Part 14

Whether, when the ship went free, Joan pulled Storm down to her merely to anchor him, or for some other reason; whether Cloud grabbed her merely in lieu of a safety-line or not; which of the two was first to put arms around the other; these are moot points impossible of decision at this date. The fact is, however, that the two scientists held a remarkably unscientific pose for a good two minutes before Joan thought that she ought to object a little, just on general principles. Even then, she did not object with her mind; instead she put up her block and used her voice.

“But, after all, Storm,” she began, only to be silenced as beloved women have been silenced throughout the ages. She cut her screen then, and her mind, tender and unafraid, reached out to his.

“This might be the perfect time, dear, to merge our minds? I’ve been scared to death of it all along, but no more . . . let’s?”

“Uh-huh,” he demurred. “I’m _still_ afraid of it. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and doing some drilling, and the more I play with it the more scared I get. It’s dangerous. It’s like playing with duodec. I’ve just about decided that we’d better let it drop.”

“Afraid? For yourself, or for me? Don’t try to lie with your mind, Storm; you can’t do it. You’re afraid only for me, and you needn’t be. I’ve been thinking, too, and digging deep, and I know I’m ready.” She looked up at him then, her quick, bright, impish grin very much in evidence. “Let’s go.”

“QX, Joanie, and thanks. I’ve been wanting this more than I ever wanted anything before in my life. But not holding hands, this time. Heart to heart and cheek to cheek.”

“Check—the closer the better.”

They embraced, and again mind flowed into mind; this time with no thought of withholding or reserve on either side. Smoothly, effortlessly, the two essential beings merged, each fitting its tiniest, remotest members into the deepest, ordinarily most inaccessible recesses of the other; fusing as quickly and as delicately and as thoroughly as two drops of water coalescing into one.

In that supremely intimate fusion, that ultimate union of line and plane and cellule, each mind was revealed completely to the other; a revealment which no outsider should expect to share.

Finally, after neither ever knew how long, they released each other and each put up, automatically, a solid block.

“I don’t know about you, Storm,” Joan said then, “but I’ve had just about all I can take. I’m going to bed and sleep for one solid week.”

“You and me both,” Storm agreed, ungrammatically, but feelingly. “Good night, sweetheart . . . and this had all better be strictly hush-hush, don’t you think?”

“I _do_ think,” she assured him. “Can’t you just imagine the field-day the psychs would have, taking us apart?”

In view of the above, it might be assumed that the parting was immediate, positive, and undemonstrative; but such was not exactly the case. But they did finally separate, and each slept soundly and long.

And fairly early the next morning—before either of them got up, at least—Cloud sent Joan a thought.

“Awake, dear?”

“Uh-huh. Just. ’Morning, Storm.”

“I’ve got some news for you, Joanie. My brain is firing on ten times as many barrels as I ever thought it had, and I don’t know what half of ’em are doing. Among other things, you made what I think is probably a top-bracket perceiver out of me.”

“So? Well, don’t peek at me, please . . . but why should I say that, after having studied in Rigel Four for two years? Women are funny, I guess. But, for your information, I have just extracted the ninth root of an eighteen-digit number, in no time at all and to the last significant decimal place, and I _know_ the answer is right. How do you like _them_ potatoes, Buster?”

“Nice. We really absorbed each other’s stuff, didn’t we? But how about joining me in person for a soupcon of ham and eggs?”

“That’s a thought, my thoughtful friend; a cogent and right knightly thought. I’ll be with you in three jerks and a wiggle.” And she was.

Just as they finished eating, Vesta breezed in. “Well, you two deep-sleepers finally crawled out of your sacks, did you? It is confusing, though, that ship’s time never agrees with planetary time. But I live here, you know, in this city you call ‘Vegiaton,’ so I went to bed at noon yesterday and I’ve got over half a day’s work done already. I saw my folks and bought half of my uncle’s bank and made the no-gambling declaration and I want to ask you both something. After the Grand Uproar here at the ’port in your honor, will you two and Helen and Joe and Bob and Barbara come with me to a little dance some of my friends are having? You’ve been _zo_ good to me, and I want to show you off a little.”

“We’ll be _glad_ to, Vesta, and thanks a lot,” Joan said, flashing a thought at Cloud to let her handle this thing her own way, “and I imagine the others would be, too, but . . . well, it’s for _you_, you know, and we might be intruding. . . .”

