The scene that met his eye was a wide corridor, so wide that it might be termed a concourse or even a public square. Members of the public that were to be observed frequenting it were very, very far from being human.
Two of them scurried past his window, clearly illuminated by lights far up in the domed ceiling. They were furry, about five feet tall, lithe and cat-like in their movements. Compared to a human, they were slim and short-bodied. They possessed three arms and three legs, each set being equally spaced about their bodies. Now and then, as they walked with short, rapid steps, frequent joints were apparent in all limbs, showing clearly that they were not just muscular tentacles. From the openings at the apexes of their heads, which must have been mouths, they were streamlined in a fashion that made it more natural to picture them swimming like Terran cuttlefish then climbing up and down thick poles. The three eyes set about each head were low enough to allow for jaw muscles.
The man watched this pair slide down a column set beside the wall that concealed him. Other individuals were scattered about the wide concourse. Almost without exception, they wore nothing more than a pouch secured by a belt just above what would have been the hips in a human. Clothing was made unnecessary by handsome coats of short, honey-colored fur that enhanced their feline air. Sometimes, when one or another bent or twisted, purple skin would show through the fur.
Across the concourse, the man could see open stalls that suggested shops. Most of them were dark inside, with nettings stretched across the fronts. The general atmosphere was not unlike that of a small Terran business section, or even a spaceport terminal, late in the evening with business slack and only night workers about.
Abruptly, those abroad scuttled for the walls. A perfectly good reason for the exodus appeared a moment later, as a column of low, long vehicles dashed from a high-arched tunnel and shot across the open space. Each was three-wheeled and carried half a dozen individuals wearing what resembled thick plastic armor. Cages of metal guarded their heads and they bore weapons like Terran rocket launchers. The convoy passed out of sight before the man could note more.
He retreated thoughtfully from the window. At the opening to the corridor, he paused indecisively. He shook his head as if trying to put out of his mind what he had just witnessed.
It might have been prudent for anyone in his position to give the corridor a searching look before entering, but this did not seem to occur to him. In seconds, he was striding along in the former direction—if anything, a trifle more briskly.
As he walked, the muffled sounds from the scene he had examined faded in the distance. Once again, he was alone with his own discreet footfalls. Several times, he passed junctions of cross corridors, and once he had to burn open a door; but never did he meet an inhabitant of the hive-like city. Either the way had been shrewdly chosen or it was seldom used at this period of the day. Even granting both, his luck must have been fantastic.
The corridor had begun to assume an almost hypnotic monotony when it ended bluntly at a column leading only upward. The man perforce was faced with the challenge of climbing it, a prospect which he obviously did not relish.
Sighing, he reversed his earlier procedure in sliding down other poles. With only one good arm, pulling himself up was slow work. It was, perhaps, only the fact that the levels were constructed to suit beings five feet tall that made it possible for him to make it to the next level up. He sat with his legs dangling through the opening, panting, while perspiration oozed out to bead his forehead.
This time, he was nearly half an hour in recovering and working up the determination required to go on. The corridor in which he found himself ran at right angles to the one below. It was wider and higher, as if more traveled, but any such open area as he had peeped at was far to the rear. Nearby, however, was a much larger door than he had yet encountered. He walked over to it.
When a tentative push produced no results, he dipped his left hand into a pocket for the black disk.
He seemed to have a good idea of where to locate the hinges on this door too. When he had burned through, the door was harder to shove aside because it turned out to be of double thickness. The hinges had been concealed from both inside and outside. The tall man now found himself only a few steps from another such portal, in what looked like an anteroom.
Methodically, he proceeded to burn his way through, squinting in the bright light of the flame but otherwise betraying no emotion.
The last door fell away. Fresh air billowed in around him, and he could see stars in a night sky outside.
Without haste, he stepped outside.
The tan, plastery wall reared above him for about ten levels. Off to his left, shadows on the ground showed a jagged shape, so it was probable that another part of the building towered upward after a set-back. The ground around the exit was perfectly level and bare of any vegetation. The nearest life was a wall of shrub-like trees about a hundred feet away, and toward these the man began to walk in the same tired pace.
He found, as if by instinct, a broad, well-kept path through the trees. A mild breeze caused the long, hanging leaves to rustle. Without looking back, the man followed the path up a gentle slope and over the curve of the hill. At the bottom of the downgrade, two figures shrank suddenly back into the shadows. He kept walking.
"That you, Gerson?" came a loud whisper, as the two Terrans stepped forward again. "Come on; we have an aircar over here! Did anyone follow you?"
The tall man turned to go with them through a fringe of trees. It seemed like a poor time to try to talk, with the possibility of pursuit behind them. The two bundled him into the black shape of the aircar in silence, and moved it cautiously through the trees just above the ground. They raised into clear air only when they had put half a mile between them and the towering hive-city.
In the library, between Smith's corner office and the conference room that adjoined the communications center, Westervelt sat and watched Lydman pore over a technical report in the blue binding of the Department of Interstellar Relations. Half a dozen other volumes, old and new, technical and diplomatic, were scattered about the table between them.
The youth caught himself running a hand through his hair in Smith's usual manner, and stopped, appalled. He judged, after due reflection, that it might be worse: he could have picked up some of Lydman's peculiarities instead.
Probably, he told himself, he ought to show some better sense and imitate the suavity of Parrish if he had to adopt the manners of anyone in the department. Unfortunately, he did not like Parrish very well, even when he was not engaged in being actively jealous of the man.
Some day, Willie, he mused, you'll snap too. When you do, it would be just your style to take after this mass of beef in front of you.
Immediately, he was ashamed of the thought. Lydman had been, in his way, nicer to him than anyone else. Moreover, he was far from being a mass of beef. Westervelt recalled the sight of Lydman on an open beach, where he seemed more at ease than anywhere else. The man kept himself hard-muscled and trim. Despite the gaunt look that sometimes crossed his features, he was probably on the low side of thirty.
So he's still quick as well as strong, thought Westervelt.If he does go for the door the way Joe predicts, Willie my boy, you be sure to get out of the way!
In theory, he was supposed to be helping Lydman research some problems Smith had thought up. So far, he had read one short article which had bored the ex-spacer and twice gone to the files for case folders. He was very well aware that the real idea was to have someone with Lydman constantly. For this reason, he was prepared further to assume the courtesy of answering any interrupting phone calls. He was determined that any news not censored by Pauline would be a wrong number, no matter if it were the head of the D.I.R. himself.
Lydman looked up from his reading.
"I'm getting hungry; aren't you, Willie?"
"I guess so. I didn't notice," said Westervelt.
"How about phoning down for something? Get whatever you like."
