He suddenly knew that. He knew why it was so. He could have explained it completely and precisely. But he didn't know how he knew. The items that added together were themselves so self evident that he didn't even wonder how he knew them. Theyhadto be so!
Cathy said muffledly, her face against his shoulder, "But we won't be alive in a couple of weeks, Lon. We can't live long past daybreak."
He did not answer. There were more ideas coming into his mind. He didn't know where they came from. But again they were such self evident, unquestionable facts that he did not wonder about them. He simply paid tense, desperately concentrated attention as they formed themselves.
"We—may live," he said shakily. "There's an ionosphere up at the top of the atmosphere here, just like there is on Earth. It's made by the sunlight ionizing the thin air. The—stronger sunlight will multiply the ionization. There'll be an—actually conducting layer of air.... Yes.... The air will become a conductor, up there." He wet his lips. "If I make a—gadget to—short-circuit that conducting layer to the ground here.... When radiation photons penetrate a transparent conductor—but there aren't any transparent conductors—the photons will—follow the three-finger rule....
"They'll move at right angles to their former course—"
He swallowed. Then he got up very quietly. He put her aside. He went to his tool shed. He climbed to the roof of the barn now filled withthanarleaves. He swung his axe.
The barn was roofed with aluminum over malleable plastic. The useful property of malleable plastic is that it does not yield to steady pressure, but does yield to shock. It will stay in shape indefinitely under a load, but one can tap it easily into any form one desires.
Lon swung his axe, head down. Presently he asked Cathy to climb up a ladder and hold a lantern for him. He didn't need light for the rough work—the burning desert vegetation gave enough for that. But when one wants to make a parabolic reflector by tapping with an axe, one needs light for the finer part of the job.
In Cetopolis, Carson agitatedly put his records on tape and sent it all off by spacegram. He'd previously reported on Lon Simpson, but now he knew that he was going to die. And he followed his instinct to transmit all his quite useless records, in order that his superiors might realize he had been an admirable employee. It did not occur to him that his superiors might be trying frantically to break his sending beam to demand that he find out how Lon Simpson made his power gadget and how he converted vegetation, before it was too late. They didn't succeed in breaking his beam, because Carson kept it busy.
He was true to type.
Elsewhere, other men were true to type, too. The human population of Cetis Gamma Two was very small. There were less than five thousand people on the planet—all within a hundred miles of Cetopolis, and all now on the night side. The rest of the planet's land masses scorched and shriveled and burst into flame where the sun struck them. The few small oceans heated and their surfaces even boiled. But nobody saw it. The local fauna and flora died over the space of continents.
But in the human settlement area, people acted according to their individual natures. Some few ran amok and tried to destroy everything—including themselves—before the blazing sun could return to do it. More sat in stunned silence, waiting for doom. A few dug desperately, trying to excavate caves or pits in which they or their wives or children could be safe....
But Lon pounded at his barn roof. He made a roughly parabolic mirror some three yards across. He stripped off aluminum siding and made a connection with the ground. He poured water around that connection. He built a crude multiply twisted device of copper wire and put it in the focus of the parabolic mirror.
He looked up at the sky. The stars seemed dimmer. He took the copper thing away, and they brightened a little. He carefully adjusted it until the stars were at their dimmest.
He descended to the ground again. He felt an odd incredulity about what he'd done. He didn't doubt that it would work. He was simply unable to understand how he'd thought of it.
"There, darling! Your pets are quite safe!" Rhadampsicus said pleasedly.
Nodalictha scanned the second planet. It was apparently coated with a metallic covering. But it was not quite like metal. It was misty, like an unsubstantial barrier to light—and to Nodalictha's penetrating thoughts.
"I had your male pet," Rhadampsicus explained tenderly, "set up a power beam link to the ionosphere. With several times the usual degree of ionization—because of the flaring sun—the grounded ionosphere became aRhinthakscreen about the planet. The more active the sun, the more dense the screen. They'll have light to see by when their side of the planet is toward the sun, but no harmful radiation can get down to them. And the screen will fade away as the sun goes back to its normal state."
Nodalictha rejoiced. Then she was a little distressed.
