Part 2

Then Morguma came and led them to a huge boiler factory that was fitted as a dining room, where they toyed with Centaur food and ate vita-horm capsules salvaged from their ship.

After that, it was out to the asteroid belt for another load of frozen atmosphere.

"Oh, Hell," said O'Dea. They were going back to their quarters after another day's work. "If it wasn't for that picture of Mercedes, I'd throw in my buttons. I'm dying to see a human being again!"

Hawthorne's homely face turned suspiciously to him. "I'm here, ain't I?"

O'Dea raised an eyebrow and turned away. A fleet of powerful Centaur dreadnaughts was landing. They had just performed the fabulous task of transporting a huge frozen lake to Avignon--a miracle of coordination.

O'Dea filled his lungs with air. He removed the blanket from his shoulders, let his chest rise and fall evenly.

"Almost as good as Earth," he said. "This air is wonderful now, but it's wasted. Only two humans to breathe it--hey!"

He stared at the spindly mountain that rose to a dizzy peak at the far end of the valley. A thin stream of smoke rose from it.

"I never noticed that before. Morguma--is that a volcano?"

Morguma, who had paused to watch them enjoy the air, looked toward the steaming mountain top and uncovered his fangs in a friendly smile.

"Entirely without harm, my charming friends of Earth! Our great scientists have performed in full an investigation. There is absolutely no danger from that volcano!"

O'Dea peered suspiciously at the distant cone. "If that thing ever goes off, this valley will be buried!"

"Oh fear not that this luscious land will be demolished, my beautiful comrades! Not a hair of your lovely heads will be harmed!"

Hawthorne growled. O'Dea made a fist of his right hand, rubbed it thoughtfully. But he shrugged, looking at the Centaur's twelve arms. They continued into the noisy dining room.

As they entered, Hawthorne stopped short and glared. Suddenly shaking with anger, he waved his fist at Morguma.

"This is the limit! You can kill me, but I don't have to stand for--this!"

* * * * *

His gesture swept the huge room. On every chair was hung bouquets of riotously colored Centaurian flowers. The walls were padded with garlands, and huge vases were in the center of each table. From the ceiling, more streamers of blossoms dipped low.

O'Dea's lips twitched, trying to hold back a grin. He watched the solid, plain features of the husky pilot become dark with fury.

"Wait Paul," he said quickly, "until we find out what it's all about." He turned to Morguma. "What happens here, my reptilian _amigo_?"

"A holiday! Tomorrow is the birthday of his supreme magnificence, _The_ Centaur! On the anniversary of his coming into the world as the son of a humble fish cleaner, we honor this great person by desisting from all labor!"

"Oh--the big shot's birthday." O'Dea held a hand on Hawthorne's arm as the pilot started to cool off. He stared at the huge portrait of a giant, moronic Centaur leering unintelligently down at them.

"A few little glands controlling a whole solar system," he mused. "I'm glad that rhino never leaves his palace."

He turned his eyes from the dictator's portrait, took Hawthorne's arm and guided him away. The two men walked to their customary places. When they found their chairs, Hawthorne stopped and growled again. He stared distastefully at the decorations on their chairs.

They were flowers--flowers from Earth.

And they were pansies.

Hawthorne pushed them disgustedly from the arms of his chair and settled down in glum resignation.

Morguma took his place at O'Dea's left. O'Dea glanced at Hawthorne on his right and chuckled. He turned to the Centaur,

"Terrestrial flowers? How come?"

"I ecstasize to see your pleasure," Morguma drooled. "One of our brave captains took a ship to your delightful world, succeeded in plucking fragrant specimens of fauna and flora to populate this world. There are now animals and vegetation from Earth thriving happily on this globe!"

"So ... any humans?"

A tear trickled down Morguma's leathery cheek. "Oh it was so sad! The humans resisted--poor misguided creatures! They all lost their valuable lives and we will have to return for more!"

O'Dea put down the Centaurian mushroom he had been preparing to taste. The grin disappeared from his face as he shoved back his chair and faced Morguma. There was a deadly something in his eyes that seemed out of place in the usually carefree features.