That was typical of Lydman, Westervelt realized. The man did not care what he ate. Smith would have been specific though unimaginative. Parrish would have sent instructions about the seasoning. The girls would choose something sickening by Westervelt's standards. He shoved back his chair and stood up.
"I'd better see what they're doing up front," he said. "I think Mr. Smith was talking about it being quicker to raid our own food locker. I'll be back in a minute."
Lydman raised his gray-blue eyes and stared through him curiously.
"No hurry," he said mildly.
Westervelt thought that the man was still watching him as he walked through the door, but he did not like to look back. It might have been so.
When he reached the main office, he found both girls replacing folders in the bay of current files opposite Simonetta's desk.
"How about letting me at the buried treasure?" he asked. "The thought of food is infiltrating insidiously."
"Willie," said Simonetta, "you'll go far here. None of the other brains had such a good idea. I'll phone for something if you'll see what people want."
"I think Mr. Smith wants to use stuff we have in the locker," said Westervelt, blocking the way to her desk. "Hold it a second while I check."
He rapped on Smith's door as he opened it. He found the chief with most of the papers on his desk shoved to one side so that a built-in tape viewer could be brought up from its concealed position. Smith was scowling as if obtaining little useful information from whatever he was watching.
"They're getting hungry," Westervelt whispered. "Is it all right to raid our guest locker?"
Smith shut off his machine, and scrubbed one hand across his long face.
"Right, Willie," he agreed. "The sooner the better. Take out whatever you think best and pass it around. Meanwhile, I'd better check on the situation downstairs—come to think of it, when you called, did you get an outside line and punch the numbers yourself?"
"No, but I have an understanding with Pauline," said Westervelt.
He was thinking that Smith had put him in charge of the food, which was perhaps a little better than being sent around to take personal orders as the girls had assumed he would do, but which was still a long way beneath the conference status he had appeared to have an hour earlier.
"Good boy!" Smith approved. "Then she'll know who I want to talk to and that she shouldn't listen in."
Westervelt was far from sanguine about the last condition, but left without trying to cause his chief any unhappiness.
Well, so it goes, he reflected. One minute a project man, the next an office boy! If I pick out what everybody likes, I'll be a project man again. But if they like it too much, I'll turn out to be the official chef around here whenever someone important stays to lunch.
The picture of sitting in on a talk with some potent official of the D.I.R. and expounding his brilliant solution to a problem, only to be requested to slap together a short order meal, made him pause outside the door, frowning.
"Now what, Willie?" asked Simonetta.
He roused himself.
"Leave it to me, Si," he answered, working up a grin. "I have everything under control."
"I hope you know what you're doing," Beryl commented. "I won't stand for a plate of mashed potatoes and gravy, or anything that fattening."
"You'll have your choice," Westervelt promised. "I wouldn't want anything to spoil that figure. Just let me at the locker."
He slipped an arm around her waist to move her aside. The flesh of her flank was softly firm under his fingers, and he made himself think better of an impulse to squeeze.
Beryl stepped away, neither quickly enough to be skittish nor slowly enough to imply permissiveness. Westervelt shrugged. He stepped forward to the blank wall at the end of the file cabinets, and slid back a panel to reveal a white-enameled food locker.
It was divided into an upper and lower section, with transparent doors that rolled around into the side walls. The lower half was refrigerated. Westervelt opened the upper to explore more comfortably.
Most of the foiled packages contained sandwiches, many of them self-heating. Somewhat bulkier containers held more substantial delicacies: Welsh rabbit, turkey and baked potato, filet mignon, rattlesnake croquettes, and salmon salad. There were sealed cups of coffee, tea, or bouillon that heated themselves upon being opened, and ice cream and fruits in the freezer section.
"Si, let me have a couple of 'out' baskets," said Westervelt, holding out his hand.
"Empty?"
"All right—your 'in' and Beryl's 'out' trays. Do you expect me to go around with everybody's supper stuffed in my pockets?"
"Frankly, yes," said Beryl. "But not with mine. Let me see what they have in there!"
She examined the array while Westervelt experimented with balancing two empty desk trays across his forearm. By the time he was ready, the girls had blocked him off, and he had to wait until the possibilities had been debated thoroughly. In the end, Simonnetta selected veal scallopini; and Beryl took a crabmeat sandwich for herself and a filet mignon for Parrish. Westervelt grinned when he saw that she also chose four sealed martinis.
His own decisions were simple. Putting aside a budding curiosity about rattlesnake meat, he took a package of fried ham and eggs—to see if it could be possible—and a self-heating package of mince pie. For Smith, Lydman, and Rosenkrantz, he piled a tray with half a dozen roast beef or turkey sandwiches, a selection of pie and ice cream, and all the coffee containers he could fit in.
"Si, pick out something nice for Pauline," he requested, noting that Beryl was already on the way across the office to Parrish's door.
Simonetta exclaimed at her forgetfulness, pushed aside the container that she had been warming on her desk according to instructions, and told him to go ahead.
"I'll take her a salad and some bouillon," she said. "The kid thinks she has to watch her weight already."
As an afterthought, Westervelt topped his load with a martini for Smith, on the theory that the chief was going to need it.
He went in there first, let Smith see that nothing but coffee was on the way to Lydman, and made his exit directly into the hall. He made the communications room his next stop, and took what was left into the library to share with Lydman.
The latter took a roast beef sandwich, pulled the heating tab, and tore it open after the required thirty seconds with one twist of his powerful fingers. Westervelt had a little more trouble with his package of ham and eggs, but the coffee cups were simpler.
They sat there in silence, except for an occasional word, and a brief scramble when Westervelt spilled coffee on a list of cases Lydman had thought of for further checking. The ex-spacer chewed methodically on three sandwiches, and poured down two containers of coffee, scanning a copy of theGalatlasall the while.
Westervelt found the fried ham and eggs to be a disappointment.
I should have tried a steak, he reflected.Eggs can't be done. Not and taste right.
There was one sandwich left, cold turkey, and Lydman had just begun on his third, so the youth helped himself. The hot mince pie had real flavor, and he was feeling quite comfortable by the time Lydman finished his ice cream.
"Shall I get some more coffee?" Westervelt offered.
"Not for me," said the other. "If you go back, though, you could pick up those folders."
Westervelt took the excuse to leave for a few minutes. He stopped in to see if Joe wanted anything, promised to look for bourbon, and returned to the main office. He found Simonetta sipping a solitary cup of coffee.
"Did they leave you all alone?" he demanded.
"Oh, no," she said. "The boss came out and had coffee with Pauline and me, but then she had a call for him and he thought he'd rather take it in his office."
Westervelt stepped over to Smith's door and listened. In theory, it should have been soundproof, so he opened it a crack. Hearing Smith's voice, he pushed his luck and put his head inside. The chief was busy enough on the phone not to be aware of the intrusion.