"But now I can't watch them!" she pouted. Rhadampsicus watched her gravely. She said ruefully, "I see, Rhadampsicus. You've spoiled me! But if I can't watch them for the time being, I won't have anything to occupy me. Darling Rhadampsicus, you must talk to me sometimes!"
He talked to her absorbedly. He seemed to think, however, that discussion of the local solar phenomena was conversation. With feminine guile, she pretended to be satisfied, but presently she went back to her housekeeping. She began to dream of their life when they had returned home, and of the residence they would inhabit there. Presently she was planning the parties she would give as a young matron, with canapés of krypton snow and zenon ice, with sprinklings of lovely red nickel bromide crystals for a garnish—
The sun rose again, and they lived. It was as if the sky were covered with a thick cloud bank which absorbed the monstrous radiation of a sun now four times its previous diameter and madly changing shape like a monstrous ameba of flame.
In time the sun set. It rose again. It set. And Cetis Gamma Two remained a living planet instead of being a scorched cinder.
When four days had gone by and nobody died, the colonists decided that they might actually keep on living. They had at first no especially logical foundation for their belief.
But Cathy boasted. And she boasted in Cetopolis. Since they were going to keep on living, the conventions required that she return to the planet's one human settlement and her duties as a beamphone operator. It wasn't proper for her to stay unchaperoned so long as she and Lon weren't married yet.
She had no difficulty with Carson. He didn't refer to her desertion. Carson had his own troubles. Now that he had decided that he would live, his problems multiplied. The colonists' barns were filled to capacity withthanarleaves which would pay off their debts to the Company. He began to worry about that.
Lost without the constant directives from the Company, he had his technicians step up the power in the settlement transmitter. He knew that the screen Lon had put up would stop ordinary spacegram transmission. Even with a tight beam, he could broadcast and receive only at night, when the screen was thinnest. Even so, he had to search out holes in the screen.
The system didn't work perfectly—it wasn't two-way at all, until the Company stepped up the power in its own transmitter—but spacegrams started to get through again.
Carson smiled in relief. He began to regain some of his old arrogantly bored manner. Now that the Company's guiding hand was once more with him, nothing seemed as bad as it had been. He was able to report that something had happened to save the colony from extinction, and that Lon Simpson had probably done it.
In return, he got a spacegram demanding full particulars, and precise information on the devices he had reported Lon Simpson to have made.
Humbly, Carson obeyed his corporation.
He pumped Cathy—which was not difficult, because she was bursting with pride in Lon. She confirmed, in detail, the rumor that Lon was somehow responsible for the protective screen that was keeping everybody alive.
Carson sent the information by spacegram. He was informed that a special Company ship was heading for Cetis Gamma Two at full speed. Carson would take orders from its skipper when it arrived. Meanwhile, he would buythanarleaf if absolutely necessary, but stall as long as possible. The legal staff of the Trading Company was working on the problem of adapting the system to get the new surplus supplies ofthanarwithout letting anybody get anything in particular for it. He would keep secret the coming of the special ship, which was actually the space yacht of a member of the Board of Directors. And he would display great friendliness toward Lon Simpson.
The last was the difficult part, because Lon Simpson was becoming difficult. With the sun writhing as if in agony overhead—seen dimly through a permanent blessed mistiness—and changing shape from hour to hour, Lon Simpson had discovered something new to get mad about. Lon had felt definitely on top of the world. He had solved the problem of clearing his debts and getting credit sufficient for two passages back to Earth, with money there to take care of getting rich on his inventions. There was no reason to delay marriage. He wanted to get married. And through a deplorable oversight, there had been no method devised by which a legal marriage ceremony could be performed on Cetis Gamma Two.
It was one of those accidental omissions which would presently be rectified. But the legal minds who'd set up the system for the planet had been thinking of money, not marriages. They hadn't envisioned connubial bliss as a service the Company should provide. And Lon was raising cain. His barn was literally bursting withthanarleaves, and he was filling up his attic, extra bedroom, living quarters and kitchen with more. He was rich. He wanted to get married. And it wasn't possible.
Lon was in a position to raise much more cain than ordinary. He'd made an amicable bargain with his fellow colonists. They brought truckloads of miscellaneous foliage to be put into his vegetation converter, and he converted it all intothanarleaves. The product was split two ways. Everybody was happy—except Carson—Because every colonist had already acquired enoughthanarleaf to pay himself out of debt, and was working on extra capital.
