He put his arm around her and squeezed. “That’s what I was sure you’d say. The question now is, how long do we let him stew in his own juice before we skip over there and talk peace terms?”

“Not long enough to let him build more generators than we can to fry us with,” she replied, promptly if a bit unclearly. “One day? Half a day? A quarter?”

“But long enough to let him know he’s licked,” Mergon said. “I’d say one full day would be just about right So let’s go get us some sleep.”

“Sleep! Llenderllon’s eyeballs! Can you even think of such a thing as sleep after all this?”

“Certainly I can. So can you — you’re all frazzled out. Come on girl, we’re hitting the sheets.”

“Why, I won’t be able to sleep a wink until this is all over!”

But she was wrong; in ten minutes they were both sleeping the sleep of exhaustion.

Twelve hours later she came suddenly awake, rolled over toward him, and shook him vigorously by the shoulder. “Wake up, you!”

He grumbled something and tried to pull away from her grip.

She shook him again. “Wake up, you great big oaf! Suppose that beast Klazmon has got more generators built and our screens are all failing?”

He opened one eye. “If they fail, sweet, we won’t know a thing about it.” He opened the other eye and, three-quarter awake now, went on, “Do you think I’m running this ship single-handed? What do you think the other officers are for?”

“But they aren’t you,” she declared, with completely feminine illogic where her husband was concerned. “So hurry up and get up and we’ll go see for ourselves.”

“Okay, but not ’til after breakfast, if I have to smack you down. So punch us up a gallon of coffee, huh? And a couple slabs of ham and six or eight eggs? Then we’ll go see.”

They ate and went and saw. The screens still flared at the same blinding white, but there were no signs of overloading or of failure. They could, the Third Officer bragged, keep it up for years. Everything was under control.

“You hope,” Mergon said — but not to the officer. He said that under his breath as he and Luloy turned away toward their own station.

Much to Mergon’s relief, nothing happened during the rest of the day, and at the end of the twenty-fourth hour he sent the actual bomb and working projections of himself and Luloy into the llanzlanate. Into the llanzlan’s private study, where Klazmon was hard at work.

It was an immense room, and one in which a good anthropologist could have worked delightedly for weeks. The floor was bare, hard, smooth-polished; fantastically inlaid in metal and colored quartz and turquoise and jade. The pictures — framed mostly in extruded stainless steel portrayed scenes (?) and things (?) and events (?) never perceived by any Earthly sense and starkly incomprehensible to any Earthly mind. The furniture was… “weird” is the only possible one-word description. Every detail of the room proclaimed that here was the private retreat of a highly talented and very eminent member of a culture that was old, wide and high.

“Hail, Llanzlan Klazmon,” Mergon said quietly, conversationally. “You will examine this bomb, please, to make sure that, unlike us two, it is actual and practical.”

The Llurd’s eyes had bulged a little and the tip of his tail had twitched slightly at the apparition. That was all. He picked up an instrument with a binocular eyepiece, peered through it for a couple of seconds, and put it down. “It is actual and practical,” he agreed.

Whatever emotions may have been surging through the llanzlan’s mind, his control was superb. He did not ask them how they had done it, or why, or any other question. After the event he knew much and could guess more — and he was perhaps the starkest realist of the most starkly realistic race of intelligent beings yet known to live.

“You realize, of course, that we do not intend to fire it except as the ultimately last resort.”

“I do now.”

“Ah, yes. Our conduct throughout has surprised you; especially that we did not counterattack.”

“If not exactly surprised at least did not anticipate that Jelmi would or could act with practically Llurdan logic,” the Llurd conceded.

“We can. And when we think it best, we do. We suggest that you cut off your attack. We will then put on air-suits and return here in person, to discuss recent developments as reasoning and logical entities should.”

The Llurd was fast on the uptake. He knew that, given time, he could crush this threat; but he knew that he would not have the time. He could see ahead as well as Mergon could to the total destruction of two hundred forty more planets. Wherefore he barked a couple of syllables at a com and the furiously incandescent screens of the Mallidaxian went cold and dark.

Jelmi and bomb disappeared. Mergon and Luloy donned gas-tight, self-contained, plastic-helmeted coveralls and reappeared in the Llanzlan’s study. Klazmon seated them courteously in two Jelman easy-chairs — which looked atrociously out of place in that room — and the peace conference, which was to last for days, began.

“First,” the llanzlan said, “this breakthrough that you have accomplished. At what stage in the negotiations do you propose to give me the complete technical specifications of it?”

“Now,” Mergon said, and a yard-high stack of tapes appeared on the floor beside the Llurd’s desk. It was the entire specs and description of the fourth-dimensional translator. Nothing was omitted or obscured.

“Oh? I see. There is, then, much work yet to be done on it. Work that only you Jelmi can do.”

“That is true, as you will learn from those tapes. Now,” said Mergon, settling down to the bargaining session, “first, we have shown you that Jelmi capable of doing genius-type work cannot be coerced into doing it. Second, the fact is that it is psychologically impossible for us to do such work under coercion. Third, we believe firmly that free and in dependent Jelmi can coexist with the Llurdi. Fourth, we believe equally firmly that for the best good of both races they should so coexist…”

And at that first day’s end, after supper, Luloy said, “Merg, I simply would not have believed it. Ever. I’m not sure I really believe it now. But you know I almost like — I actually admire that horrible monster in some ways!”

Seaton called Rovol of Rays, on Norlamin, as soon as he could reach him. He told him the story of what he had done on Ray-See-Nee, and what he hoped to gain by it, in detail, then went on to ask his help on the control of the fourth-dimensional translator.

“You see, Rovol, at perfect sync it would — theoretically — take zero power. I don’t expect the unattainable ideal, of course—” he winked at Dorothy — “just close enough so we can pack enough stuff into the Valeron to handle everything they can throw at us and still have enough left over to fight back with.”

“Ah, youth, a fascinating problem indeed. I will begin work on it at once, and will call in certain others in whose provinces some aspects of it lie. By the time you arrive here we will perhaps have determined whether or not any solution is at present possible.”

“What?” Seaton yelped. “Why — I thought — surely—” he almost stuttered. “I thought you’d have it done by then — maybe be sending it out to meet us, even.”

The old Norlaminian’s paternally forbearing sigh was highly expressive. “Still the heedless, thoughtless youth, in spite of all our teachings. You have not studied the problem yourself at all.”

“Well, not very much, I admit.”

“I advise you to do so. If you devote to it every period of labor between now and your arrival here you may perhaps be able to talk about it intelligently,” and Rovol cut com.

Dorothy whistled. She didn’t whistle very often, but she could do it very expressively.

“Yeah,” Seaton said, ruefully. “And the old boy wasn’t kidding, either.”