And the DQ got away. She was by no means intact; but, since her skin had been very much thicker than the Valeron’s to start with, there was still some of it left when she got out of range.

Thereupon DuQuesne put on the headset of the DQ’s Brain and began to think. He had tried direct attack on the galaxy of Chlorans; it had failed. His next step, obviously, was to decide what his next step should be.

The flesh-and-blood brain that was thinking into the energy-and-metal Brain of the DQ was no whit less logical, no iota less unsentimental in its judgments than the great computer itself. Man-brain and machine-brain together considered the evidence.

Datum: The DQ was not up to handling Galaxy DW-427-LU. Datum: Not even the added muscle conferred by the willing cooperation of the Fenachrone was enough to make it so. Datum: No discoverable increase of its armaments or its crew would give it even a fighting chance against the energies that had just come so close to destroying it.

Wherefore—

Finally, an hour later, DuQuesne raised the microphone of a repeating sixth-order broadcasting transmitter to his lips and said — dispassionately, unemotionally and with no more expression than if he had been ordering up his lunch: “DuQuesne calling Seaton reply as before stop.”

26. THE TALENT

Seaton had thought that the visit to the Jelmi would be a short one, just long enough to get the “gizmo,” but his own breakthrough put an end to such thinking. It took days to reduce the theory to practice and weeks to build into the Skylark of Valeron the gigantic installations Seaton wanted.

The very enormity of the breakthrough changed all plans, dislocated all schedules. To the Jelmi the fourth dimensional translator had been a phenomenon — a weapon — in itself.

It had extremely valuable applications, and each of them offered a long career of study.

That was enough for them. But to Seaton and Crane and the Norlaminians it was something more than that; it was an effect, a new and unexplored area of knowledge, to be fitted somehow into the known and computed structure of sixth-order perhaps of other-order-effects; and to be used and considered in conjunction with them. It was a theorist’s dream — and an engineer’s nightmare.

Meanwhile, as the male Skylarkers, their Jelm colleagues and the Norlaminians were busily getting done the impossible task of exploring a whole new field of knowledge and transmuting it into actual structures and gigantic machines, the women of the party were exploring the life of an alien race… and having the time of their respective lives doing it. Sitar, of course, was in her element. Bare skin and jewelry she liked. She liked to look at and to feel her mink coat, she said, but she hated to have to wear it; and as for that horrible, scratchy underwear — augh! Hence, now that the personal gravity controls were personal heaters as well, she was really enjoying herself.

Dorothy and Margaret, of course, took to it as though to the manner born. In three days neither of them was any more conscious of nudity than was Sennlloy herself. Even Lotus got used to it. While she could never become an enthusiastic nudist, she said, she did stop blushing. In fact, she almost stopped feeling like blushing.

“Dick,” Dorothy said one evening, “I’ve finally made contact with them on music.”

“Music!” he snorted. “Huh! It sounds to me like a gaggle of tomcats yowling on a back fence.”

She laughed. “It’s unworldly, of course, but a lot of it is beautiful, in a weird sort of way, and they have some magnificent techniques. I’ve been trying everything on them, you know, and they’ve just been sitting on their hands. I’ll give you three guesses as to what I finally hit them with.”

“Strauss waltzes? Jazz? Don’t tell me it was rock-’n’-roll.” She laughed. “Old-fashioned ragtime. Not what they call rag these days, but real syncopation. And polkas. Specifically, three old, old recordings — with improved sound, of course. Pee Wee Hunt’s Twelfth Street Rag, Plehal Brothers’ Beer Barrel Polka, and — of all things! — Glahe Musette’s Hot Pretzels. They simply grabbed the ball and ran all over the place with it. What they came up with is neither rag nor polka — in fact, it’s like nothing ever heard before on any world — but it’s really toe-tingling stuff. Comes the dance tomorrow evening I’ll show you some steps and leaps and bounds that will knock your eyes right out of their sockets.”

“I believe that, if what the gals have been teaching me is any criterion. You have to be a mind-reader, an adagio dancer and a ground-and-lofty tumbler, and have an eidetic memory. But I hope I won’t smash any of the girls’ arches down or kick any of their faces in.”

“Don’t fish, darling. I know how good you are. Ain’t I been practicing with you for lo, these many periods?”

At the dance it became clear that Seaton’s statement was (as, it must be admitted, some of his statements were!) somewhat exaggerated. There was a great deal of acrobatics — Seaton and Sennlloy took advantage of every clear space to perform handspring-and-flip routines in unison. But everything was strictly according to what each person could do and wished to do. Thus, men and women alike danced with the Osnomians as though they were afraid of breaking them in two — which they were. And thus Lotus was, as Margaret had foretold that she would be, the belle of the ball.

Hard-trained gymnast and acrobat that she was, her feet were off the floor most of the time; and before the dance was an hour old she was being tossed delightedly by her partner of the moment over the heads of half a dozen couples to some other man who was signaling for a free catch.

Three days before the Skylark’s departure, Mergon announced that there would be a full-formal farewell party on the evening before the takeoff.

“What are you going to wear, Dick?” Crane asked. Seaton grinned. “Urvan of Urvania’s royal regalia. All of it. You?”

“I’m going as Tarnan, the Karbix of Osnome; with guns, knives, bracelets and legbands complete. And a pair of forty-fives besides.”

“Nice! And I’ll wear my three-fifty-sevens, then, too. If I can find a place to hang them on anywhere.”

And Dorothy and Margaret each wore about eleven quarts of gems.

As the eight guests entered the dining hall — last, as protocol dictated — and the eight hundred Jelmi rose to their feet as one, the spectacle was something that not one of the six Tellurians would ever forget. DuQuesne had seen a few Jelmi in full formal panoply; but here were eight hundred of them!

After the sumptuous meal the tables vanished; music — a spine-tingling, not-too-fast march — swelled into being; and dancing began.

Dancing, if dancing it could be called, that bore no relationship whatever to the boisterous sport of which there had been so much. Each step and motion and genuflection and posture was stately, graceful, poised and studied. The whole was very evidently the finished product of centuries of refinement and perfection of technique.

And at its close each of the eight honored guests was amazed to find that their movements had been so artfully yet inconspicuously guided that each of them had grasped hands once with every Jelm on the floor.

And on the way to their quarters Dorothy, her eyes brimming with unshed tears, pressed Seaton’s arm against her side. “Oh, Dick, wasn’t that simply wonderful? I could cry. Only once in my life before has anything ever hit me as hard as that did.”

Well on the way back to Galaxy DW-427-LU, Seaton was humming happily to himself.

He had gone through everything for the umpteenth time and for the umpteenth time had found everything good.