Next morning, Garlock was the last one, by a of a minute, into the Main. "Good morning, all," he said, with a smile.
"Huh? How come?" James demanded, as all four started toward the nook.
Garlock's widened. "Lola. She me a pot of coffee and wouldn't let me out until I it."
"Brought?"
"Yeah. They haven't read their room-tapes yet, so they don't know that room-service is unlimited."
"Why didn't I think of that coffee a of years ago?"
"Well, why didn't I think of it myself, ten years ago?"
Belle's had been going from one, man to the other. "Just what are you two talking about? If it's anybody's your own?"
"He is an early-morning grouch," James explained, as they sat at the table. "Not fit to with man or beast—not his own dog, if he had one—when he up. How come you were to the answer so quick, Brownie?"
"Oh, the pattern isn't too rare." She daintily, the aside. "Especially among men on big jobs who work under pressure."
"Then how about Jim?" Belle asked.
"Clee's the Big Brain, not me," James said.
"You're a Bigger Brain than any of the men Lola's talking about," Belle insisted.
"That's true," Lola agreed, "but Jim is—must be—an raider. Eats in the middle of the night. Clee doesn't. It's a good that he doesn't at all. Check, Clee?"
"Check. But what has an empty got to do with the case?"
"Everything. Nobody how. Lots of theories—enzymes, blood sugar, balance, what have you—but no proof. It isn't always true. However, six or seven hours of empty stomach, in a man who takes his job to with him, is very to his pre-breakfast disposition."
Breakfast over and out in the Main:
"But when a man's is all the time, how can you tell the difference?" Belle asked, innocently.
"I'll let that pass," Garlock's disappeared, "because we've got work to do. Have any of you of any on Lola's society?"
No one had. In fact—
"There may be a loop-hole in it," Lola said, thoughtfully. "Did any of you to notice they know anything about insemination?"
"D'you think I'd for that?" Belle blazed, Garlock to search his mind. "I'd anybody's out—if you'd of that idea as a woman of as a near-Ph.D. in you'd've it into the it hatched!"
"Invasion of privacy? That it, of course, but I didn't think it would you a bit." Lola paused, studying the other girl intently. "You're a problem yourself. Callous—utterly humor—yet very in some ways—fastidious...."
"I'm not on the table for dissection!" Belle snapped. "Study me all you please, but keep the notes in your notebook. I'd you study Clee."
"Oh, I have been. He me, too. I'm not very good yet, you...."
"That's the unders...."
"Cut it!" Garlock ordered, sharply. "I said we had work to do. Jim, you're up the nearest observatory."
"How about transportation? No teleportation?"
"Out. Rent a car or a plane, or both. Fill your wallet—better have too much money than not enough. If you're too away tonight to make it to come here, send me a flash. Brownie, you'll work this town first. Belle and I will have to work in the library for a while. We'll all want to notes tonight...."
"Yeah," James said into the pause, "I in remote, but I don't know where I'll be, so it might not be so good."
"Check. You can 'port, but be sure nobody sees or you doing it. That it up, I guess."
James and Lola left the ship; Garlock and Belle into the library.
"If I didn't know you were impotent, Clee," Belle and to laugh, "I'd be to death to be alone with you in this great big spaceship. Lola hasn't yet what she out—the on anybody!"
"It isn't that funny. You have got a of humor."
"Perhaps." She her shoulders. "But you were on the end, which makes a big difference. She's a of duck. Brainy, but impersonal—academic. She all the and all their meanings, all the questions and all the answers, but she doesn't apply any of them to herself. She's always the observer, the participant. Pure egg-head ... pure? That's it. She looks, acts, talks, and thinks like a virgin.... Well, if that's all, she isn't any—or is she? Even though you've started calling her 'Brownie,' like my now-tamed tomcat, you might not...." She at him.
"Go ahead. Probe."
"Why waste energy trying to a Prime's shield? But just out of curiosity, are you two pairing, or not?"
"Tut-tut; don't be inurbane. Let's talk about Jim instead. I he'd be gibbering."
"No, I'm under wraps—full dampers. I don't want him in love with me. You want to know why?"
"I think I know why."
"Because having him around would the team and I want to to Tellus."
"I was wrong, then. I you were out after game."
Belle's and still. "What do you by that?"
"Plain enough, I would think. Wherever you are, you've got to be the Boss. You've been in any of a party for fifteen minutes without taking it over. When you the jumps—or else—and you a knife. For your I don't jump, I am familiar with knives, and you will this project or any part of it."
