Chapter III

An hour later he sat on his bed and rubbed his aching jaw. He peered through a puffed eye at Hawthorne beside him. The pilot's blunt face was all grin.

"So I'm the primitive savage!" Hawthorne doubled in laughter. "You're the one who acted intelligent like a guinea pig tonight!"

"Laugh, you ape!" O'Dea groaned and moved his jaw tenderly. "Not broken, I guess. But Morguma sure packs _quintol_ in those cornerstones he uses for fists. All twelve of them!"

"_Quintol_--that's it." Hawthorne pulled a bottle from under his shirt. He looked patronizingly at O'Dea. "There's enough _quintol_ here to get four Centaurs blind drunk!"

"Well, start slopping it up, slop!"

"This bottle," said Hawthorne patiently, "is our dictator's birthday present to our friend Morguma. The Centaurs will appreciate such a gesture of friendship!"

O'Dea stared through unbelieving black eyes at him. "Why, you--rat!--"

"Tomorrow," Hawthorne went on, "is a holiday. Nobody works except us. That's as a token of interstellar good will. We work and the Centaurs rest--except our good friend Morguma, who will be along to keep an eye on us. Morguma deserves a little fun, too."

O'Dea crawled out of his bunk and advanced with hard fists. He was promptly shoved back by the grinning Hawthorne.

"Don't you see?" Hawthorne demanded. "We get Morguma so pie-eyed he won't know what's going on. Then--"

He drew a stubby forefinger across his throat and made a croaking noise. O'Dea pried his puffed eyelids apart and beamed in pleased understanding. His lips parted slowly in a grin that would have done credit to a Centaur.

"Oh, I am ecstatic!" he said.

* * * * *

Morguma was ecstatic when he received his present. Tears of happiness gushed down his cheeks as O'Dea presented the vacuum bottle with a flowery oration. He seemed to have forgotten the incident of the previous night, and took no notice of O'Dea's bruised features.

The happy creature crushed O'Dea to his bosom with several bear-like arms.

"Oh my dear bosom friends! My heart would swell with song if I were able to sing! Oh you fortunate humans, to be able to sing!"

O'Dea broke loose from the embrace and rubbed his ribs. He looked cheerfully at Hawthorne.

"As soon as he's _non compos mentis_," he whispered, "we'll slug the lug, and--"

"Shut up," Hawthorne growled softly. "You'll queer everything."

The pilot took his place at the control board and they pushed out to the asteroid belt. Morguma settled himself in his usual chair at the rear of the control room and tantalized himself by smelling the _quintol_.

"Oh how wonderful!" he enthused. "Aged in the bottle, too! How I love humans!"

O'Dea glanced impatiently from the corner of his eye. The Centaur was in no hurry to consume the _quintol_. They were approaching the asteroid belt before he had put much inside him.

The two men stalled by chasing down worthless rocks until half the liquor was inside the Centaur. Morguma's six eyes gradually became glassier and glassier. He started to sway a little in his chair.

"Gonna get the mosh wonnerful piesh of d'lightful oshy--oshygen you ever shaw!" he announced. "There'sh shtupendous piesh. Oh I am rap--rapshurous!"

"It's only a piece of pumice!" O'Dea insisted.

"Itsh oshygen! Lovely beaut'ful delecbub--delect'ble oshygen!" Morguma staggered toward them. "Put sheizure beam on lovely oshygen!"

The seizures clamped on the stone as O'Dea shrugged and threw out the beams. Morguma took another long nip and let his eyes swim into focus on the dials. He looked hurt.

"Not oshygen? Not lovely oshygen? Oh I am eshcruchiated!"

The creature sobbed and took another drink. He staggered back and fell into his chair, where he fell into a weeping spree, his head buried in his hands.

O'Dea glanced swiftly. His elbow dug into Hawthorne's ribs.

Hawthorne nodded. They quietly picked up the wrenches they had kept nearby; started toward Morguma.

One on each side, they moved cautiously. Silently they moved forward until they came within striking distance.

