Chapter V

Dwells there a thing in all of space
Without a smile to light its face?
Intellect: Puck's dwelling place?
"What fools we mortals be!"

Ahead he saw an enormous Geissler tube sign flashing alternately with neon's bright red and argon's blue:

THE SPACASINO
Dine & Dance--Floorshow Tonite
Joy Rikki & Martian Madcaps

and simultaneously, he heard voices and the double tread of footsteps down a cross street. The robot slipped intelligently into the shadow of an ornate doorway and he followed.

Coarse voices--the voices of space-hardened men:

"We gotta git Manuel out to the ship. 'S been loaded since sundown. What'll the Envoy think? Cripes, we're behind schedule now--'most a day!"

"You git 'im out! Ain't I tried? Y'know 'ow 'e is when 'e gits drunk! Give the blighter a bevy of chorines to dance in front of 'im and some vod-vil stuff and the blinkin' fool will set there all the bloomin' night 'e will, if 'e's anywheres near tight, an 'ell itself won't move 'im!"

... The voices became inaudible--

Inspiration came to Hunter Frederix then. It was a futile, vain hope. It was a desperate gamble and Death held the odds; but an hour's delay might mean success. Andres would soon be conscious; the rockets would flash out of Botrodus.

A wild plan flashed across his brain, and then a pure thought which held in it understanding and acknowledgment--understanding of one man's weakness and acknowledgment of another's genius.

He looked down at the robot, saw the photocellular eyes turned upwards to his face. Despite the seriousness of it all, he smiled crookedly as he caught the automaton up in his arms and hurried across to a doorway marked plainly "Stage Door--No Loiterers!"

The door opened as he crossed the photo-electric eye on the threshold, and he came upon a hectic scene: a sweating, cigar-chewing manager upbraiding a group of voluptuous chorines.

"Listen, girls, please can't you think up a new routine? This fellow's a madman when he's drunk and he might take it in his cranium to tear the joint apart. How's about that Starshine Sequence?"

Frederix shouldered his way brusquely through the surprised throng, ignoring the angry remarks which came as his metal suit brushed bare arms and backs. No time for pardons now; seconds meant life or death--

"Hey, Mac!" he said by way of introduction. "Could you use an act?"

The irate manager surveyed the big, purposeful man inside the oxysuit, grinned and said:

"Listen, Goldilocks, whatcha think this is--a bearded man's convention?"

"Never mind about the customers!" the engineer burst in repartee, smiling though his heart was grim. "I've a trained, talking Ganymedean ape here. I'll give you an act that'll knock 'em wild if you'll announce me now and give me a dressing room for about ten minutes. Oke?"

A system was hanging on the balance in the weighing of a few, short, seemingly lightly-spoken words--the future of many kindred races sprung from a common sun who labored now under greatest stress--And the grinning manager must have sensed the aura of seriousness and power about the unshaven man and his strange companion, for his face grew sober.

"What's the act like, pal?"

"Ever hear the '_Saga-of-Sal_'?"

"I've heard _of_ it!"

"Tonight you'll hear _it_!"

Frederix's heart was beating with the power surges of a liquid-rocket's blast as he hurried into the dressing room, completely removed his helmet, splashed on fiery pseudo-pirate make-up, darkened his golden beard, and then turned his attention to the stoic robot.

Time flew with the beating of his heart. Removing the robot's system of speech, he set the disks awhirl, loosening the bolts which held the 144 common units of enunciation in a fixed order. Transcribing his reedy falsetto onto the disks, remembering some of the great poem, extemporizing with his natural flair for poetry, he recited some of the choicest lines; then locked the enunciator unit and lay the robot aside with an air of confidence and satisfaction.

Carefully he obliterated with make-up any distinguishing signs on the government suit; then hurried out into the wings, the monkey-thing scurrying before--

(The rockets are coming from Kaa, from Kaa,
Out of Kaa flashing flames in the night.)

* * * * *

All spacemen have heard the "Saga-of-Sal," repeated from expedition quarters on Pluto into the English colony in Mercury's twilight zone, Sal, the throaty torch-singer from dear old Boston at the very sound of whose magic voice the maharajahs of Mars went into ecstasy and who spurned them all to marry a blue midget from Callisto.

Conceived by some long-dead bard with the virile, full style of a Kipling, it had been handed from mouth to mouth, every minstrel singing it differently; but none of them ever had cause to sing it quite like Hunter Frederix and his futuristic concept of a vaudeville stooge did that wild night in the Spacasino while he waited, his life hanging on a thread, anticipating momentary recognition, praying for the sound of rockets out of Kaa.

The automaton scampered out in advance and a howl of laughter shook the terra cotta walls. Frederix glimpsed Manuel Onupari rising from a drink-laden table beyond the arc-lamps, a reluctant scowl on his black-jowled, evil face as he argued vehemently with a Vron who was plainly encouraging the renegade's men to take their leader to the waiting ship.

But at the sound of applause, Onupari shook himself free and sank back into his seat, exploding in drunken laughter, calling for more wine.

(Out of Kaa flashing flames in the night--)

A sigh of relief on his lips, Frederix looked down at that pink, bewhiskered face, unspeakably comical, unspeakably innocent as they swung into the Saga, holding its cues while the crowd roared, giving them full punch under the sensitive direction of the electrical life which seemed to know so much of all things.

"I will take my atomic and sweep through the stars
And chase all the girlies from Pluto to Mars;
I'm a knight with a steed which belches out flame;
I'm a whooper, by golly, Vamose is my name!

"Monk is my partner--he rides on my knee!
He flirts with them girlies, what a grand sight to see!
From Callisto to Luna, from mountain to shore
We still are a-whoopin'; may the rockets roar!"

Whereupon they swung into an animated recital of how they, privateers ranging the void, had heard Sal broadcasting from a Martian station, and, unutterably fascinated by her siren's call, landed only to be turned over to the Service since she was a Service dame, and to sit in a jail cell and watch her say I do to that Callistan blue midget in a magnificent jail house wedding for dear old publicity's sake! What a wild, uproarious yarn that was; what shouting, whistling, stomping arose in that semi-barbaric place!

And the minutes were fleeing--and the miles behind the ships plunging onward--

* * * * *

Mad thunder of applause broken by an equally mad roar. Meevo, pale, wild-eyed, bursting into the club, crying out:

"Onupari! Planes riding the beam in from Kaa--two hundred miles away! Come on, you drunken fool!" And Meevo jerked the drunken commander to his unsteady feet, slapped his face with an insane violence, threw him into the arms of some less-drunken men and rushed them and his fellow Vron out into the night.

_They were coming!_ Coming, yes, but fifteen endless minutes away! Half that time would see Onupari's powerful ship standing out into cosmic space!

And the native impetuosity of Hunter Frederix could not fail to come. Heated thoughts surged through his brain. His hand strayed to the guns at his side and then he had flung the helmet on to his suit, clamped it down and was gone from the Spacasino like a flash. "Monk," the robot-extraordinary, tried in vain to match his madly-plunging steps.