“Why, not at all!” Vesta waved the objection away with an airy flirt of her tail. “You’re friends of mine! And everybody’s real friends are always welcome, you know, everywhere. And it’ll be small and quiet; only six or eight hundred are being asked, they say. . . .” she paused for a moment: “. . . of course, after it gets around that we have _you_ there, a couple of thousand or so strangers will come in too; but they’ll all smell nice, so it’ll be QX.”

“How do you know what they’ll smell like?” Cloud asked.

“Why, they’ll smell like our crowd, of course. If they didn’t they wouldn’t _want_ to come in. It’s QX, then?”

“For us two, yes; but of course we can’t speak for the others.”

“Thanks, you wonderful people; I’ll go ask them right now.”

“Joan, have you blown your stack completely?” Cloud demanded. “Small—quiet—six or eight _hundred_ invited—a couple of thousand or _so_ gate-crashers—what do you want to go to a brawl like _that_ for?”

“The chance is too good to miss—it’s priceless. . . .” She paused, then added, obliquely: “Storm, have you any idea at all of what Vesta thinks of you? You haven’t snooped, I’m sure.”

“No, and I don’t intend to.”

“Maybe you ought to,” Joan snickered a little, “except that it would inflate your ego too much. It’s hard to describe. It’s not exactly love—and not exactly worship, either god-worship or hero-worship. It isn’t exactly adoration, but it’s very much stronger than mere admiration. A mixture of all these, perhaps, and half a dozen others, coupled with a simply unbelievable amount of _pride_ that you are her friend. It’s a peculiarly Vegian thing, that Tellurians simply do not feel. But here’s why I’m so enthused. It has been over twenty years since any non-Vegian has attended one of these uniquely Vegian parties except as an outsider, and a Vegian party with outsiders looking on isn’t a Vegian party at all. But we Storm, will be going as insiders!”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Positive. Oh, I know it isn’t _us_ she wants, but _you_; but that won’t make any difference. As Vesta’s friend—‘friend’ in this case having a very special meaning—you’re in the center of the inner circle. As friends of yours, the rest of us are in, too. Not in the inner circle, perhaps, but well inside the outside circle, at least. See?”

“Dimly. ‘A friend of a friend of a friend of a very good friend of mine,’ eh? I’ve heard that ditty, but I never thought it meant anything.”

“It does here. We’re going to have a time. See you in about an hour?”

“Just about. I’ve got to check with Nordquist.”

“Here I am, Storm,” the Lensman’s thought came in. Then, as Cloud went toward his quarters, it went on: “Just want to tell you we won’t have anything for you to do here. This is going to be a straight combing job.”

“That won’t be too tough, will it? A Tellurian, sixty, tall, thin, grave, distinguished-looking . . . or maybe. . . .”

“Exactly. You’re getting the idea. Cosmeticians and plastic surgery. He could look like a Crevenian, or thirty years old and two hundred pounds and slouchy. He could look like anything. He undoubtedly has a background so perfectly established that fifteen thoroughly honest Vegians would swear by eleven of their gods that he hasn’t left his home town for ten years. So every intelligent being on Vegia who hasn’t got a live tail, with live blood circulating in it, is going under the Lens and through the wringer if we have to keep Vegia in quarantine for a solid year. He is _not_ going to get away from us this time.”

“I’m betting on you, Nordquist. Clear ether!”

The Lensman signed off and Cloud, at the end of the specified hour, undressed and redressed and went to the computer room. All the others except Joe were already there.

“Hi, peoples!” Cloud called; then did a double-take. “Wow! And likewise, Yipes! How come the tri-di outfits didn’t all collapse, Joan, when those two spectaculars took up cybernetics?”

“I’ll never know, Storm.” Joan shook her head wonderingly, then went on via thought; and Cloud felt her pang of sheer jealousy. “Why is it that big girls are always so much more beautiful than little ones? And the more clothes they take off the better they look? It simply isn’t _fair_!”

Cloud’s mind reached out and meshed with hers. “Sure it is, sweetheart. They’re beauties; you can’t take that away from them. . . .”

And beauties they certainly were. Helen, as has been said, was lissom and dark. Her hair was black, her eyes a midnight blue, her skin a deep, golden brown. Barbara, not quite as tall—five feet seven, perhaps—was equally beautifully proportioned, and even more striking-looking. Her skin was tanned ivory, her eyes were gray, her hair was a shoulder-length, carefully-careless mass of gleaming, flowing, wavy silver.