"Another of your nonchalant slaughters." His voice was a low monotone. "Morguma, you'll pay for that--you and your grinning murder pals--"

His hand closed around the steaming cup of Centaurian coffee and he flung the liquid into the Centaur's face.

III

An hour later he sat on his bed and rubbed his aching jaw. He peered through a puffed eye at Hawthorne beside him. The pilot's blunt face was all grin.

"So I'm the primitive savage!" Hawthorne doubled in laughter. "You're the one who acted intelligent like a guinea pig tonight!"

"Laugh, you ape!" O'Dea groaned and moved his jaw tenderly. "Not broken, I guess. But Morguma sure packs _quintol_ in those cornerstones he uses for fists. All twelve of them!"

"_Quintol_--that's it." Hawthorne pulled a bottle from under his shirt. He looked patronizingly at O'Dea. "There's enough _quintol_ here to get four Centaurs blind drunk!"

"Well, start slopping it up, slop!"

"This bottle," said Hawthorne patiently, "is our dictator's birthday present to our friend Morguma. The Centaurs will appreciate such a gesture of friendship!"

O'Dea stared through unbelieving black eyes at him. "Why, you--rat!--"

"Tomorrow," Hawthorne went on, "is a holiday. Nobody works except us. That's as a token of interstellar good will. We work and the Centaurs rest--except our good friend Morguma, who will be along to keep an eye on us. Morguma deserves a little fun, too."

O'Dea crawled out of his bunk and advanced with hard fists. He was promptly shoved back by the grinning Hawthorne.

"Don't you see?" Hawthorne demanded. "We get Morguma so pie-eyed he won't know what's going on. Then--"

He drew a stubby forefinger across his throat and made a croaking noise. O'Dea pried his puffed eyelids apart and beamed in pleased understanding. His lips parted slowly in a grin that would have done credit to a Centaur.

"Oh, I am ecstatic!" he said.

* * * * *

Morguma was ecstatic when he received his present. Tears of happiness gushed down his cheeks as O'Dea presented the vacuum bottle with a flowery oration. He seemed to have forgotten the incident of the previous night, and took no notice of O'Dea's bruised features.

The happy creature crushed O'Dea to his bosom with several bear-like arms.

"Oh my dear bosom friends! My heart would swell with song if I were able to sing! Oh you fortunate humans, to be able to sing!"

O'Dea broke loose from the embrace and rubbed his ribs. He looked cheerfully at Hawthorne.

"As soon as he's _non compos mentis_," he whispered, "we'll slug the lug, and--"

"Shut up," Hawthorne growled softly. "You'll queer everything."

The pilot took his place at the control board and they pushed out to the asteroid belt. Morguma settled himself in his usual chair at the rear of the control room and tantalized himself by smelling the _quintol_.

"Oh how wonderful!" he enthused. "Aged in the bottle, too! How I love humans!"

O'Dea glanced impatiently from the corner of his eye. The Centaur was in no hurry to consume the _quintol_. They were approaching the asteroid belt before he had put much inside him.

The two men stalled by chasing down worthless rocks until half the liquor was inside the Centaur. Morguma's six eyes gradually became glassier and glassier. He started to sway a little in his chair.

"Gonna get the mosh wonnerful piesh of d'lightful oshy--oshygen you ever shaw!" he announced. "There'sh shtupendous piesh. Oh I am rap--rapshurous!"

"It's only a piece of pumice!" O'Dea insisted.

"Itsh oshygen! Lovely beaut'ful delecbub--delect'ble oshygen!" Morguma staggered toward them. "Put sheizure beam on lovely oshygen!"

The seizures clamped on the stone as O'Dea shrugged and threw out the beams. Morguma took another long nip and let his eyes swim into focus on the dials. He looked hurt.

"Not oshygen? Not lovely oshygen? Oh I am eshcruchiated!"

The creature sobbed and took another drink. He staggered back and fell into his chair, where he fell into a weeping spree, his head buried in his hands.