If this kept up, the galactic market would be broken.
Carson had nightmares about that.
So the sun went through convulsions in emptiness, and nobody on its second planet paid any attention at all. After about a week, it occasionally subsided. When that happened, the ionization of the planet's upper atmosphere lessened, the radiation screen grew thinner, and a larger proportion of light reached the surface. When the sun flared higher, the shield automatically grew thicker. An astronomical phenomenon which should have destroyed all life on the inner planets came to be taken for granted.
But events on the second planet were not without consequences elsewhere. The Board of Directors of the Cetis Gamma Trading Company simultaneously jittered and beamed with anticipation. If Lon could convert one form of vegetable product into another, then the Company's monopoly ofthanarwould vanish as soon as he got loose with his device. On the other hand, if the Company could get that device for its very own....
Thanarhad a practically unlimited market. Every year a new age group of the population needed a milligram a day to keep old age away. But besides that, there was Martianzussfiber, which couldn't be marketed because there wasn't enough of it, but would easily fetch a thousand credits a kilo if Lon's gadget could produce it from samples. There was that Arcturiansiccesdust—the pollen of an inordinately rare plant on Arcturus Four—which could be sold at more than its weight in diamonds, for perfume. And—
The directors of the Company shivered over what might happen; and gloated over what could. So they kept their fingers crossed while the space yacht of one of their number sped toward Cetis Gamma Two, manned by very trustworthy men who would carry out their instructions with care and vigor and no nonsense about it.
Lon Simpson worked with his neighbors, converting all sorts of vegetable debris—the fact that some of it was scorched did not seem to matter—intothanarleaf which was sound legal tender on that particular planet. From time to time he went to Cetopolis. He talked sentimentally and yearningly to Cathy. And then he went to Carson's office and raised the very devil because there was as yet no arrangement by which he and Cathy could enter into the state of holy matrimony.
Rhadampsicus looked over his notes and was very well pleased. He explained to Nodalictha that from now on the return of Cetis Gamma to its normal condition would be a cut-and-dried affair. He would like to stay and watch it, but the important phenomena were all over now. He said solicitously that if she wanted to go on, completing their nuptial journey.... She might be anxious to see her family and friends.... She might be lonely....
Nodalictha smiled at him. The process would have been horrifying to a human who watched, but Rhadampsicus smiled back.
"Lonely?" asked Nodalictha coyly. "With you, Rhadampsicus?"
He impulsively twined his eye stalks about hers. A little later he was saying tenderly, "Then I'll just finish my observations, darling, and we'll go on—since you don't mind waiting."
"I'd like to see my pets again," said Nodalictha, nestling comfortably against him.
Together, they scanned the second planet, but their thoughts could not penetrate itsRhinthakscreen. They saw the space yacht flash up to it. Rhadampsicus inspected the minds of the bipeds inside it. Nodalictha, of course, modestly refrained from entering the minds of male creatures other than her husband.
"Peculiar," commented Rhadampsicus. "Very peculiar. If I were a sociologist, I might find it less baffling. But they must have a very queer sort of social system. They actually intend to harm your pets, Nodalictha, because the male now knows how to supply them all with food and energy! Isn't that strange? I wish theRhinthakscreen did not block off scanning.... But it will fade, presently."
"You will keep the others from harming my pets," said Nodalictha confidently. "Do you know, darling, I think I must be quite the luckiest person in the Galaxy, to be married to you."
The space yacht landed at the field outside Cetopolis. Inhabitants of the tiny town flocked to the field to see new faces. They were disappointed. One man came out and the airlock closed. No visitors.
The skipper went into Carson's office. He closed the door firmly behind him. He had very beady eyes and a very hard-boiled expression. He looked at Carson with open contempt, and Carson felt that it was because Carson did the Company's dirty work with figures and due regard for law and order, instead of frankly and violently and without shilly-shallying.
"This Lon Simpson's got those gadgets, eh?" asked the skipper.
"Why—yes," said Carson unhappily. "He's very popular at the moment. He made something on his barn roof that kept the sun from burning us all to death, you know—that still keeps us from burning to death, for that matter."
