Triplanetary
even that much reward several times over before he collects it. Don't be
silly, dear heart--good-night."
She tipped her head back, holding up to him her red, sweetly curved,
smiling lips, and his eager arms, hitherto kept away from her by sheer
force of will, swept around her in almost fierce intensity. As his hot
lips met hers, her arms crept up around his neck and they stood, clasped
together in the motionless ecstasy of love's first embrace.
"Girl, girl, how I love you!" Costigan's voice was husky, his usually
hard eyes were glowing with a tender light. "That settles that. I'll
really _live_ now, anyway, while...."
"Stop it!" she commanded, sharply. "You're going to live until you die
of old age--see if you don't. You'll simply _have_ to, Conway!"
"That's so, too--no percentage in dying now. All the pirates between
Tellus and Andromeda couldn't take me after this--I've got too much to
live for. Well, good-night, sweetheart, I'd better beat it--you need
some sleep."
The lovers' parting was not as simple and straightforward a procedure as
Costigan's speech would indicate, but finally he did seek his own room
and relaxed upon a pile of cushions, his stern visage transformed.
Instead of the low metal ceiling he saw a beautiful, oval, tanned young
face, framed in a golden-blonde corona of hair. His gaze sank into the
depths of loyal, honest, dark-blue eyes; and looking deeper and deeper
into those blue wells he fell asleep. Upon his face, too set and grim by
far for a man of his years--the lives of Sector Chiefs of the T. S. S.
are never easy, nor as a rule are they long--there lingered as he slept
that newly acquired softness of expression, the reflection of his
transcendent happiness.
For eight hours he slept soundly, as was his wont; then, also according
to his habit and training, he came wide awake, with no intermediate
stage of napping.
"Clio?" he whispered. "Awake, girl?"
"Awake!" Her voice came through the ultra-phone, relief in every
syllable. "Good heavens, I thought you were going to sleep until we got
to wherever it is that we're going! Come on in, you two--I don't see how
you can possibly sleep, just as though you were home in bed."
"You've got to learn to sleep anywhere if you expect to keep in...."
Costigan broke off as he opened the door and saw Clio's wan face. She
had evidently spent a sleepless and wracking eight hours. "Good Lord,
Clio, why didn't you call me?"
"Oh, I'm all right, except for being a little jittery. No need of asking
how _you_ feel, is there?"
"No--I feel hungry," he answered cheerfully. "I'm going to see what we
can do about it--or say, guess I'll see whether they're still
interfering on Samms' wave."
He took out a small, insulated case and touched the contact stud lightly
with his fingers. His arm jerked away powerfully.
"Still at it," he gave the necessary explanation. "They don't seem to
want us to talk outside, but his interference is as good as my
talking--they can trace it, of course. Now I'll see what I can find out
about our breakfast."
He stepped over to the plate and shot its projector beam forward into
the control room, where he saw Nerado lying, doglike, at his instrument
panel. As Costigan's beam entered the room a blue light flashed on and
the Nevian turned an eye and an arm toward his own small observation
plate. Knowing that they were now in visual communication, Costigan
beckoned an invitation and pointed to his mouth in what he hoped was the
universal sign of hunger. The Nevian waved an arm and fingered controls,
and as he did so a wide section of the floor of Clio's room slid aside.
The opening thus made revealed a table which rose upon its low pedestal,
a table equipped with three softly cushioned benches and spread with a
glittering array of silver and glassware. Bowls and platters of
dazzlingly white metal, narrow-waisted goblets of sheerest crystal; all
were hexagonal, beautifully and intricately carved or etched in
apparently conventional marine designs. And the table utensils of this
strange race were peculiar indeed. There were tearing forceps of sixteen
needle-sharp curved teeth; there were flexible spatulas; there were deep
and shallow ladles with flexible edges; there were many other peculiarly
curved instruments at whose uses the Terrestrials could no even guess;
all having delicately fashioned handles to fit the long, slender fingers
of the Nevians.
But if the table and its appointments were surprising to the
Terrestrials, revealing as they did a degree of culture which none of
them had expected to find in a race of beings so monstrous, the food was
even more surprising, although in another sense. For the wonderful
crystal goblets were filled with a grayish-green slime of a nauseous and
overpowering odor, the smaller bowls were full of living sea spiders and
other such delicacies; and each large platter contained a fish fully a
foot long, raw and whole, garnished tastefully with red, purple, and
green strands of seaweed!
Clio looked once, then gasped, shutting her eyes and turning away from
the table, but Costigan flipped the three fish into a platter and set it
aside before he turned back to the visiplate.
"They'll go good fried," he remarked to Bradley, signaling vigorously to
Nerado that the meal was not acceptable and that he wanted to talk to
him, _in person_. Finally he made himself clear, the table sank down out
of sight, and the Nevian commander cautiously entered the room.