“. . . they’ve got a lot of stuff: but believe me, there are several grand lots of stuff they _haven’t_ got, too. I wouldn’t trade half of you for either one of them—or both of them together.”

“I believe that—at least, about _both_ of them,” Joan giggled mentally, “but how many men. . . .”

“Well, how many men do you want?” Cloud interrupted.

“Touché, Storm . . . but do you really. . . .”

What would have developed into a scene of purely mental lovemaking was put to an end by the arrival of Joe Mackay, who also paused and made appropriate noises of appreciation.

“But there’s one thing I don’t quite like about this deal,” he said finally. “I’m not too easy in my mind about making love to a moll who is packing a Mark Twenty Eight DeLameter. The darn thing might go off.”

“Keep your distance, then, Lieutenant Mackay!” Helen laughed. “Well, are we ready?”

They were. They left the ship and walked in a group through the throng of cheering Vegians toward the nearby, gaily-decorated stands in which the official greetings and thank-yous were to take place. Helen and Babs loved it; just as though they were parading as finalists in a beauty contest. Bob and Joe wished that they had stayed in the ship and kept their clothes on. Joan didn’t quite know whether she liked this kind of thing or not. Of the six Tellurians, only Neal Cloud had had enough experience in public near-nudity so that it made no difference. And Vesta?

Vesta was fairly reveling—openly, unashamedly reveling—in the spotlight with her Tellurian friends. They reached the center stand, were ushered with many flourishes to a reserved section already partly filled by Captain Ross and the lesser officers and crewmen of the good-will-touring Patrol ship _Vortex Blaster II_. Not all of the officers, of course, since many had to stay aboard, and comparatively few of the crew; for many men insist on wearing Tellurian garmenture and refuse to tan their hides under ultra-violet radiation—and no untanned white Tellurian skin can take with impunity more than a few minutes of giant Vega’s blue-white fury.

Of the ceremonies themselves, nothing need be said; such things being pretty much of a piece, wherever, whenever, or for whatever reason held. When they were over, Vesta gathered her six friends together and led them to the edge of the roped-off area. There she uttered a soundless (to Tellurian ears) whistle, whereupon a group of Vegian youths and girls formed a wedge around the seven and drove straight through the milling crowd to its edge. There, by an evidently pre-arranged miracle, they found enough copters to carry them all.

_Chapter 16_ ▂▂▂▂▂▂VEGIAN JUSTICE

THE NEARER THEY got to their destination the more fidgety Vesta became. “Oh, I _hope_ Zambkptkn could get away and be there by now—I haven’t seen him for over half a year!”

“Who?” Helen asked.

“My brother. Zamke, you’d better call him, you can pronounce that. The police officer, you know.”

“I thought you saw him this morning?” Joan said.

“I saw my other brothers and sisters, but not him—he was tied up on a job. He wasn’t sure just when he could get away tonight.”

The copter dropped sharply. Vesta seized Cloud’s arm and pointed. “That’s where we’re going; that big building with the landing-field on the roof. The Caravanzerie. Zee?” In moments of emotion or excitement, most of Vesta’s sibilants reverted to Z’s.

“I see. And this is your Great White Way?”

It was, but it was not white. Instead, it was a blaze of red, blue, green, yellow—all the colors of the spectrum. And crowds! On foot, on bicycles, on scooters, motorbikes, and motortricycles, in cars and in copters, it seemed impossible that _anything_ could move in such a press as that. And as the aircab approached its destination Neal Cloud, space-hardened veteran and skillful flyer though he was, found himself twisting wheels, stepping on pedals, and cutting in braking jets, none of which were there.

How that jockey landed his heap and got it into the air again all in one piece without dismembering a single Vegian, Cloud never did quite understand. Blades were scant fractional inches from blades and rotors; people were actually shoved aside by the tapering bumpers of the cab as it hit the deck; but nothing happened. This, it seemed, was _normal_!

The group re-formed and in flying-wedge fashion as before, gained the elevators and finally the ground floor and the ballroom. Here Cloud drew his first full breath for what seemed like hours. The ballroom was tremendous—and it was less than three-quarters filled.