"Yes, I appreciate your difficulty," Smith said, obviously having said it many times before. "Still, if there is no way to send us an elevator, I would much rather not have a party climbing the twenty-five flights to break open the door. If it has to be broken, we can do it."
Westervelt recognized the answering voice, hoarser though it now was, as that of the silver-haired manager downstairs. He wondered why the sight of each other did not make both the manager and Smith want to comb their hair.
"Naturally, we will make good any damage," Smith said. "Besides, you must have a good many other people on the lower floors of the tower to look after."
"Most of them are displaying the good sense to stay in their offices until the emergency is dealt with."
Westervelt crept inside and moved around until he could see the face pouting on the screen of Smith's phone. The man now had heavy shadows under his eyes, although he had mopped off the perspiration that had bathed him when Westervelt had spoken with him.
"Well, perhaps we have slightly different problems," Smith told the manager.
"Problems!" exclaimed the latter. His effort to contain his emotions was clearly visible. "Well ... of course ... if it is really serious, perhaps we can get the police to send up an emergency rescue squad—"
"No!" Smith interrupted violently. "No rescue squad! We do not in any way need to be rescued. Not at all!"
The manager eyed him with dark suspicion.
"Is someone ill?" he demanded. "We cannot be responsible for any lawsuits due to your refusal to let us call competent authorities."
"Aren't you a competent authority?" demanded Smith. "Just get the elevator working, will you? We'll wait until then."
"There is no way of knowing when power will be restored," said the manager. "You must have a TV set around the office somewhere, so you can hear the news bulletins on the situation as soon as I can." He paused to pop a lozenge into his mouth, sighed, and added, "Sooner, I dare say."
Smith had leaned back in his chair, a stricken look on his face. He saw Westervelt, and began to wave frantically toward the hall.
"I never thought of that," exclaimed the youth.
He burst into the hall from Smith's private entrance, realized he would have to pass the library to reach Joe Rosenkrantz with an order for censorship, and circled back to the main entrance.
He went in, saw Simonetta still at her desk, and opened the door to Pauline's cubicle. When he got inside with the little blonde, her swivel chair, and her switchboard, there was just about room enough to breathe.
"Pauline!" he panted. "Punch the com room number and lend me your headset!"
"This is cosy!" she giggled, but did as he asked.
Joe answered promptly.
"Joe, this is Willie. It just so happens that Charlie Colborn was changing transistors in all the personal sets you have down there, so you can't pick up a newscast right now—right?"
There was a pregnant pause before one answered.
"Right. That's the way it goes. Can you talk? I don't see any image."
"I'm with Pauline. It's okay. I mean, it was just a thought, in case...."
"Sure," said Rosenkrantz. "Should have thought of it myself. Everything else all right?"
Westervelt told him that it was, agreed that he hoped it would continue. Then he surrendered the headset to Pauline, who tickled his ribs as he squirmed around to leave the cubicle.
"Don't you dare!" she giggled when he turned on her. "I'll talk!"
"Please, no, Pauline," he sighed. "Anything but that!"
He walked loosely past Simonetta, who stared at him unbelievingly, and started to enter Smith's office again. Behind him, he heard the sounds of a door being closed and high heels clicking subduedly on the springy flooring. Beryl's voice said something as he began to look around. He stopped.
"What did she say?" he asked Simonetta.
Beryl had already disappeared toward the hall.
"She said Mr. Parrish invited her downstairs for a cocktail. He thinks they should have about twenty minutes to relax before going back to work."
"You're kidding!" gasped Westervelt.
"No, I'm not! Willie, you've been acting awfully strange. Where have you been ducking to every time—"
Westervelt was already running for the hall.
He skidded and nearly fell going through the entrance. Beryl was standing near the elevator.
"Did you ring yet?" asked Westervelt.
"No, I'm waiting for Mr. Parrish," said Beryl, in a tone that emphasized unwieldiness of an assembly of three persons.
"Your lipstick is smeared," said Westervelt.
Beryl gave him an even less believing stare than had Simonetta, but, glancing hastily at her watch, began to fumble out her compact.
"In here, where the light is better," said Westervelt.
He grabbed her by an elbow and dragged her into the office before it occurred to her to resist.
"Please, Willie! You'rehandlingme!" she protested coldly.
Westervelt was already out the door again, bent upon taking the other entrance to Smith's office, when he saw the hall door of Parrish's office open. He reversed direction in time to meet Parrish as the latter stepped into the corridor.
"Beryl said to tell you she'll be right back," he said, waving a thumb vaguely in the direction of the rest rooms.
"Oh. Thanks, Willie," answered Parrish. "I'll wait inside."
Westervelt reached Smith's office before Parrish had completely closed his own door. From the corner of his eye, he saw the blue of Beryl's dress.
"Mr. Smith!" he called as he thrust his head inside. "I think I need help!"
The first sensation that penetrated, agonizingly, to Taranto's consciousness was that of heat. Heat, and then the damp itch of soaking sweat.
The next feeling, as he groggily sought to take up the slack in his hanging jaw, was thirst. It was a raging demand that brought him entirely awake. Before he could control himself, he had emitted a groan.
Immediately, he was dropped from whatever had been supporting him in a swaying, dipping fashion. He landed with a thud on the hard ground.
A chatter of Syssokan broke out above him. It was answered by other Syssokan voices farther away. Taranto kept his eyes closed and lay limply where he had sprawled, while he tried to figure out what had gone wrong.
Shortly before dawn, he and Meyers had each swallowed his capsule as directed. He remembered a period of vague drowsiness after that, then nothing more until he had been awakened just now. From his still dizzy mind, he sought to drag the outline of events expected.
They had hoped to be taken out to the desert, possibly to a Syssokan burial ground according to the local custom, and left to be dried by the dessicating blaze of the sun. It had been planned that a spaceship would land in the late afternoon to pick them up. Undoubtedly, it would take the Syssokans several hours to report the "deaths" and to secure official permission for disposal of the bodies, even though they were less given to red tape than Terrans. Still, they should have abandoned the "bodies" long before Taranto had expected to awake.
He risked opening one eye a slit. Syssokan legs crowding around blocked his view, but he could tell that it was dusk. The heat he felt must be that of sand and rocks that had baked all day.
It must have taken the Syssokans a long time to get this far. He wondered whether they had brought him an unusual distance into the desert, perhaps to avoid contaminating their own burial grounds, or whether they had simply indulged in some long-winded debate as to the proper course to pursue in regard to deceased aliens.
My God!he thought.What if they'd decided to dissect us? I never thought of that! I wonder if the joker that sent those pills did?