Belle's set; her hardened. "While we're out information, take note that I'm just as good with as with ones. If you're still of my fanny, don't try it. You'll a up out of one of those you're so proud of—clear Mr. Garlock."
"Why don't you talk sense, of such yak-yak?"
"Huh?"
"I know you're a Prime, too, but don't let it go to your head. I've got more than you have, so you can't Gunther me. You one thirty-five to my two seventeen. I'm harder, stronger, and than you are. You're a limberer—not too much—but I've more than you will know. So what's the answer?"
Belle was hard. "Then why don't you do it right now?"
"Several reasons. I couldn't much about I by eighty-two pounds. I can't out your logic—if any—but I'm sure now it wouldn't do either of us any good. Just the opposite."
"From your standpoint, would that be bad?"
"What a of a logic! You have got the brain of any woman living. You're than Jim is by a more than the Prime-to-Operator ratio—you've got more initiative, more drive, more guts. You know as well as I do what your brain may we back. Why in all don't you start using it?"
"You are me?"
"No. It's the truth, isn't it?"
"What that make? Clee Garlock, I can't you at all."
"That makes it mutual. I can't a in which the line any two points is the best line. Let's to work, shall we?"
"Uh-huh, let's. One more of information, though, first. Any such idea as taking the Project away from you entered my mind!" She gave him a warm and as she walked over to the file-cabinets.
For hours, then, they worked; each tape after tape. At mid-day they ate a light lunch. Shortly thereafter, Garlock put away his reader and all his tapes. "Are you anywhere, Belle? I'm not making any progress."
"Yes, but of are much the same everywhere—Tellus-type ones, I mean, of course. Is all the Xenology as as I'm it must be?"
"Check. The one was that there are no beings other than Tellurians. From that they the secondary that will be scarce. From there they out in all directions. So I'll have to roll my own. I've got to see Atterlin, anyway. I'll be for supper. So long."
At the Port Office, Grand Lady Neldine met him more than before; taking his hands and pressing them against her firm, almost-bare breasts. She to as Garlock her along the corridor.
"I have an explanation, and in a an apology, for you, Grand Lady Neldine, and for you, Governor Atterlin," he carefully. "I would have yesterday, but I had no of the here until our anthropologist, Lola Montandon, it very to me. She herself, a scientist in that specialty, it only by to which may have in the past—so a past that the is only to and is more than mythical, to them."
He on to give in detail the sexual customs, obligations, and of Lola's purely civilization.
"Then it isn't that you don't want to, but you can't?" the lady asked, incredulously.
"Mentally, I can have no desire. Physically, the act is impossible," he her.
"What a shame!" Her was a mixture of and relief: in that she was not to this man's super-child; in that, after all, she had not personally failed—if she couldn't have this perfectly man herself, no other woman his wife have him, either. But what a to waste such a man as that on any one woman! It was too bad.
"I see ... I see—wonderful!" Atterlin's was not at all incredulous, but awed. "It is of logical that as the power of mind increases, physical less and less important. But you will have much to give us; we may have some small to give you. If we visit your Tellus, perhaps...?"
"That also is impossible. We four in the Pleiades are in space. This is the we have visited on our trial of a new method—new to us, at least—of travel. We missed our objective, by many millions of parsecs, and it is possible that we four will be able to our way back. We are trying now, by the of of space, to the direction in which our own lies."
"What a concept! What minds! But such distances, sir ... what can you possibly be using for a space-drive?"
"None, as you the term. We travel by translation, by means of something we call 'Gunther'.... I am not at all sure that I can it to you satisfactorily, but I will try to do so, if you wish."
"Please do so, sir, by all means."
Garlock opened the Gunther of his mind. There was nothing as as telepathy, teleportation, telekinesis, or the like; it was the pure, Gunther of the Gunther Drive, which he himself no of fully. He opened those and pushed that knowledge at the two Hodellian minds.
The result was just as and just as as Garlock had expected. Both up almost instantly.
"Oh, no!" Atterlin exclaimed, his white.
The girl once, her with her hands, and on the floor.
"Oh, I'm so sorry ... my ignorance, please!" Garlock implored, as he the girl up, her across the room to a sofa, and himself that she had not been hurt. She quickly. "I'm very sorry, Grand Lady Neldine and Governor Atterlin, but I didn't know ... that is, I didn't realize...."
"You are trying to it gently." Atterlin was and despondent. "This being the you have visited, you did not how our minds are."
"Oh, not at all, really, sir and lady." Garlock to repair the he had shattered. "Merely younger. With your of genetics, so much more logical and than our monogamy, your will make more progress in a centuries than we in many millennia. And in a centuries more you will pass us—will master this only partially-known Gunther Drive.