Just inside the doorway Vesta paused, sniffing delicately. “He _is_ here—come on!” She beckoned the six to follow her and rushed ahead, to be met at the edge of the clear space in head-on collision. Brother and sister embraced fervently for about two seconds. Then, reaching down, the man broke his sister’s grip and flipped her around sidewise, through half of a vertical circle, so that her feet pointed straight up. Then, with a sharp “_Blavzkt!_” he snapped into a back flip.

“_Blavzkt—Zemp!_” she shouted back, bending beautifully into such an arch that, as his feet left the floor, hers landed almost exactly where his had been an instant before. Then for a full minute and a half the joyous pair pinwheeled, without moving from the spot; while the dancers on the floor, standing still now, applauded enthusiastically with stamping, hand-clapping, whistles, cat-calls, and screams.

Vesta stopped the exhibition finally, and led her brother toward Cloud and Joan. The music resumed, but the dancers did not. Instead, they made a concerted rush for the visitors, surrounding them in circles a dozen deep. Vesta, with both arms wrapped tightly around Cloud and her tail around Joan, shrieked a highly consonantal sentence—which Cloud knew meant “Lay off these two for a couple of minutes, you howling hyenas, they’re mine”—then, switching to English: “Go ahead, you four, and have fun!”

The first two men to lay hands on the two tall Tellurian beauties were, by common consent and without argument, their first partners. Two of the Vegian girls, however, were not so polite. Both had hold of Joe, one by each arm, and stood there spitting insults at each other past his face until a man standing near by snapped a few words at them and flipped a coin. The two girls, each still maintaining her grip, leaned over eagerly to see for themselves the result of the toss. The loser promptly relinquished her hold on Joe and the winner danced away with him.

“Oh, this is _wonderful_, Storm!” Joan thought. “We’ve been _accepted_—we’re the first group I ever actually _knew_ of to really break through the crust.”

The Vegians moved away. Vesta released her captives and turned to her brother.

“Captain Cloud, Doctor Janowick, I present to you my brother Zamke,” she said. Then, to her brother: “They have been very good to me, Zambktpkn, both of them, but especially the captain. You know what he did for me.”

“Yes, I know.” The brother spoke the English “S” with barely a trace of hardness. He shook Cloud’s hand firmly, then bent over the hand, spreading it out so that the palm covered his face, and inhaled deeply. Then, straightening up: “For what you have done for my sister, sir, I thank you. As she has said, your scent is pleasing and will be remembered long, enshrined in the Place of Pleasant Odors of our house.”

Turning to Joan, and omitting the handshake, he repeated the performance and bowed—and when an adult male Vegian sets out to make a production of bowing, it is a production well worth seeing.

Then, with the suddenest and most complete change of manner either Cloud or Joan had ever seen he said: “Well, now that the formalities have been taken care of, Joan, how about us hopping a couple of skips around the floor?”

Joan was taken slightly aback, but rallied quickly. “Why, I’d love it . . . but not knowing either the steps or the music, I’m afraid I couldn’t follow you very well.”

“Oh that won’t make any. . . .” Zamke began, but Vesta drowned him out.

“Of _course_ it won’t make any difference, Joan!” she exclaimed. “Just go ahead and dance any way you want to. He’ll match your steps—and if he so much as touches one of your slippers with his big, fat feet, I’ll choke him to death with his own tail!”

“And I suppose it is irrefutable that you can and will dance with me with equal dexterity, aplomb, and insouciance?” Cloud asked Vesta, quizzically, after Joan and Zamke had glided smoothly out into the throng.

“You zaid it, little chum!” Vesta exclaimed, gleefully. “And I know what all those words mean, too, and if I ztep on either one of _your_ feet I’ll choke _my_ zelf to death with my _own_ tail, zo there!”

Snuggling up to him blissfully, Vesta let him lead her into the crowd. She of course was a superb dancer; so much so that she made him think himself a much better dancer than he really was. After a few minutes, when he was beginning to relax, he felt an itchy, tickling touch—something almost impalpable was creeping up his naked back—the fine, soft fur of the extreme tip of Vesta’s ubiquitous tail!

He grabbed for it, but, fast as he was, Vesta was faster, and she shrieked with glee as he missed the snatch.

“See here, young lady,” he said, with mock sternness, “if you don’t keep your tail where it belongs I’m going to wrap it around your lovely neck and tie it into a bow-knot.”