Whatever had gone wrong, he was well behind schedule. He could imagine the chagrin of the D.I.R. man watching the proceedings through his little flying spy-eye. Taranto hoped that the spacers hired for the pick-up were still standing by—at the worst, they would have water. Cautiously, he tried to move his tongue inside his mouth. It stuck against his teeth. He suspected that the taste would be terrible, if he could taste at all.
The heat!he thought.I've been soaking up heat all day and not sweating. Now it's jetting out of every pore.
Whatever the drug had done or failed to do, it must have nearly suspended most of the normal functions of the body. No wonder he was perspiring so heavily as he began to recover! Even so, he felt as if he had a fever. He began to hope that he had not been carried for very long. Unless he had been lying in the cell—or, better, in some examination room at ground level—for most of the elapsed time while disputes held up disposal of his body, some instinct told him, he was very likely to die.
Someone rubbed a hand roughly over his face, slipping through the film of sweat. At this demonstration, renewed exclamations broke out above him. One of the Syssokans shouted some gabble, as if to another some way off.
A moment later, Taranto heard a hoarse yelp that could have come only from a Terran throat. Then words began to form, and he realized that it must be Meyers.
That blew the pipes!he thought, and opened his eyes.
A Syssokan looking down at him hissed in astonishment. Others, who had been watching another group about twenty feet away, turned to stare down at Taranto. He was hauled to his feet by the first pair that thought of it. One, a minor officer by his red uniform, sputtered a question at the Terran, forgetting in his evident excitement that he was speaking Syssokan. Taranto wiped his face with his shirtsleeve. He was beginning to feel a trifle cooler as his perspiration evaporated in the dry air, but his surroundings seemed feverishly unreal.
He could not quite understand what Meyers was shouting now, but even in the hoarse voice could be detected a note of pleading. Taranto thought it must be something about water. The Syssokan before him gathered his wits and repeated his question in Terran.
"What doess thiss mean?" he demanded, glaring angrily at Taranto with his huge, black eyes.
The Terran tried to answer, but could not get the words out. He gestured weakly at a waterskin secured to the harness of one of the soldiers. After a brief moment of hesitation, the officer waved permission. The soldier detached the container and handed it suspiciously to Taranto. Fearing the effect of too much liquid in one jolt, the latter forced himself to take only a few small swallows. He wished he could afford to stick his whole head inside the skin and soak up the water like a blotter.
"You are dead!" declared the officer impatiently.
The tiny greenish-gray scales of his facial skin actually seemed ruffled. Taranto dizzily sought for some likely apology to excuse his being alive. He decided that there might be a slim chance of getting away with a whopper.
"If it is officially declared, then of course I am dead!" he croaked. "What d'ya expect. Look how weak I am!"
The Syssokan swiveled their narrow, pointed skulls about at each other.
"I'm in the last minutes," said Taranto sadly.
"What lasst minutess?" asked the officer.
"It's the way Terrans pass on," asserted the spacer. "Didn't you ever see a Terran die?"
The officer silently avoided admitting so much, running a hand reflectively over his thick waist, but his hesitation provided an opening.
"That's the way it goes," said Taranto. "First a blackout ... we sleep, that is. Then the last minutes, the sweat of death, and ... blooey!"
He raised the waterskin and sneaked a long swallow, risking it because he feared he might not be allowed another.
He was right. The officer snatched away the skin and thrust it into the long fingers of its indignant owner.
"If you are sso dead," he demanded, not illogically, "why do you drink up our water?"
"Sorry," apologized Taranto. "Where are we?"
"What difference iss it to you?"
"I ... uh ... don't want to make hard feelings or bad luck by dying in one of your burial grounds."
"It will not happen," said the officer grimly. "We have been ssent in another place to guard against that. Look back—you can see the city over that way."
Taranto turned. The outline of the city walls, with lights showing here and there on the watch towers, loomed up about five miles away. A small rise in the rolling ground of the desert hid the base of the walls and the greater part of the rough trail they had evidently followed. It would have been a fine spot for a spaceship to drop briefly to the surface.
"Do you wish to lie down here?" asked the officer politely. "We will wait until it iss over."
Don't be so damn' helpful! thought Taranto.
He looked desperately about, striving to give the impression of seeking a comfortable spot. He felt the situation turning more and more sour by the minute. It would be very difficult to feign death successfully again now that the Syssokan suspicions were so aroused. They might well make sure of him in their own way.
Near him stood half a dozen brown-clad soldiers. Four of them, spears slung on their shoulders by braided straps, had apparently been carrying him while two others acted as relief bearers. Besides the officer, there was a sub-officer, also in brown but wearing a red harness. In the background, a similar group clustered about Meyers.
Taranto saw that he had been tumbled from a sort of flat stretcher of wickerwork. It was of careless craftsmanship, as if meant to be abandoned with the body it served on the last journey. He wondered if it could be assumed to be his property.
"Don't put yourselves out," he said. "I can't hardly take a step even to sit down. It'll be just a coupla minutes now. Good-bye!"
The Syssokan officer made no move to depart. Taranto had not really dared to hope that he would. He was trying to think of some further excuse when Meyers saved him the trouble.
"Help!Taranto!" shrieked the other spacer, bursting suddenly from the group about him. "I told them we're alive, and they want to kill us!"
He ran staggeringly toward Taranto, kicking up spurts of sand. His shirt front was dark with sweat and dribbled water. He looked wild with fright.
"Ah, they do live!" exclaimed the officer. "Seize them!"
He seemed to realize only after about ten seconds that he had, this time, spoken in Terran. Evidently feeling that not all his men might have learned that particular language, he began to repeat the order in Syssokan. Taranto interfered by swinging his fist at the center of the greenish-gray features. The Syssokan, arms flung wide, sailed backward and landed on the nape of his neck in a patch of gravel. Meyers screamed hoarsely as his own bearers caught up to him and dragged him down.
Taranto sprang forward to snatch up the wicker stretcher from the ground. A long-fingered hand clutched at his shoulder, but let go when he kicked backward without looking around. He raised the stretcher and swung it around in a wide arc at the three Syssokans reaching for him.
Two, having left their heads unprotected, went down; but the stretcher frame crumpled. Taranto tripped the other Syssokan, glancing hopefully at the sky. There was no sign of the fire-trail of a descending spaceship in the deepening twilight. Then he had to duck as the other three bearers were upon him.
"Get up, Meyers!" he yelled.
He met the rush with a hard left that dumped the leading Syssokan on his back. The next hesitated, and was brushed aside by the sixth, who had had the wits to unsling his spear.
Taranto sidestepped the crude but large point that thrust straight at his belly. The shaft of the spear slid along his left ribs, and he punched over the outstretched arms of the soldier at the Syssokan's head. He clamped the spear between his elbow and body, retaining it as his attacker staggered back.