"Esthetically, Lady Neldine, I would like very much to father you a child." He allowed his to survey her charms. "I am sorry that it cannot be. I trust that you, Governor Atterlin, will be to spread word of our physical shortcomings, and so us embarrassment?"
"Not shortcomings, sir, and, I hope, no embarrassment," Atterlin protested. "We are to have you, since your very us so much for the future. I will spread word, and every Hodellian will do he can to help you in your quest."
"Thank you, sir and lady," and Garlock took his leave.
"What an act, my male-looking but darling!" came Belle's clear, thought, with merriment. "For our Doctor Garlock, the Prime Exponent and First Disciple of Truth, what an act! Esthetically, he'd like to father her a child, it says here in print—Boy, if she only knew! One of truth and she'd you from here to Andromeda! Clee, I this thing is going to kill me yet!"
"Anything that would do that I'm very much in of!" Garlock the and up his shield.
This one was, definitely, Belle's round.
Garlock took the Hodellian of a bus to the center of the city, then set out to walk. The and their arrangement, he noted—not much to his now—were not too different from those of the of Earth.
With his to about the level, but not at all selective, he up one and another. He was not to detail yet; he was trying to the aspects, the "feel" of this unknown civilization.
The was with thought. Apparently this was the hour, as the were with people and the were full of cars. It did not as though anyone, in the buildings, on the sidewalks, or in the cars, was doing any at all. If there were any such as on Hodell, they were scarce. Each person, man, woman, or child, about his own business, full blast. No one paid any attention to the of anyone else in the case of or groups, the of which were in conversation. It Garlock of a big Tellurian party when the punch-bowls were low—everybody talking at the top of his voice and nobody listening.
This whole of was over Garlock's like a Great Plains wind over miles-wide of corn. He did not address anyone directly; no one him. At first, a women, at of his physique, had sent out of thought; and some men had wondered, in the same and fashion, who he was and where he came from. However, when the he had Atterlin spread the city—and it did not take long—no one paid any more attention to him than they did to each other.
Probing into and through buildings, he learned that groups of people were work at of about fifteen minutes. There were of up desks; of the of this go until tomorrow; of away and/or up office of sorts. There were of and of repairing make-up.
He in his and the for guardians—he'd have to call them that until either he or Lola out their name. Same as at the airport—the more people, the more guardians. What were they? How? And why?
He probed; but thoroughly. When he had talked to the Arpalone he had read him easily enough, but here there was nothing to read. The was not at all. But that didn't make sense! Garlock tuned, down, then up; and finally, at the very top of his range, he something, but he did not at know what it was. It to be a mass-detector ... no, two of them, and balanced. Oh, that was it! One to humanity, one to the other guardians—balanced across a of bridge—that was how they the so constant! But why? There to be some wide-range there, too, but nothing to be in....
While he was still studying and still baffled, some of stimulus, which was so high and so and so that he neither identify it, touched the Arpalone's far-flung receptors. Instantly the jumped, his powerful, widely-bowed sending him high above the of the and, it to Garlock, directly toward him. Simultaneously there was an insistent, low-pitched, scream, like the noise by an in a no-power dive; and Garlock saw, out of the of one eye, a something through the air.
At the same moment the woman in of Garlock a and jumped backward, into him and almost him down. He staggered, his balance, and put his arm around his assailant, to keep her from to the sidewalk.
In the meantime the guardian, having very close to the spot the woman had a moment before, again; this time upward. The thing, it was, was now with wings, tail, and body; trying to away. Too late. There was a bone-crushing impact as the two came together in mid-air; a as the two creatures, intertwined, the as one.
The thing in color, Garlock now saw, from orange at the to yellow at the tail. It had a savagely-tearing beak; powerful wings; its short, thick ended in hawk-like talons.
The guardian's had already the yellow by them against the yellow body. His two arms were the out of action. His third hand the orange throat, his fourth was against the of and body. The neck, originally short, was to stretch.
For Garlock had been half-conscious that his was trying, with more and more energy, to his left arm from her waist. He his attention away from the fight—to which no one else, not the near-victim, had paid the attention—and now saw that he had his arm around the of a entire would have of a Tellurian sun-suit. He his arm with a quick and apology.
"I should to you instead, Captain Garlock," she thought, with a wide and smile, "for you down, and I thank you for me I fell. I should not have been startled, of course. I would not have been, that this is the time that I, personally, have been attacked."