"So if we take it away or smash it," observed the skipper, "we don't have to worry about anybody saying nasty things about us afterward. Yeah?"
Carson swallowed.
"Everybody'd die if you smashed the gadget," he admitted, "but all thethanarplants in existence would be burned up, too. There'd be no morethanar. The Company wouldn't like that."
The skipper waved his hand. "How do I get this Simpson on my ship? Take a bunch of my men and go grab him?"
"Wh-what are you going to do with him?"
"Don't you worry," said the skipper comfortingly. "We know how to handle it. He knows how to make some things the bosses want to know how to make. Once I get him on the ship, he'll tell. We got ways. Do I take some men and grab him, or will you get him on board peaceable?"
"There—ah—" Carson licked his lips. "He wants to get married. There's no provision in the legal code for it, as yet. It was overlooked. But I can tell him that as a ship captain, you—"
The skipper nodded matter of factly.
"Right. You get him and the girl on board. And I've got some orders for you. Gather up plenty ofthanarseed. Get some starting trays with young plants in them. I'll come back in a couple of days and take you and them on board. The stuff this guy has got is too good, understand?"
"N-no. I'm afraid I don't."
"I get this guy to tell us how to make his gadgets," the skipper explained contemptuously. "We make sure he tells us right. To be extra sure, we leave the gadgets he's got made and working back here, where he can't get to 'em and spoil 'em. But when we know all he knows—and what he only guesses, too, and my tame scientists have made the same kinda gadgets, an' they work—why, we come back and pick you up, and thethanarseed and the young growing plants. Then we get the gadgets this guy made here, and we head back for Earth."
"But if you take the gadget that keeps us all from being burned up—" Carson said agitatedly, "if you do, everybody here—"
"Won't that be too bad!" the skipper said ironically. "But you won't be here. You'll be on the yacht. Don't worry. Now go fix it for the girl and him to walk into our parlor."
Carson's hand shook as he reached for the beamphone. His voice was not quite normal as he explained to Cathy in the exchange that the skipper of the space yacht had the legal power to perform marriage ceremonies in space. And Carson, as a gesture of friendship to one of the most prominent colonists, had asked if the captain would oblige Cathy and Lon. The captain had agreed. If they made haste, he would take them out in space and marry them.
The skipper of the space yacht regarded him with undisguised scorn when he hung up the phone and mopped his face.
"Pretty girl, eh?" he asked contemptuously, "and you didn't have the nerve to grab her for yourself?" He did not wait for an answer. "I'll look her over. You get your stuff ready for when I come back in a couple of days."
"But—when you release them," Carson said shakily, "They'll report—"
The skipper looked at Carson without any expression at all. Then he went out.
Carson felt sick. But he was a very loyal employee of the Cetis Gamma Trading Company. From the windows of his air-conditioned office, he watched Lon Simpson greet Cathy on his arrival in Cetopolis. He saw Cathy put a sprig ofchanelblossoms on the lapel of her very best suit, in lieu of a bridal bouquet. And he watched them go with shining faces toward the airport. He didn't try to stop them.
Later he heard the space yacht take off.
Nodalictha prepared to share the thoughts and the happiness of the female biped whose emotions were familiar, since Nodalictha was so recently a bride herself. Rhadampsicus was making notes, but he gallantly ceased when Nodalictha called to him. They sat, then, before their crude but comfortable bower on the ninth planet, all set to share the quaint rejoicing of the creatures of which Nodalictha had grown fond.
Nodalictha penetrated the thoughts of the female, in pleased anticipation. Rhadampsicus scanned the mind of the male, and his expression changed. He shifted his thought to another and another of the bipeds in the ship's company. He spoke with some distaste.
"The ones you consider your pets, Nodalictha, are amiable enough. But the others—" He frowned. "Really, darling, if you went into their minds, you'd be most displeased. They are quite repulsive. Let's forget about them and start for home. If you really care for pets, we've much more suitable creatures there."
Nodalictha pouted.