Two or three were now advancing from where a knot of figures seemed to be sitting upon Meyers in the gloom. They did not especially hurry. Taranto had begun to reverse the spear to jab at the Syssokan left facing him when he heard a scrabbling behind him.
He whirled away to his right, ducking instinctively as a body hurtled past him. When he faced about, he found that most of those whom he had knocked down were again on their feet and advancing. The officer, the lower part of his face smeared with purplish blood, ran at Taranto full tilt. He screamed an order in his own language.
The spacer cracked the butt of the spear smartly against the Syssokan's head, sending him down on his face. One of the others, however, managed to get a grip on the weapon. Instinct told Taranto that any attempt at a tug of war on his part would lead to a fatal entanglement. He dodged away and sprinted toward the group pinning Meyers.
A Syssokan voice yelled mushily behind him as he concentrated upon driving with the greatest possible force into the writhing group before him. He struck with a crunch that tumbled bodies in all directions. Taranto himself felt sand scrape raspingly against the side of his face as he half-rolled, half-skidded along the ground.
His pursuers now caught up to the new location of hostilities. The first thing Taranto saw as he managed to drag one knee under him was the butt end of a spear plunging at his midsection. The Syssokan behind it had his center of gravity well ahead of his churning feet, obviously intent upon doing great bodily harm. The spacer wondered for a split second why the native did not use his point.
Then he twisted hips and torso to his right, drawing back his left shoulder. As the spear passed him, he slapped down hard on the shaft with his left hand. The butt dug into the sand, and the Syssokan hissed in consternation as he vaulted head over heels before he could release the weapon. The one immediately behind was caught in the center of his harness by a flying foot, whereupon he collapsed with a groan across the prone figure of his comrade. Two more, who had dropped their spears, reached out toward Taranto, urged on by the officer on their heels.
Taranto saw Meyers stagger to his feet. Then the two Syssokans were all over him. He skipped away to his left over a pair of limp legs, parried a groping hand, and brought around the long, low left hook that had made him respected in past years.
In the ring, he had floored men with that punch. At the least, he expected a fine, loudwhooshfrom the Syssokan, but the latter disappointed him. He folded in limp silence.
For a second or two, everything stopped. Taranto stared down at the soldier, slumped on the ground like a loose sack of potatoes. Even the Syssokans who were not at the moment engaged in pulling themselves to their feet also gaped.
Light dawned for the spacer. Those among whom he had gone head-hunting kept getting to their feet as fast as he knocked them down.
"Hit 'em in the gut!" he yelled to Meyers. "That's where their brains are!"
He charged at the nearest Syssokan, lips drawn back in an unconscious snarl. The soldier made a reflexive motion to cross his arms before his thick abdomen. Taranto, unopposed, hit him alongside the head with a light right, then whipped the left hook in again as the arms began to lift. The Syssokan went out like a light.
"Come on!" Taranto shouted at Meyers when he saw that the other had not moved. "Two of us could do it. Those heads are too little to hold a brain. Kick 'em, if you can't do anything else!"
"Are you crazy?" retorted Meyers, his voice hoarse as much with fear as with thirst. "They'll kill us! Give up, and they'll only take us back!"
Taranto sensed someone behind him. He started to run, but two or three recovered Syssokans headed him off. He tried to cut back to his right. He slipped in a patch of sand and saved himself from going flat only by catching his weight on both outstretched hands. One of the Syssokans landed across his back, feeling blindly for a hold.
Taranto surged up, trying to butt with the back of his head. He was promptly wrapped in the long arms of another soldier facing him, as the grip from the rear slid down to his waist. The fellow behind him seemed to think he could hurt him by kneading both knobby fists into the spacer's belly, but there was too much hard muscle there.
The Terran again butted, forward this time, and brought up his knee. This was less effective than it should have been, but it helped him free one arm so that he could drive an elbow backward.
The officer ran up with a reversed spear. From the look in his big black eyes, Taranto realized that the Syssokan had also learned something during the melee. That explained, no doubt, why he was an officer. He swung the spear in a neat arc—at Taranto's head!
It cracked against the Terran's skull. Even though he did his best to ride with it, he felt his knees buckle. He struck out with his right fist, but the punch was smothered by the soldier whom he had kneed.
The spear came down again. The world of Taranto's existence was reduced to a narrow view of a straining, greenish-gray calf showing through a torn leg of a Syssokan uniform. Vaguely, he realized that he was on his hands and knees. A great number of hands seemed to be grabbing at him, and his own were very heavy as he groped out for the leg.
He got some sort of fumbling grip, and started to haul himself up. The slowness of his motions alarmed him, in a foggy way. He tried to tuck his chin behind his left shoulder because he knew that there was something ... something ... coming....
It came. The Syssokan officer's big foot took him behind the ear with a brutal thump.
Taranto, however, sinking into gray nothingness, did not really feel it....
Smith stood at the corner of the corridor, leaning back every half minute or so to peek around at the stretch leading toward the library and communications room.
Westervelt had propped himself with folded arms against the opposite wall, facing the door to the stairs.
Beryl hovered behind Parrish, who faced Smith impatiently between darting glares at Westervelt.
"All right, I guess I have to tell you, Pete," said Smith in a low tone. "You might say we are temporarily inconvenienced."
"By him?" asked Parrish, jerking a thumb in Westervelt's direction. "That I could understand. The kid's beginning to think he's a comedian. He started out just now playing Charley's Aunt."
"Sssh!" said Smith softly.
Westervelt turned his head toward the main entrance, wondering how far Parrish's voice had carried.
Smith's dapper assistant looked from one to the other. Seeking some evidence of sanity, he turned with raised eyebrows to Beryl. The blonde rounded her blue eyes at him and shrugged.
"Pete, this is no joke," insisted Smith. "I wish it hadn't gotten around so fast, but there it is."
"Therewhatis?" demanded Parrish, in a tone bordering on the querulous.
"Well ... there's been some kind of power failure throughout the business district. There aren't any elevators running, and we don't know how long it will be until the power company copes with the trouble."
"No elevators?" repeated Parrish.
He stared at the sliding doors of the elevator shaft as if unable to comprehend the lack of such service. The idea seemed to sink in.
"No elevators?And ninety-nine storiesup?"
"Sssh!" said Smith, glancing down the corridor.
"What's the matter with you, Castor?" asked Parrish. "Are you watching for someone ... someone ... oh!"
"See what I'm thinking?" asked Smith.
They faced each other for a moment in silence.
"Well, it ought to be all right, as long as he can get down the stairs if he wants to," said Parrish. "I'm sorry, Beryl. We'll have to make it some other time."
"But how are we going to get home?" asked the blonde.