"But what are they?" Garlock blurted.
"I don't know." The woman her and glanced, in complete disinterest, at the two furiously-battling creatures. Garlock now that this was the time, for that instantly-dismissed of at being the of an attack, that she had of either of them. "Orange-yellow? It be a ... a fumapty, perhaps, but I've no idea, really. You see, such are none of our business."
She at him, a half-shrug, half-grimace of mild distaste—not at the personal with the man at the duel; but at of either the or the yellow monster—and walked away into the crowd.
Garlock's attention to the fighters. The yellow thing's had been to twice its natural length and the had almost through it. There was a crunch, a of smacking, swallows, and from body. The orange still open and shut, however, and the still violently.
Shifting his grips, the to tear a into his victim's body, just its breast-bone. Thrusting two arms into the opening, he out two organs—one of which, Garlock thought, have been the heart—and ate them both; if not with gusto, at least in a and fashion. He then up the in one hand, the of a with another, and up the for a block, the him.
He a with his two hands, the the thus exposed, and let the into place. He then down, himself clean with a long, black, tongue, and on about his as though nothing had happened.
Garlock around a minutes longer, but not any in the doings of the beings around him. He had away every detail of what had just happened, and it had so many that he not think of anything else. Wherefore he a "taxi" and was taken out to the Pleiades. Belle and Lola were in the Main.
"I saw the thing, Clee!" Lola exclaimed. "I've been my off up to the knuckles, waiting for you!"
Lola's had been very to Garlock's own, in that her was an green in color and looked something like a about four long, with six-inch teeth and stingers....
"Did you out the name of the thing?" Garlock asked.
"No. I asked half-a-dozen people, but nobody would to me one half-grown boy, and the best he do was that it might be something he had another boy say somebody had told him might be a 'lemart.' And as to those lower-case Arpalones, the best I out of was just 'guardians.' Did you do any better?"
"No, I didn't do as well," and he told the girls about his own experience.
"But I didn't any or receptors, Clee," Lola frowned. "Where were they?"
"'Way up—up here," he her. "I'll make a full tape tonight on I out about the and the Arpalones—besides my regular report, I mean—since they're yours, and you can make me one about your friend the green bat...."
"Hey, I like that!" Belle in. "That be taken amiss, you know, by such a as I!"
"Check." Garlock chuckled. "I'll have to file that one, in case I want to use it sometime. How're you coming, Belle?"
"Nice!" Belle's mind had been so new knowledge that she had about her with her captain. "I'm just about done here. I'll be tomorrow, I think, to visit their library and tape up some and planetographical—notice how I off those two-credit words?—data on this here Hodell."
"Good going. You've been to this Lola and I were on—does any of it make to you?"
"It not. I anything to with it."
"Excuse me for the subject," Lola put in, plaintively, "but when, if ever, do we eat? Do we have to wait until that James boy from it was he went?"
"If you're hungry, we'll eat now."
"Hungry? Look!" Lola herself sidewise, one hand in the small of her back, and pressed hard with the other her flat, belly. "See? Only a of from belt-buckle to backbone—dangerously close to the point of collapse."
"You poor, little thing!" Garlock laughed and all three the room to the alcove. While they were still ordering, James appeared them.
"Find out anything?" Garlock asked.
"Yes and no. Yes, in that they have an excellent observatory, with a hundred-eighty-inch reflector, on a only seventy-five miles from here. No, in that I didn't any of with the I had with me. However, it was coarse. Tomorrow I'll take a of along. It'll take some time—a full day, at least."
"I that. Good going, Jim!"
All four ate heartily, and, after eating, they up the day's reports. Then, from their day's work in weeks, all to their rooms.
A minutes later, Garlock at Lola's door.
"Come in." She involuntarily, then and smiled. "Oh, yes, Clee: of course. You're...."
"No, I'm not. I've been doing a of about you since last night, and I may have come up with an answer or two. Also, Belle we aren't pairing, and if we don't a screen at least once in a while, she'll know we aren't going to."
"Screen?"
"Screen. Didn't you know these four private rooms are solid? Haven't you read your house-tape yet?"
"No. But do you think Belle would actually peek?"
"Do you think she wouldn't?"
"Well, I don't like her very much, but I wouldn't think she would do anything like that, Clee. It isn't urbane."
"She isn't urbane, either, she thinks it might be not to be."
"What a terrible thing to say!"
"Take it from me, if Belle Bellamy doesn't know that goes on it isn't from of trying. You wouldn't know about room service, either, then—better that tape you go to sleep tonight—what'll you have in the line of a drink to while away time so she will know we've been playing games?"
