She turned back toward the two and held out her hand so that the man could inspect the gem, saying, “I have not given any attention at all to your monetary system, but this should be worth enough, I think, to leave in the place of the book of five volumes. Or should if be bigger?”
Close up, the man goggled at blue-white fire. “Bigger! Than that rock? Lady! Are you kidding? If that thing will stand inspection it’ll buy you a library, buildings and all!”
“That’s all I wanted to know. Thank you.” Luloy turned to Mergon. “They don’t know any more than…”
“Just a minute; please,” the man broke in. “If diamonds don’t mean any more than that to you, why wouldn’t it be a good idea for you to make her some? To alleviate the shock she has just had? Not as big, of course; none bigger than the end of my thumb.”
Luloy nodded. “I know. Various sizes, for full-formal array. She’s just about my size, so eleven of your quarts will do it.”
“My God, no…” Madlyn began, but the man took smoothly over.
“Not quite, Miss Luloy. Our ladies don’t decorate their formats as lavishly as you apparently do. One quart, or maybe a quart and a half, will do very nicely.”
“Very well,” Luloy looked directly at the man. “But you won’t want to be lugging them around with you all the rest of the day — they’re heavy — so I’ll put them in the righthand top drawer of the bureau in your bedroom. Good-by,” and Mergon’s hands began to move toward his controls.
“Wait a minute!” the man exclaimed. “You can’t just dump us back where we were without a word of explanation! While spaceships aren’t my specialty — I’m a petrochemical engineer tee eight — I’ve never imagined anything as big as this vessel actually flying, and I’m just about as much interested in that as I am in the way we got here which has to be fourth-dimensional translation; it can’t be anything else. So if everything isn’t top secret, how about showing us around a little?”
“The fourth-dimension device is top secret; so much so that only three or four of us know anything about it. You may study anything else you please. Bearing in mind that we have only a few seconds over three of your minutes left, where would you like to begin?”
“The engines first, please, and the drives.”
“And you, Miss Mannis? Arts? Crafts? Sciences? There is no dancing going on at the moment.”
The dancer’s right hand flashed out, seized her fellow Earthman’s forearm and clung to it. “Wherever he goes I go along!” she said, very positively.
Since neither of the two Earthpeople had even been projected before, they were both very much surprised at how much can be learned via projection, and in how short a time. They saw tremendous receptors and generators and propulsors; they saw the massed and banked and tiered keyboards and instrumentation of the control stations; they saw how the incredibly huge vessel’s inoson structural members were trussed and latticed and braced and buttressed to make it possible for such a titanic structure to fly.
Since everything aboard the original Jelman vessel had been moved aboard this vastly larger one before the original had been reduced to moon-dust, the dancer and her companion also saw beautiful, splendid, and magnificent — if peculiarly unearthly — paintings and statues and tapestries and rugs. They heard music, ranging from vast orchestral recordings down to the squeakings and tootlings of beginners learning to play musical instruments unknown to the humanity of Earth.
And above all they saw people. Hundreds and hundreds of people; each one completely naked and each one of a physical perfection almost never to be found on Earth.
At time zero minus twenty seconds Mergon cut off the projectors and the Earthman looked at Luloy.
She not only had swapped the diamond for the five-volume set of books; she had already read over a hundred pages of Volume One. She was flipping pages almost as fast as her thumb and forefinger could move, and she was absorbing the full content of the work at the rate of one glance per page.
“You people seem to be as human as we are,” Madlyn said, worriedly, “but outside of that you’re nothing like us at all in any way. Where did you come from anyway?”
“I can’t tell you,” Mergon said, flatly. “Not that I don’t want to, I can’t. We’re what you call human, yes; but our world Mallidax is a myriad of galaxies away from here — so far away that the distance is completely incomprehensible to the mind. Good-by.”
And Madlyn Mannis found herself — with no lapse of time and with no sensation whatever of motion — standing in her former tracks under the big umbrella on the beach. The only difference was that she was now standing still instead of digging her toes into the sand.
She looked at her fellow moon-traveler. He, too, was standing in the same place as before, but he now looked as though he had been struck by lightning. She swallowed twice, then said, “Well, I’m awfully glad I wasn’t alone when that hap…” she broke off abruptly, licked her lips, and went on in a strangely altered tone, “Or am I nuttier than a fruit-cake? Vas you dere, Shar-lee?”
“I vas dere, Madlyn.” He walked toward her. He was trying to grin, but was not having much success with it. “And my name is Charley — Charles K. van der Gleiss.”
“My God! That makes it even worse — or does it?”
“I don’t see how anything could; very well or very much… but I need a drink. How about you?”
“Brother! Do I! But we’ll have to dress. You can’t get anything on the beach here that’s strong enough to cope with anything like that!”
“I know. City owned. Teetotal. I’ll see you out in front in a couple of minutes. In a taxi.”
“Make it five minutes, or maybe a bit more. And if you run out on me, Charles K. van der Gleiss, I’ll… I’ll hunt you up and kill you absolutely dead, so help me!”
“Okay, I’ll wait, but make it snappy. I need that drink.”
She had snatched up her robe and had taken off across the sand like a startled doe; her reply came back over one shoulder. “You need a drink? Oh, brother!”
11. BLOTTO
THE world had come a long way from the insular, mudbound globe of rock and sea of the 1950s and 1970s; Seaton and Crane had seen to that. Norlaminian observers were a familiar sight to most humans — if not in person, then surely through the medium of TV or tapefax. A thousand worlds had been photographed by Tellurian cameramen and reporters; the stories of the Osnomians, the Fenachrone, the Valeronians, even the Chlorans and the other weirdly non-human races of the outer void were a matter of public record.
Nevertheless, it is a far different thing from knowing that other races exist to find yourself a guest of one of them, a quarter of a million miles from home; wherefore Madlyn and Charles’s expressed intentions took immediate and tangible form.
Madlyn Mannis and Charles K. van der Gleiss were facing each other across a small table in a curtained booth; a table upon which a waiter was placing a pint of bonded hundred-proof bourbon and the various items properly accessory thereto. As soon as the curtain fell into place behind the departing waiter the girl seized the bottle, raised it to her mouth, and belted down a good two fingers — as much as she could force down before her coughing, choking, and strangling made her stop.
“Hey! Take it easy!” the man protested, taking the bottle from her hand and putting it gently down on the table. “You’re not used to guzzling it like that; that’s for plain damn sure.”
She gulped and coughed a few times; wiped her streaming eyes. “I’ll tell the world I’m not; two little ones is always my limit, ordinarily. But I needed that jolt, Charley, to keep from flipping my lid completely. Don’t you need one, too?”
“I certainly do. A triple, at least, with a couple of snowflakes of ice and about five drops of water.” He built the drink substantially as specified, took it down in three swallows, and drew a profoundly deep breath. “You heard me tell them I’m a petrochemical engineer, tee eight. So maybe that didn’t hit me quite as hard as it did you, but bottled courage helps, believe me.” He mixed another drink — a single — and cocked an eyebrow at the girl. “That’ll you have as a chaser for that God-awful belt?”