"Oh, they'll probably have it fixed by the time we're finished here," said Parrish.
"Then what's all the trouble about. Why is Willie looking so sour?"
Westervelt braced himself against the impact of three glances and tried not to sneer. The other two men cleared their throats and looked back at Beryl.
"I'm going to have to ask your co-operation, Beryl," said Smith. "First, Pete, I'd like to point out to you a little gem of modern design. This door here is powered to slide open automatically for a fire or other emergency."
"Of course," said Parrish curiously.
"But there isn't any power," Smith pointed out.
Parrish reached out impatiently and tried the door. He wrenched at it two or three times, then bent to peer for the latch.
"No use, Pete," said Smith, glancing down the hall again. "Willie already went through that whole routine. I've been on the phone to the building manager, and there isn't anything he can do except send a party up from the seventy-fifth floor to burn open the door from the stair side."
"Is he doing it?"
"Well, frankly ... I told him it wasn't necessary," said Smith, getting a stubborn look on his long face.
"But you know Bob!" expostulated Parrish. "If he gets the idea that he's penned in here—"
"I know, I know," said Smith. "On the other hand, we can always get something from the lab and break out from this side, provided we take care not to let him know what is going on until later."
Westervelt eyed Beryl sardonically. He had seldom seen an expression so blended of impatience and vague worry. He wondered if anyone would explain to her.
Parrish shook his head.
"I think it might be better to call downstairs again, and have them come up," he said.
"I don't want to do that," said Smith.
"Why not?"
"It would get around. Pretty soon, the story would be all over the D.I.R."
Parrish actually leaned forward slightly to study his chief's face. He found no words, but his very expression was plaintive. Smith sighed.
"We're in the business of springing spacers from jails all over the explored galaxy," he said. "We're supposed to be loaded to the jets with high-potency brainwaves and have a gadget for every purpose! How is it going to look if we're locked in our own office and can't get out without help?"
Parrish threw up his hands. Pivoting, he walked loosely a few feet along the corridor and back, squeezing his chin in the palm of one hand. He clasped his hands behind his back, then, and peered around Smith at the empty wing of the corridor.
"Maybe we could dope him," he suggested, without much feeling.
"I should have thought of that," admitted Smith, "but he's finished eating."
"Can't we find something in the lab to shoot a dart?"
As Smith tried to remember, Westervelt interrupted.
"If you decide on that, I'm not volunteering, thank you. Did you ever see Mr. Lydman move in a hurry? Whoever tries it had better not miss with the first dart!"
Smith said, "Harumph!" and Parrish looked uncomfortable. The assistant glanced momentarily at Beryl, but shook his head immediately.
Westervelt followed his thinking. For one thing, Lydman was known to be devoted to his wife and two children; for another, who knew how badly Beryl might miss?
"Now, if everyone will just keep calm," said Smith, "and we can keep Bob busy, we'll probably get along fine until they restore power. How long can it take, after all? They can't waste any time with a large part of a modern city like this cut off. It's unthinkable."
"I suppose you're right," said Parrish.
Smith turned to Beryl.
"What I meant by asking your co-operation," he said, "is that we'll need to have someone with Mr. Lydman most of the time. Willie has been doing it until now, but we don't want it to look like deliberate surveillance."
"But why?" asked Beryl. "I mean ... I see that it worries all of you that ... that he might find out. But what if he does?"
"Possibly nothing," answered Smith. "On the other hand, Mr. Lydman was once imprisoned, in his space traveling days. He was held for a long time under very trying conditions; and the experience has left him with a problem. It is notexactlyclaustrophobia...."
He paused, as if to let Beryl recall other remarks about Lydman. Their general air of gravity seemed to impress her.
"I'll be ... glad to help," she said reluctantly.
"Fine!" said Smith. "Probably nothing will be necessary. Now, I think we had better go in and tell Si, so that everyone will be alerted to the situation."
Westervelt caught the glance that passed between Parrish and Beryl. He was almost certain that each of them was mentally counting the people who had known beforetheyhad been told.
That's what you get for being so busy in the dead files, he thought.
They trouped in behind Smith. Simonetta watched as if they had been a parade. Smith, with an occasional comment from Parrish, told her the story.
"So that is the partial reason for staying late," he concluded, "although, of course, the case of Harris comes first."
Westervelt had wandered over to a window. He adjusted the filter dial for maximum clarity and looked out.
From where he was, he could see a great black carpet across part of the city, spreading out from somewhere beneath his position until it was cut by a sharp line of street lights many blocks away. Beyond that, the city looked normal. To the near side of the invisible boundary and, he supposed, for a like distance in the opposite direction behind his viewpoint, there were only sparse and faint glows of emergency lights. Some were doubtless powered by buildings with the equipment for the purpose, others were the lights of police and emergency vehicles on the ground or cruising low between the taller buildings.
I wonder what they actually do when something like this happens?he thought.What if they think they have it fixed, turn on the juice again, and it blows a second time?
His reverie was interrupted by the sound of Simonetta's phone. From where he was, he could see Joe Rosenkrantz's features as the operator asked for Smith.
"Oh, there you are, Mr. Smith," said Joe. "Pauline has been trying all over. Trident is transmitting, and I thought you would want to be here. They say they have a relay set up right to Harris."
Smith let out a whoop and made for the door.
"He'll be right there," Simonetta told the grinning TV man.
Parrish and Westervelt trailed along. When the latter looked back, he saw that Simonetta had replaced Beryl; and he could hardly blame the blonde for seizing the chance to sit down and collect her thoughts. He felt like crawling into a hole somewhere himself.
Passing the library, Parrish cocked an eyebrow at him. Westervelt nodded. He went in and told Lydman about the call. The ex-spacer was interested enough to join the procession.
When Westervelt followed him into the communications room, Joe Rosenkrantz was explaining the set-up to Smith.
"Like before, we go through Pluto, Capella VII, and an automatic relay on an outer planet of the Trident system, but you won't see anything of that. It's after we get Johnson that the fun begins."
He leaned back in his swivel chair before the screen and surveyed the group.
"Johnson is gonnathinkto a fish near his island. This fish thinks to one swimming near Harris. They claim Harris answers."
Smith ran both hands through his hair.
"We try anything," he said. "Let's go!"
Joe got in contact with Johnson, the Terran D.I.R. man, among other things, on Trident. The latter was not quite successful in hiding an I-told-you-so attitude.
"Harris himself confirms that he is being held on the ocean floor," he said. "He seems to be a sort of pet, or curiosity."
"Can you make sense out of the messages?" asked Smith. "I mean, is there any difficulty because of a language barrier? We don't want to make some silly assumption and find out it was based on a misunderstanding."
After the weird pause caused by the mind-numbing distance, Johnson replied.