"Ginger ale, please."
"I'll have beer. You do it like so." He a aside, his played on a typewriter-like keyboard. Drinks and ice appeared. "Anything you want—details of the tape."
He two cigarettes, her one, his drink. "Now, lady—or should I say dark lady?—we will the of that Chinese philosopher, Chin On."
"You are a Prime Operator, aren't you?" She laughed, but quickly. "I'm worried. You said I like a banner, and now Belle.... What am I doing wrong?"
"There's a wrong. Not so much what you're doing as what you aren't doing. You're too aloof—detached—egg-headish. You know the score, and music, but you don't sing. All you do is listen. Belle thinks you're not only a physical virgin, but a psychic-blocked prude. I know better. You're so full of what you want to do—what you know is right—and what those three-cell-brained you think you ought to do that you have got no more of than a piston-rod. You haven't been for a minute since you came aboard. Check?"
"You have been thinking, haven't you? You may be right; that it's been longer than that ... since the preliminaries, I think. But what can I do about it, Clee?"
"Contact. Three-quarters full, say; for me to give you what I think is the truth."
"But you said you screens with a woman?"
"There's a time for everything. Come in."
She did so, for almost a minute, then herself loose.
"Ug-gh-gh." She shivered. "I'm I haven't got a mind like that."
"And the same from me to you. Of the truth may in between. I may be as off the on one as you are on the other."
"I so. But it up no end—it a knots. Even that other thing—brotherly love? It's a very concept—you see, I had any brothers."
"That's one thing that was the with you. Nothing than that, certainly, and will be."
"And I you got the thought—it must have jumped up and you—" Lola's was visible through her tan, "how many times I've like my up and your and a of those of yours, just to see if they're as hard as they look?"
"I'm you that up; I don't know I would have to or not. You've got to stop acting like a Third of an Operator; and you've got to stop acting as though you had been ten of me. Now's as good a time as any." He took off his shirt and a strong-man's pose. "Come ahead."
"By golly, I'm going to!" Then, a moment later, "Why, they're harder! How do you, a scientist, psionicist, and scholar, keep in such hard shape as that?"
"An hour a day in the gym, three hundred sixty-five days a year. Many are better—but a of a are worse."
"I'll say." She her ale, sat in her chair, and put her up on the bed. "That was a of if there was one. I haven't so good since they me as home-town candidate—and that was a small town and eight months ago. Bring on your dragons, Clee, and I'll 'em and wide. But I can't actually be like she is...."
"Thank God for that. Deliver me from two such pretzel-benders one ship."
"... but I have been a good actress, I think."
"Correction, please. 'Outstanding' is the word."
"Thank you, sir. And women—men, too, of course—do up memories, to ... to...."
"To roll 'em around on their and give their taste-buds a treat."
"Exactly. So where I don't have any memories to up, I'll make like an actress. Check?"
"Good girl! Now you're rolling—we're in like Flynn. Well, we've been in screen long enough, I guess. Fare well, little sister Brownie, until we meet again." He the of their refreshments, and all, into the chute, up his shirt, and started out.
"Put it on, Clee!" she whispered, intensely.
"Why?" He cheerfully. "It'd look still if I to the altogether."
"You're incorrigible," she said, but her was wide and perfectly natural. "You know, if I had had a something like you it would have saved me a of wear and tear. I'll see you in the breakfast."
And she did. They together to breakfast; not hands, but with almost hip. Relaxed, friendly, on very and satisfactory terms. Lola orders for them both. Belle a probe, which bounced—Lola's screen was tight, although her were and bland.
But the meal, in response to a double-edged, wickedly-barbed of Belle's, a memory into being above Lola's shield. It was the flash, suppressed. Her clear and steady; if she at all it did not show.
Belle it, of course, and at Garlock. She knew, now, what she had wanted to know. And, Prime Operator though he was, it was all he do to make no sign; for that fleetingly-revealed memory was a perfect job. He would not have—could not have—questioned it himself, for one fact. It was of an event that had not and would!
And after breakfast, at some from the others, "That is my girl, Brownie! You're on all barrels. You're an Operator, all right; and it takes a good one to like that with her mind!"
"Thanks to you, Clee. And thanks a million, really. I'm me again—I think."
Then, since Belle was looking, she took him by ears, his down, and him on the lips. The and were perfect at that moment. Clee's was obvious.
"I know I said you'd have to me next time," Lola said, very low, "but this act needs just this much of an touch. Anyway, such little, tiny, ones as this, and out in public, don't count."