Hawthorne waved O'Dea back, gesturing to his own powerful right arm. O'Dea nodded, poised his weapon for the follow up swing. Hawthorne raised the wrench.

And then Morguma's whip flicked out.

* * * * *

Hawthorne's eyes remained fastened to his empty hand as the wrench clattered into a corner. Again the snap of Centaur leather, and O'Dea's weapon joined the other. The two men stood foolishly, like a pair of boys caught stealing apples. Morguma spoke:

"Oh you bad bad people! Go back to control board; let poor Morguma alone. Oh I am deshicated to think you would do thish to poor old frien' Morguma!"

They slunk back to their posts. O'Dea raised his helpless eyes to the portrait above the controls.

"What can I do, Mercedes?" he whispered. "The guy is stiffer than King Tut and still you can't beat him!"

They avoided each other's eyes. Each knew what the other was thinking. Defeat meant that the Centaur had won. There would be no warning to Earth.

Avignon would become a planet of slave humans, blindly following the skillful teachings of the Centaurs. They would infiltrate Earth, tear down from within.... Generations would be required, but the Centaurs had time. They thought in long term strategy.

Hawthorne was staring unbelievingly through the telescope. His trembling fingers closed on O'Dea's arm.

"Let go, you ape--"

O'Dea stopped, impelled by the smoldering hope in the eyes that warned him to silence. He glanced swiftly to be sure that Morguma was still hunched stupidly in his chair, then followed Hawthorne's gaze. He gasped at what they saw.

In their line of vision was a mass that looked like twisted wire, coiled up in a planless tangle. O'Dea leaned forward, stared without belief.

"Our fuel," he breathed. "If we can get hold of that--"

Hawthorne waved him frantically, silently, to the seizure beams. O'Dea tiptoed to the levers, waited with one eye on Morguma while Hawthorne crept up on the precious fuel.

O'Dea eyed the dials, hands shaking on the control bars. There was no mistake! It was indeed their fuel, forced out of the hole in their tanks by internal pressure. Pressed out into space in a priceless ribbon, it had frozen into this amorphous mass!

O'Dea's heart was heavy in his ears. His suddenly feverish eyes darted to the apparently-sleeping Morguma, then to the smiling portrait of Mercedes.

Hawthorne nodded imperatively. The ship jolted slightly as the seizure beams went on. The fuel was clamped rigid before them. Morguma stirred and studied them with glazed eyes. His thick voice croaked:

"Whazzhat? Oshygen? Lovely precious oshygen?"

"That's right, Morguma. Oshygen--I mean oxygen." O'Dea brought the chunk closer, trying hard to look natural. "It looks so lovely I'd like to take a chunk on board and sniff it right now!"

"Oh whassa lovely ideas!" Morguma, still clutching his whip and his bottle, navigated by dead-drunk reckoning to the vision plate in the control room's belly. He peered stupidly at the coiled fuel. O'Dea feared that the sound of his breathing would sober the Centaur. He held the breath in his pounding lungs.

"'s funny oshygen!" Morguma mumbled. "Mosh funniesh oshygen I ever seen!" He brightened. "Mush be a rare ishotype! Oh mush be lov'liesh oshygen in whole galaxy!"

He closed all but one eye and tried to read the dials. Furtively, O'Dea turned the telescope into the asteroid belt, and the instruments swayed as badly as Morguma himself. The Centaur shuddered and turned away.

"Broken! All the metersh mush be drunk! Can't eshamine lovely oshygen!"

He started sobbing.

"Oh, come now, old man," said O'Dea, sympathetically. "We can bring a piece of it inside the ship and look at it first hand--"

"Wunnerful ideas! Wunnerful!"

Morguma slapped O'Dea's back affectionately. O'Dea picked himself off the floor and staggered in a great circle to the control board.

A thin seizure beam stabbed at a corner of the fuel, broke off a generous chunk. Under O'Dea's trained fingers, it moved toward the ship, through the belly lock.

Then it was in the cabin.