At Costigan's insistence, he came up to the plate, leaving near the door
three guards armed with projectors in instant readiness. The operative
then shot the beam into the galley of the pirate's lifeboat, suggesting
that they should be allowed to live there. For some time the argument of
arms and fingers raged--though not exactly a fluent conversation, both
sides managed to convey their meanings quite clearly. Nerado would not
allow the Terrestrials to visit their own ship--he was taking no
chances--but after a thorough ultra-ray inspection he did finally order
some of his men to bring into the middle room the electric range and a
supply of Terrestrial food. Soon the Nevian fish were sizzling in a pan
and the appetizing odors of coffee and of browning biscuit permeated the
room. But at the first appearance of those odors the Nevians departed
hastily, content to watch the remainder of the curious and repulsive
procedure in their visiray plates.
Breakfast over and everything made tidy and shipshape, Costigan turned
to Clio.
"Look here, girl; you've got to learn how to sleep. You're all in. Your
eyes look like you'd been on a Martian picnic and you didn't eat half
enough breakfast. You've got to sleep and eat to keep fit. We don't want
you passing out on us, so I'll put out this light, and you'll lie down
here and sleep until noon."
"Oh, no; don't bother. I'll sleep to-night. I'm quite...."
"You'll sleep now," he informed her, levelly. "I never thought of you
being nervous, with Bradley and me on each side of you. We're both right
here now, though, and we'll stay here. We'll watch over you like a
couple of old hens with one chick between them. Come on; lie down and go
bye-bye."
Clio laughed at the simile, but lay down obediently. Costigan sat upon
the edge of the great divan, holding her hand, and they chatted idly.
The silences grew longer, Clio's remarks became fewer, and soon her
long-lashed lids fell and her deep, regular breathing showed that she
was sound asleep. The man stared at her, his very heart in his eyes. So
young, so beautiful, so lovely--and _how_ he did love her! He was not
formally religious, but his every thought was a sincere prayer. If he
could only get her out of this mess ... he wasn't fit to live on the
same planet with her, but ... just give him one chance, just one!
But Costigan had been laboring for days under a terrific strain, and had
been going very short on sleep. Half hypnotized by his own mixed
emotions and by his staring at the smooth curves of Clio's cheek, his
own eyes closed and, still holding her hand, he sank down into the soft
cushions beside her and into oblivion.
Thus sleeping hand-in-hand like two children Bradley found them, and a
tender, fatherly expression came over his face as he looked down at
them.
"Nice little girl, Clio," he mused, "and when they made Costigan they
broke the mould. They'll do--about as fine a couple of kids as old
Tellus ever produced. I could do with some more sleep myself." He yawned
prodigiously, lay down at Clio's left, and almost instantly was himself
asleep.
Hours later, both men were awakened by a merry peal of laughter. Clio
was sitting up, regarding them with sparkling eyes. She was refreshed,
buoyant, ravenously hungry and highly amused. Costigan was amazed and
annoyed at what he considered a failure in a self-appointed task;
Bradley was calm and matter-of-fact.
"Thanks for being such a nice bodyguard, you two," Clio laughed again,
but sobered quickly. "I slept wonderfully well, but I wonder if I can
sleep to-night without making you hold my hand all night?"
"Oh, he doesn't mind doing that," Bradley commented.
"Mind it!" Costigan exclaimed, and his eyes and his tone spoke volumes
that his tongue left unsaid.
They prepared and ate another meal, one to which Clio did full justice;
and, rested and refreshed, had begun to discuss possibilities of escape
when Nerado and his three armed guards entered the room. The Nevian
scientist placed a box upon a table and began to make adjustments upon
its panels, eyeing the Terrestrials attentively after each setting.
After a time a staccato burst of articulate speech issued from the box,
and Costigan saw a great light.
"You've got it--hold it!" he exclaimed, waving his arms excitedly. "You
see, Clio, their voices are pitched either higher or lower than
ours--probably higher--and they've built an audio-frequency changer.
He's nobody's fool, that fish!"
Nerado heard Costigan's voice; there was no doubt of that. His long neck
looped and angled in Nevian gratification, and, although neither side
could understand the other, both knew that intelligent speech and
hearing were attributes common to the two races. This fact altered
markedly the relations between captors and captives. The Nevians
admitted among themselves that the strange bipeds might be quite
intelligent, after all; and the Terrestrials at once became more
hopeful.
"It isn't so bad, if they can talk," Costigan summed up the situation.
"We might as well take it easy and make the best of it, particularly
since we haven't been able to figure out any possible way of getting
away from them. They can talk and hear, and we can learn their language
in time. Maybe we can make some kind of a deal with them to take us back
to our own system, if we can't make a break."
The Nevians being as eager as the Terrestrials to establish
communication, Nerado kept the newly devised frequency-changer in
constant use. There is no need of describing at length the details of
that interchange of languages. Suffice it to say that starting at the
very bottom they learned as babies learn, but with the great advantage
over babies of possessing fully developed and capable brains. And while
the human beings were learning the tongue of Nevia, several of the
amphibians (and incidentally Clio Marsden) were learning Triplanetarian;
the two officers knowing well that it would be much easier for the
Nevians to learn the logically-built common language of the Three
Planets than to master the senseless intricacies of English.
In a few weeks the two parties were able to understand each other after
a fashion, by using a weird mixture of both languages. As soon as a few
ideas had been exchanged, the Nevian scientists built transformers small