"Rhadampsicus, let's just watch their marriage ceremony. It is so cute to think of little creatures like that loving each other—and marrying—"
Rhadampsicus withdrew his thought from the space yacht and looked about the charming rural retreat he and Nodalictha had occupied. Its nitrogen-snow walls glittered in the starlight. The garden of cyanogen flowers and the border of ammonia crystals and the walkway of monoclinic sulphur, and the reflection pool of liquid hydrogen he'd installed in an odd half hour. These were simple, but they were delightful. The crudity of the space yacht with its metal walls so curiously covered over with a coating of lead oxide in hardened oil, and the vegetable gum flooring.... Rhadampsicus did not like the surroundings men made for themselves in space.
"Very well, darling," he said resignedly. "We will watch, and then we'll take off for home. I'm anxious to see what the modernists have to say when I show them my notes on this flare-up.—And of course," he added with grave humor, "you want to show your family that I haven't ill-treated you."
He was the barest trace impatient, but Nodalictha's thoughts were with the female biped in the spaceship. Her expression was distressed.
"Rhadampsicus!" she said angrily. "The other bipeds are being unkind to my pets! Do something! I don't like them!"
A sailor in a soiled uniform led them into the space yacht's saloon. The airlock clanked shut, and the yacht soared for the skies. The sailor vanished. Nobody else came near. Then Lon stiffened. He got the flavor of his surroundings. He had Cathy with him. On her account, his flesh crawled suddenly.
This was a space yacht, but of a very special kind. It was a pleasure ship. The decorations were subtly disgusting. There were pictures on the walls, and at first glance they were pretty enough, but on second glance they were disquieting, and when carefully examined they were elaborately and allusively monstrous. This was the yacht of someone denying that anything could be more desirable than pleasure—and who took his pleasure in a most unattractive fashion.
Lon grasped this much, and it occurred to him that the crew of such a yacht would be chosen for its willingness to coöperate in its owner's enterprises. And Lon went somewhat pale, for Cathy was with him.
The ship went up and up, with the dark shutters over the ports showing that it was in sunshine fierce enough to be dangerous on unshielded flesh. Presently there was the feel of maneuvering. After a time the shutters flipped open and stars were visible.
Lon went quickly to a port and looked out. The great black mass of the night side of Cetis Gamma Two filled half the firmament. It blotted out the sun. The space yacht might be two or three thousand miles up and in the planet's umbra—its shadow—which was not necessary for a space wedding, or for anything involving a reasonably brief stay in the excessive heat Cetis Gamma gave off.
There were clankings. A door opened. The skipper came in and Cathy smiled at him because she didn't realize Lon's fierce apprehension. Four other men followed, all in soiled and untidy space yacht uniforms, then two other men in more ordinary clothing. Their expressions were distinctly uneasy.
The four sailors walked matter of factly over to Lon and grabbed at him. They should have taken him completely by surprise, but he had been warned just enough to explode into battle. It was a very pretty fight, for a time. Lon kept three of them busy. One snarled with a wrenched wrist, another spat blood and teeth and a third had a closed eye before the fourth swung a chair. Then Lon hit something with his head. It was the deck, but he didn't know it.
When he came to, he was hobbled. He was not bound so he couldn't move, but his hands were handcuffed together, with six inches of chain between for play. His ankles were similarly restricted. He could move, but he could not fight. Blood was trickling down his temple and somebody was holding his head up.
The skipper said impatiently, "All right, stand back."
Lon's head was released. The skipper jerked a thumb. Men went out. Lon looked about desperately for Cathy. She was there—dead white and terrified, but apparently unharmed. She stared at Lon in wordless pleading.
"You're a suspicious guy, aren't you?" asked the skipper sardonically. "Somebody lays a finger on you and you start fighting. But you've got the idea. I'll say it plain so we can get moving. You're Lon Simpson. Carson, down on the planet, reported some nice news about you. You made a gadget that converts any sort of leaf tothanar. Maybe it turns stuff to other stuff, too." He paused. "We want to know how to make gadgets like that. You're gonna draw plans an' explain the theory. I got guys here to listen. We're gonna make one, from your plans an' explanations, an' it'd better work. See?"
"Carson sent for you to do this," Lon Simpson said thickly.
"He did. The Company wants it. They'll use it to makezussfiber and sicces dust, and stuff like that. Maybe dream dust, too, an' so on. The point is you're gonna tell us how to make those gadgets. How about it?"
