meet in the lobby. Be sure you’re sitting—or standing—some place where Vesta can pass a couple of words with you without anybody catching on. Check?”

“Check.”

-----

[2] Rough locations are expressed in degrees of galactic longitude and hundredths of the distance from Centralia to the Arbitrary Rim of the galaxy. This convention ignores the galaxy’s thickness and is used only in first approximations. E.E.S.

_Chapter 8_
▂▂▂▂▂▂VESTA THE VEGIAN

IMMEDIATELY AFTER SUPPER Cloud called Vesta and Nadine into his cabin.

“You first, Nadine.” He caught her eyes and stopped talking, but went on thinking. He was amazed at how easy it had been to learn the knack of telepathy with both Luda and the Manarkan. “How did you make out with Tommie? Can’t she read you at all?”

“Not at all. I can read her easily enough, but she can neither send nor receive.”

“How about Vesta, then? Any more progress?”

“No. Just like you. She learned very quickly to receive, but that is all. She cannot tune her mind; I have to do it all.” It also amazed the Blaster that, after learning one half of telepathy so easily, he had been unable even to get a start on the other half. “We might try it again, though, all three of us together?”

They tried, but it was no use. Think as they would, of even the simplest things—squares, crosses, triangles, and circles—staring eye to eye and even holding hands, neither the Blaster nor the Vegian could touch the other’s mind. Nor could the Manarkan tell them or show them what to do.

“Well, that’s out, then.” Cloud frowned in concentration, the fingers of his left hand drumming almost soundlessly on the table’s plastic top. “Nadine, you can’t send simultaneously to both Vesta and me, because we can’t tune ourselves into resonance with you, as a real telepath could. However, could you read me and send my thoughts to Vesta, and do it fast enough to keep up? As fast as I talk, say?”

“Oh, easily. I don’t have to tune sharply to receive—unless there’s a lot of interference, of course—and even then, Vesta can read my shorthand. She learned it before we met you.”

“Hm . . . m. Interesting. Let’s try it out. I’ll think at you, you put it down in shorthand. You, Vesta, tape it in Spanish. Get your notebook and recorder . . . ready? Let’s go!”

There ensued a strange spectacle. Cloud, leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed, mumbled to himself in English, to slow his thoughts down to approximately two hundred words per minute. Nadine, paying no visible attention to the man, wrote unhurried, smoothly-flowing—most of the time—symbols. Vesta, throat-mike in place and yellow-eyed gaze nailed to the pencil’s point, kept pace effortlessly—most of the time.

“That’s all. Play it back, Vesta. If you girls got half of that, you’re _good_.”

The speaker came to life, giving voice to a completely detailed and extremely technical report on the extinction of an imaginary atomic vortex, and as the transcription proceeded Cloud’s amazement deepened. It was evident, of course, that neither of the two translators knew anything at all about many of the scientific technicalities involved. Nevertheless the Manarkan had put down—and Vesta had recorded in good, idiomatic Galactic Spanish—an intelligent layman’s idea of what it was that had been left out. That impromptu, completely unrehearsed report would have been fully informative to any expert of the Vortex Control Laboratory!

“Girls, you _are_ good—_very_ good.” Cloud paid deserved tribute to ability. “First chance we get, I’ll split a bottle of fayalin with you. Now we’d better hit the sack. We land early in the morning, and since we’re going to stay here a while we’ll have to go through quarantine and customs. So pack your bags and have ’em ready for inspection.”

They landed at the spaceport of Tommie’s home town, which Cloud, after hearing Vesta’s literal translation of its native name, had entered in his log as “Mingia.” They passed their physicals and healths easily enough—the requirements for leaving a planet of warm-blooded oxygen-breathers are so severe and so comprehensive that the matter of landing on a similar one is almost always a matter of simple routine.

“Manarkan doctors we know of old; you are welcome indeed. We see very few Tellurians or Vegians, but the standards of those worlds are very high and we are glad to welcome you. But Chickladoria? I never heard of it—we’ve had no one from that planet since I took charge of this port of entry. . . .”

The Tomingan official punched buttons, gabbled briefly, and listened.

“Oh, yes. Excellent! The health, sanitation, and exit requirements of Chickladoria are approved by the Galactic Medical Society. We welcome you. You all may pass.”

They left the building and boarded a copter for their hotel.

“. . . and part of its name is ‘Forget-me-not’! Isn’t that a dilly of a name for a hotel?” Vesta, who had been telepathing busily with Nadine, was giggling sunnily.

Suddenly, however, she stopped laughing and, eyes slitted, leaped for the door. Too late: the craft was already in the air.

“Do you know what that . . . that _clunker_ back there _really_ thought of us?” she flared. “That we’re weak, skinny, insipid, under-developed little _runts_! By Zevz and Tlazz and Jadkptn, I’ll show him—I’ll take a tail-wrap around his neck and. . . .”

“Pipe down, Vesta—listen!” Cloud broke in, sharply. “You’re smart enough to know better than to explode that way. For instance, you’re stronger than I am, and faster—admitted. So what? I’m still your boss. And Tommie isn’t, even though, as you ought to know by this time, she could pull your tail out by the roots and beat you to death with the butt end of it in thirty seconds flat.”

“Huh?” Vesta’s towering rage subsided miraculously into surprised curiosity. “But you’re _admitting_ it!” she marvelled. “Even that _I_ am stronger and faster than _you_ are!”

“Certainly. Why not? Servos are faster still, and ordinary derricks are stronger. It’s _brains_ that count. I’d much rather have your linguistic ability than the speed and strength of a Valerian.”

“So would I, really,” Vesta purred. “You’re the _nicest_ man!”

“So watch yourself, young lady,” Cloud went on evenly, “and behave yourself. If you don’t, important as you are to this project, I’ll send you back to the ship in irons. That’s a promise.”

“P-f-z-t-k!” Vesta fairly spat the expletive. Her first thought was sheer defiance, but under the Blaster’s level stare she changed her mind visibly. “I’ll behave myself, Captain Neelcloud.”