"There isn't any language barrier in a thought, but you might say there's sometimes an attitude barrier. Usually, we can pick up an equivalent meaning if we assume, for instance, that our time sense is similar to that of these fish."
"Well, try asking Harris how deep he is," suggested Smith.
They watched Johnson look away, although the man did not seem to be going through any marked effort of concentration. Hardly thirty seconds of this had elapsed when they saw him scowl.
"This fish off my beach can't get it through his massive intellect that he can't think directly to another fish at your position. He thinks you must be pretty queer not to have someone to do your thinking for you."
Smith turned a little red. Westervelt admired Joe Rosenkrantz's pokerface. Johnson appeared to be insisting.
"Harris says he is two minutes' swim under the surface," he reported.
"Well, how far from your position, then?" asked Smith.
The distance turned out to be a day-and-a-half swim.
"Does he need anything? Are they keeping him under livable conditions?"
The pause, and Johnson relayed, "They pump him air and feed him. He needs someone to get him out."
"How can we find him?" asked Smith. "Can he work up any way of signaling us?"
"You are signaling him now, he says. He wants you to get him out."
Smith looked around him for questions. Lydman suggested asking how Harris was confined. Smith put it to Johnson, and after the maddening pause, got an answer.
"He says he's in a big glass box like a freight trailer. It's like a cage. Inside, he is free to move around, and he wants to get out."
"Then have him tell us where it is!" snapped Smith.
"He doesn't know," came the reply. "They move about every so often."
"What did I say?" whispered Parrish. "Nomadic."
No one took the time to congratulate him because Smith was asking what the Tridentians were like. Johnson's mental connection seemed to develop static. They saw him shake his head as if to clear it. He turned a puzzled expression to the screen.
"I didn't get that very plainly," he admitted. "A sort of combination of thoughts—they feed him and they don't taste good."
"Well, tell your fishy friend to keep his own opinions out of it," said Smith, surprising Westervelt, who had not quite caught up to the situation.
Johnson, a moment later, grimaced. His expression became apologetic.
"Don't say things like that!" he told Smith, turning again to the screen. "It slipped through my mind as I heard you, and he didn't like it!"
"Who? Harris?"
"No, the fish at his end. I apologized for you."
There was a general restless shifting of feet in the Terran office. Smith seemed, in the dim lighting of the communications room, to flush a deeper shade.
"And what does Harris say?"
Johnson inquired. Harris requested that they get him out.
"Goddammit!" muttered Smith. "He must be punchy!"
"It happens," Lydman reminded him softly.
"Yes," said Smith, after a startled look around, "but some were like that to begin with, and his record suggests it all the way."
He asked Johnson to get a description of the place where Harris found himself. The answer was, in a fashion, conclusive.
"Like any other part of the sea bottom," reported Johnson. "And, furthermore, he's tired of thinking and wants to rest."
"Who does?" demanded Smith.
"They won't tell me," said Johnson, sadly.
Smith choked off a curse, noticing Simonetta standing there. He combed his hair furiously with both hands. No one suggested any other questions, so he thanked Johnson and told Joe to break off.
"At least, we know it's all real," he sighed. "He was actually taken, and he's still alive."
"You put a lot of faith in a couple of fish," said Lydman.
Smith hesitated.
"Well ... now ... they aren't really fish," he said. "Let's not build up a mental misconception, just because we've been kidding about 'swishy the thinking fishy.' Actually, they probably wouldn't even suggest fish to an ichthyologist, and they may be a pretty high form of life."
"They may be as high as this Harris," commented Parrish, and earned a cold stare from Lydman.
"I think I'll look around the lab," said the latter, as the others made motions toward breaking up the gathering.
Westervelt promptly headed for the door. He saw that Lydman was walking around the corner of the wire mesh partition that enclosed the special apparatus of the communications room, doubtless bent upon taking a short-cut into the lab.
I want to go sit down a while before they pin me on him again, thought the youth.I need fifteen minutes, then I'll relieve whoever has him, if Smitty wants me to.
The light, impotent after penetrating fifty fathoms of Tridentian sea, was murky and green-tinted; but Tom Harris had become more or less used to that. It rankled, nevertheless, that the sea-people continued to ignore his demands for a lamp.
He knew that they used such devices. Through the clear walls of his tank, he had seen night parties swimming out to hunt small varieties of fish. The water craft they piloted on longer trips and up to the surface were also equipped with lights powered by some sort of battery. It infuriated Harris to be forced arbitrarily to exist isolated in the dimness of the ocean bottom day or the complete blackness of night.
He rose from the spot where he had been squatting on his heels. So smooth was the glassy footing that he slipped and almost fell headlong. He regained his balance and looked about.
The tank was about ten by ten feet and twice as long, with metal angles which he assumed to be aluminum securing all edges. These formed the outer corners, so that he could see the gaskets inside them that made the tank water-tight. The sea-people, he had to admit, were quite capable of coping with their environment and understanding his.
The end of the tank distant from Harris was opaque. He thought that there were connections to a towing vehicle as well as to the plant that pumped air for him. The big fish had not made that quite clear to him. All other sides of the tank were quite clear. Whenever he walked about, he could look through the floor and find groups of shells and other remnants of deceased marine life in the white sand. Occasionally, he considered the pressure that would implode upon him should anything happen to rupture the walls, but he had become habitually successful in forcing that idea to the back of his mind.
Along each of the side walls were four little airlocks. The use of these was at the moment being demonstrated by one of the sea-people to what Harris was beginning to think of as a child.
The parent was slightly smaller than Harris, who stood five-feet-five and weighed a hundred and thirty pounds Terran. It also had four limbs, but that was about the last point they had in common. The Tridentian's limbs all joined his armored body near the head. Two of them ended in powerful pincers; the others forked into several delicate tentacles. The body was somewhat flexible despite the weight of rugged shell segments, and tapered to a spread tail upon which the crustacean balanced himself easily.
Harris felt at a distinct disadvantage in the vision department: each of the Tridentians had four eyes protruding from his chitinous head. The adult had grown one pair of eye-stalks to a length of nearly a foot. The second pair, like both of the youngster's, extended only a few inches.
The Terran could not be sure whether the undersea currency consisted of metal or shell, but the Tridentian deposited some sort of coin in a slot machine outside one of the little airlocks. It caused a grinding noise. Directly afterward, a small lump of compressed fish, boned, was ejected from an opening on the inside.
"Goddam' blue lobsters!" swore Harris. "Think they're doing me a favor!"
He let them wait a good five minutes before he decided that the prudent course was to accept the offering. Sneering, he walked over and picked up the food. There was usually little else provided. On days he had been too angry or too disgusted to accept the favors of sightseers, his keepers assumed that he was not hungry.