Lon licked his lips. He said slowly, "I think there's more. Go on."
"You made another gadget," said the skipper, with relish, "that turns out power without fuel. The Company wants that, too. Spacelines will pay for it. Cities will pay for it. It ought to be a pretty nice thing. You're gonna make plans and explanations of how that works and we're gonna make sure they're right. That clear?"
"Will you let us go when I've told you?" Lon asked bitterly.
"Not without one more gadget," the skipper added amiably. "You made something that put a screen around the planet yonder, so it didn't get burned up. It'd oughta be useful. The company'll put one around Mercury. Convenient for minin' operations. One around that planet that's too close to Sirius. Oh, there's plenty of places that'll be useful. So you'll get set to draw up the plans for that, too—andexplanations of how it works. Then we'll talk about lettin' you go."
Lon knew that he wouldn't be let go in any case. Not after he'd told them what was wanted. Not by men who'd work on a pleasure craft like this. Not with Cathy a prisoner with him. But he might as well get all the cards down.
"And if I won't tell you what you want to know?" he asked.
The skipper shrugged his shoulders. "You were knocked out a while," he said without heat. "While we were waitin' for you to come to, we told her—" he jerked his thumb at Cathy—"what would happen to her if you weren't obligin'. We told her plenty. She knows we mean it. We won't hurt you until we've finished with her. So you'd better get set to talk. I'll let her see if she can persuade you peaceable. I'll give her ten minutes."
He went out. The door clicked shut behind him and Lon knew that this was the finish. He looked at Cathy's dazed, horror-filled eyes. He knew this wasn't a bluff. He was up against the same system that had brought colonists to Cetis Gamma Two. The brains that had planned that system had planned this. They'd gotten completely qualified men to do their dirty work in both cases.
"Lon, darling! Please kill me!" Cathy said in a hoarse whisper.
He looked at her in astonishment.
"Please kill me!" repeated Cathy desperately. "They—they can't ever dare let us go, Lon, after what they've told me! They've got to kill us both. But—Lon, darling—please kill me first...."
An idea came into Lon's mind. He surveyed it worriedly. He knew that he would have to tell what he knew and then he would be killed. The Cetis Gamma Trading Company wanted his inventions, and it would need him dead after it had them.
The idea was hopeless, but he had to try it. They knew he'd made gadgets which did remarkable things. If he made something now and persuaded them that it was a weapon....
His flesh crawled with horror. Not for himself, but for Cathy. He fumbled in his pockets. A pocket knife. A key chain. String. His face was completely gray. He ripped an upholstered seat. There were coiled springs under the foamite. He pulled away a piece of decorative molding. He knew it wouldn't work, but there wasn't anything else to do. His hands moved awkwardly, with the handcuffs limiting their movements.
Time passed. He had something finished. It was a bit of wood with a coil spring from the chair, with his key chain wrapped around it and his pocket knife set in it so that the blade would seem to make a contact. But it would achieve nothing whatever.
Cathy stared at him. Her eyes were desperate, but she believed. She'd seen three equally improbable devices perform wonders. While Lon made something that looked like the nightmare of an ultimatist sculptor, she watched in terrified hope.
He had it in his hand when the door opened again and the skipper came back into the saloon. He said prosaically, "Shall I call in the scientist guys to listen, or the persuader guys to work on her?"
"Neither. I've made another gadget," Lon said from a dry throat. "It will kill you. It'll kill everybody on the ship—from here. You're going to put us back down on the planet below."
The skipper did not look at the gadget, but at Lon's face. Then he called. The four men of the crew and the two uneasy scientists came in.
"We got to persuade," the skipper said sardonically. "He just told me he's made a new gadget that'll kill us all."
He moved unhurriedly toward Lon. Lon knew that his bluff was no good. If the thing had actually been a weapon, he'd have been confident and assured. He didn't feel that way, but he raised the thing menacingly as the skipper approached.
The skipper took it away, laughing.
"We'll tie him in a chair an' get to work on her. When he's ready to talk, we'll stop." He looked at the object in his hands. It was ridiculous to look at. It was as absurd as the device that extracted power from matter stresses, and the machine that converted one kind of vegetation into another, and the apparatus—partly barn roof—that had short-circuited the ionosphere of Cetis Gamma Two to the planet's solid surface. It looked very foolish indeed.