Vesta sobered instantly. “Oh . . . do you _really_ think I’m lovely, Captain Nealcloud—my neck, I mean?”

“No doubt about it,” Cloud declared. “Not only your neck—all of you. You are most certainly one of the most beautiful things I ever saw.”

“Oh, thanks . . . I hadn’t. . . .” she stared into his eyes for moments, as if trying to decide whether he really meant it or was merely being polite; then, deciding that he did mean it, she closed her eyes, let her head sink down onto his shoulder, and began to purr blissfully; still matching perfectly whatever motions he chose to make.

In a few minutes, however, they heard a partially-stifled shriek and a soprano voice, struggling with laughter, rang out.

“Vesta!”

“Yes, Babs?”

“What do you do about this tail-tickling business? I never had to cope with anything like _that_ before!”

“Bite him!” Vesta called back, loudly enough for half the room to hear. “Bite him good and hard, on the end of the tail. If you can’t catch the tail, bite his ear. Bite it good.”

“_Bite_ him? Why, I _couldn’t_—not _possibly_!”

“Well, then give him the knee, or clout him a good, solid tunk on the nose. Or better yet; tell him you won’t dance with him any more—he’ll be good.”

“_Now_ you tell us what to do about tail-ticklers,” Cloud said then. “S’pose I’d take a good bite at _your_ ear?”

“I’d bite you right back,” said Vesta, gleefully, “and I bet you’d taste just as nice as you smell.”

The dance went on, and Cloud finally, by the aid of both Vesta and Zamke, did finally manage to get one dance with Joan. And, as he had known he would, he enjoyed it immensely. So did she.

“Having fun, chum? I never saw you looking so starry-eyed before.”

“Oh, brother!” she breathed. “To say that I was never the belle of any ball in my schooldays is the understatement of the century, but here . . . can you imagine it, Storm, _me_ actually outshining Barbara Benton and Helen Worthington both at once?”

“Sure I can. I told you. . . .”

“Of course it’s probably because their own women are so big that I’m a sort of curiosity,” she rushed on, “but whatever the reason, this dance is going down in my memory book in great big letters in the reddest ink I can find!”

“Good for you—hail the conquering heroine!” he applauded. “It’ll do you good to have your ego inflated a little. But what do _you_ do about this tail-tickling routine?”

“Oh, I grab their tails”—with her sense of perception, she could, of course—“and when they try to wiggle them free I wiggle back at them, like this,” she demonstrated, “and we have a perfectly wonderful time.”

“Wow! I’ll bet you do—and when I get you home, you shameless. . . .”

“Sorry, Storm, my friend,” the big Vegian who cut in wasn’t sorry at all, and he and Cloud both knew it. “You can dance with Joan any time and we can’t. So loosen all clamps, friend. Grab him, Vzelkt!”

Vzelkt grabbed. So, in about a minute, did another Vegian girl; and then after a few more minutes, it was Vesta’s turn again. No other girl could dance with him more than once, but Vesta, by some prearranged priority, could have him once every ten minutes.

“Where’s your brother, Vesta?” he asked once. “I haven’t seen him for an hour.”

“Oh, he had to go back to the police station. They’re all excited and working all hours. They’re chasing Public Enemy Number One—a Tellurian, they think he is, named Fairchild—why?” as Cloud started, involuntarily, in the circle of her arm. “Do you know him?”

“I know _of_ him, and that’s enough.” Then, in thought: “Did you get that, Nordquist?”

“I got it.” Cloud was, as the Lensman had said that he would be, under surveillance every second. “Of course, this one may not be Fairchild, since there are three or four other suspects in other places, but from the horrible time we and the Vegians both are having, trying to locate this bird, I’m coming to think he is.”

The dance went on until, some hours later, there was an unusual tumult and confusion at the door.

“Oh, the police are calling Vesta—something has happened!” his companion exclaimed. “Let’s rush over—oh, hurry!”

Cloud hurried; but, as well as hurrying, he sent his sense of perception on ahead, and meshed his mind imperceptibly with Vesta’s as well.

Her mind was a queerly turbid, violently turbulent mixture of emotions: hot with a furiously passionate lust for personal, tooth-and-claw-revenge; at the same time icily cold with the implacable, unswervable resolve of the dedicated, remorseless, and merciless killer.

“Are you sure, beyond all doubt, that this is the garment of my brother’s slayer?” Vesta was demanding.