In the beginning, he had also had a most difficult time getting through to them his need for fresh water. That was when he had come to believe in the large, fish-like swimmer who had transmitted his thoughts to the sea-people. The fact that the latter could and did produce fresh water for him aroused his grudging respect, even though the taste was nothing to take lightly.
He juggled the lump of fish in one hand, causing the little Tridentian to twirl his eye-stalks in glee and swim up off the ocean bottom to look down through the top of the tank. The parent also wiggled his eye-stalks, more sedately. Harris suspected them of laughing, and turned his back.
Looking through the other side of his tank, he could see—to such distance as the murky light permitted—the parked vehicles of the Tridentians. Like a collection of small boats, they were of sundry sizes and shapes, depending perhaps upon each owner's fancy, perhaps on his skill. Harris did not know whether the Tridentians' craftsmanship extended to the level of having professional builders. At any rate, they were spread out like a small city. Among them were tent-like arrangements of nets to keep out swimming vermin. Other than that, the sea-people used no shelters.
They were smart enough to build a cage for me!he thought bitterly.What the hell is the matter with the Terran government, anyway? That Department of Interstellar Relations, or whatever they call it. Why can't they get me out of here? And where did Big Fish go now?
He saw several of the crustacean people approaching from the camping area. Shortly, no doubt, he would again be a center of mass attention, with cubes of compressed and stinking fish shooting at him from all the little airlocks. He snarled wordlessly.
The groups seemed to come at certain periods which he had been unable to define. He could only guess that they had choice times for hunting besides other work that had to be done to maintain the campsite and their jet-propelled craft.
I'd like to get one of them in here and boil him!thought Harris.Big Fish claims they don't taste good. I wonder. Anyway, it would shake them up!
He had long since given up thinking about what the sea-people could do to him if they chose. Their flushing the tank eighteen inches deep with sea water twice a day had soon given him an idea, especially as he had nowhere to go during the process. He no longer permitted himself to fall asleep anywhere near the inlet pipe.
He noticed that the dozen or so sightseers were edging around the end of the tank to join the first individual and his offspring. Looking up, Harris saw the reason. A long, dark shadow was curving down in an insolently deliberate dive. It was streamlined as a Terran shark and as long as the tank in which Harris lived. The flat line of its leading edge split into something very like a yawn, displaying astonishing upper and lower carpets of conical teeth. This was possible because the eyes, about eight Harris thought, were spaced in a ring about the head end of the long body.
They know I don't like to eat them, but I like to scare them a little.Big Fish thought to Harris.Look at them trying to smile at me!
Harris watched the Tridentians wiggling and waving their eye-stalks as the monster passed lazily over them and turned to come slowly back.
"I'd like to scare them a lot," said Harris, who had learned some time ago that he got through better just by forgetting telepathy and verbalizing. "Is the D.I.R. man still there?"
Which ... what you thought?inquired Big Fish.
"The other Terran, the one on the island."
The other air-breathing one is gone, the other Big Fish is feeding, as I have done just now, and it is not clear about the far Terran who lacks a Big Fish.
"All the bastards on both worlds are out to lunch," growled Harris, "and here I sit!"
You are in to lunch, agreed the monster.
The three eyes that bore upon the imprisoned man as the thinker swept past the tank had an intelligent alertness. Harris had come to imagine that he could detect expressions on Big Fish's limited features.
"You're the only friend I've got!" he exclaimed, slipping suddenly into self-pity. "I wish I could go with you."
Once you could, when you had your own tank.
"It was what we call a submarine," said Harris. "I was looking to see what was on the ocean floor. Tell me, is it all like this?"
Is it all like what? With blue lobsters?
Harris still retained enough sanity to realize that the Tridentians did not suggest Terran lobsters to this being who probably could not even imagine them. That was an automatic translation of thought furnished out of his own memory and name-calling.
"No," he said. "I mean is it all sand and mud with a few chasms here and there? Where do these crabs get their metals?"
There are different kinds of holes and hills. It is all mostly the same. You cannot swim in it anywhere, although there are little things that dig under the soft sand. Some of them are good to eat but you have to spit out a lot of sand. The crabs dig with machines sometimes, in big holes, but what they catch I do not know.
"Isn't there anything that catchesthem?" asked Harris bitterly.
No. They are big enough to catch other things, except a few. Things that are bigger than I am are not smart.
The monster made a pass along the ocean bed near the Tridentians, stirring up a cloud of sand and causing Harris's captor to shrink against the side of his tank. The Terran laughed heartily. He clapped the backs of his fists against his forehead above the eyes and wiggled his forefingers at the Tridentians on the other side of the clear barrier.
Even after the sand had settled, he ran back and forth along the side of his tank, making sure that every sightseer had opportunity to note his gesture. He had an idea that they did not like it much.
They do not like it at all, thought Big Fish.Some of them are asking for the man who lets the sea into your tank.
"Don't call it a man!" objected Harris, giving up his posturing. "I am a man."
What else can I call these men except men?asked the other.I do not understand why you want to be called a man. You are different.
"Forget it," said Harris. "It was just a figure of thought."
He felt like sitting down again, but decided against it in case the onlookers should succeed in obtaining the services of the tank attendant. He walked to the end of the tank, where he could stare into the greenish distance without looking at the Tridentian camp.
"I wish I were dead," he muttered. "They'll never get me out of here."
Behind him, he heard the plop-plop of food tidbits landing on the floor of the tank as the onlookers sought to regain his attention. They must have come out of their moment of pique if they were trying to coax him to amuse them further.
"If I could find a bone in those hunks of fish, I'd kill myself," said Harris.
The dark shape of Big Fish settled over the tank, cutting off what little light there was like a cloud. Harris looked up resentfully.
I do not understand you, thought the monster.That would be very foolish.
"What—trying to commit suicide with a fish bone?"
No matter how, it would be extremely foolish, for then you would be dead.
Harris could not think of anything to say. He could not even think of anything to think, obviously, since none of his chaotic, half-formed thoughts brought a response.
It would be as if you had been eaten, insisted his friend.
"All right, all right! I won't do it then, if that'll make you happy," exclaimed Harris.
It has no effect on how well I feed, Big Fish informed him.
It took Harris a minute, but he figured it out.
"So that's your philosophy!" he muttered to himself. "Now I know what it takes to make you happy. Something to eat!"
Where?inquired the monster.I do not see anyone I want to eat.
"Never mind!" said Harris. "Tell me more about the ocean bottom. Where there are big holes or cliffs, can you see ... uh ... stripes in the sides, layers of rock?"
Sometimes. Where it is deep enough. Other places there are things growing to the bottom. Only little fish that are not even good to eat do their feeding there. Sometimes the sea-people take away the growing things or dig holes.