The skipper was amused.
"Look out, you fellas," he said humorously. "It's gonna kill you!"
He crooked his finger and the knifeblade made a contact. He swept it in mock menace about the saloon. The four crew-members and the two scientists went stiff. He gaped at them, then turned the device to stare at it incredulously. He came within its range.
He stiffened. Off-balance, he fell on the device, breaking its gimcrack fastenings and the contact which transmitted nothing that Lon Simpson could imagine coming out of it. The others fell, one by one, with peculiarly solid impacts.
Their flesh was incredibly hard. It was as solid, in fact, as so much mahogany.
Nodalictha said warmly, "You're a darling, Rhadampsicus! It was outrageous of those nasty creatures to intend to harm my pets! I'm glad you attended to them!"
"And I'm glad you're pleased, my dear," Rhadampsicus said pleasantly. "Now shall we set out for home?"
Nodalictha looked about the cosy landscape of the ninth planet of Cetis Gamma. There were jagged peaks of frozen air, and mountain ranges of water, solidified ten thousand aeons ago. There were frost-trees of nitrogen, the elaborate crystal formations of argon, and here a wide sweep of oxygen crystal sward, with tiny peeping wild crystals of deep-blue cyanogen seeming to grow more thickly by the brook of liquid hydrogen. And there was their bower; primitive, but the scene of a true honeymoon idyll.
"I almost hate to go home, Rhadampsicus," Nodalictha said. "We've been so happy here. Will you remember it for always?"
"Naturally," said Rhadampsicus. "I'm glad you've been happy."
Nodalictha snuggled up to him and twined eye stalks with him.
"Darling," she said softly, "you've been wonderful, and I've been spoiled, and you've let me be. But I'm going to be a very dutiful wife from now on, Rhadampsicus. Only it has been fun, having you be so nice to me!"
"It's been fun for me, too," replied Rhadampsicus gallantly.
Nodalictha took a last glance around, and each of her sixteen eyes glowed sentimentally. Then she scanned the far-distant spaceship in the shadow of the second planet from the now subsiding sun.
"My pets," she said tenderly. "But—Rhadampsicus, what are they doing?"
"They've discovered that the crew of their vehicle—they call it a space yacht—aren't dead, that they're only in suspended animation. And they've decided in some uneasiness that they'd better take them back to Earth to be revived."
"How nice! I knew they were sweet little creatures!"
Rhadampsicus hesitated a moment.
"From the male's mind I gather something else. Since the crew of this space yacht was incapacitated, and they were—ah—not employed on it, he and your female will bring it safely to port, and, I gather that they have a claim to great reward. Ah—it is something they call 'salvage.' He plans to use it to secure other rewards he calls 'patents' and they expect to live happily ever after."
"And," cried Nodalictha gleefully, "from the female's mind I know that she is very proud of him, because she doesn't know that you designed all the instruments he made, darling. She's speaking to him now, telling him she loves him very dearly."
Then Nodalictha blushed a little, because in a faraway space yacht Cathy had kissed Lon Simpson. The process seemed highly indecorous to Nodalictha, so recently a bride.
"Yes," said Rhadampsicus, drily. "He is returning the compliment. It is quaint to think of such small creatures—Ha! Nodalictha, you should be pleased again. He is telling her that they will be married when they reach Earth, and that she shall have a white dress and a veil and a train. But I am afraid we cannot follow to witness the ceremony."
Their tentacles linked and their positron blasts mingling, the two of them soared up from the surface of the ninth planet of Cetis Gamma. They swept away, headed for their home at the extreme outer tip of the most far-flung arm of the spiral outposts of the Galaxy.
"But still," said Nodalictha, as they swept through emptiness at a speed unimaginable to humans, "they're wonderfully cute."
"Yes, darling," Rhadampsicus agreed, unwilling to start an argument so soon after the wedding. "But not as cute as you."
On the space yacht, Lon Simpson tried to use his genius to invent a way to get his handcuffs and leg-irons off. He failed completely.
Cathy had to get the keys out of the skipper's pocket and unlock them for him.