O'Dea glanced swiftly. His elbow dug into Hawthorne's ribs.

Hawthorne nodded. They quietly picked up the wrenches they had kept nearby; started toward Morguma.

One on each side, they moved cautiously. Silently they moved forward until they came within striking distance.

Hawthorne waved O'Dea back, gesturing to his own powerful right arm. O'Dea nodded, poised his weapon for the follow up swing. Hawthorne raised the wrench.

And then Morguma's whip flicked out.

* * * * *

Hawthorne's eyes remained fastened to his empty hand as the wrench clattered into a corner. Again the snap of Centaur leather, and O'Dea's weapon joined the other. The two men stood foolishly, like a pair of boys caught stealing apples. Morguma spoke:

"Oh you bad bad people! Go back to control board; let poor Morguma alone. Oh I am deshicated to think you would do thish to poor old frien' Morguma!"

They slunk back to their posts. O'Dea raised his helpless eyes to the portrait above the controls.

"What can I do, Mercedes?" he whispered. "The guy is stiffer than King Tut and still you can't beat him!"

They avoided each other's eyes. Each knew what the other was thinking. Defeat meant that the Centaur had won. There would be no warning to Earth.

Avignon would become a planet of slave humans, blindly following the skillful teachings of the Centaurs. They would infiltrate Earth, tear down from within.... Generations would be required, but the Centaurs had time. They thought in long term strategy.

Hawthorne was staring unbelievingly through the telescope. His trembling fingers closed on O'Dea's arm.

"Let go, you ape--"

O'Dea stopped, impelled by the smoldering hope in the eyes that warned him to silence. He glanced swiftly to be sure that Morguma was still hunched stupidly in his chair, then followed Hawthorne's gaze. He gasped at what they saw.

In their line of vision was a mass that looked like twisted wire, coiled up in a planless tangle. O'Dea leaned forward, stared without belief.

"Our fuel," he breathed. "If we can get hold of that--"

Hawthorne waved him frantically, silently, to the seizure beams. O'Dea tiptoed to the levers, waited with one eye on Morguma while Hawthorne crept up on the precious fuel.

O'Dea eyed the dials, hands shaking on the control bars. There was no mistake! It was indeed their fuel, forced out of the hole in their tanks by internal pressure. Pressed out into space in a priceless ribbon, it had frozen into this amorphous mass!

O'Dea's heart was heavy in his ears. His suddenly feverish eyes darted to the apparently-sleeping Morguma, then to the smiling portrait of Mercedes.

Hawthorne nodded imperatively. The ship jolted slightly as the seizure beams went on. The fuel was clamped rigid before them. Morguma stirred and studied them with glazed eyes. His thick voice croaked:

"Whazzhat? Oshygen? Lovely precious oshygen?"

"That's right, Morguma. Oshygen--I mean oxygen." O'Dea brought the chunk closer, trying hard to look natural. "It looks so lovely I'd like to take a chunk on board and sniff it right now!"

"Oh whassa lovely ideas!" Morguma, still clutching his whip and his bottle, navigated by dead-drunk reckoning to the vision plate in the control room's belly. He peered stupidly at the coiled fuel. O'Dea feared that the sound of his breathing would sober the Centaur. He held the breath in his pounding lungs.

"'s funny oshygen!" Morguma mumbled. "Mosh funniesh oshygen I ever seen!" He brightened. "Mush be a rare ishotype! Oh mush be lov'liesh oshygen in whole galaxy!"

He closed all but one eye and tried to read the dials. Furtively, O'Dea turned the telescope into the asteroid belt, and the instruments swayed as badly as Morguma himself. The Centaur shuddered and turned away.

"Broken! All the metersh mush be drunk! Can't eshamine lovely oshygen!"

He started sobbing.

"Oh, come now, old man," said O'Dea, sympathetically. "We can bring a piece of it inside the ship and look at it first hand--"

"Wunnerful ideas! Wunnerful!"

Morguma slapped O'Dea's back affectionately. O'Dea picked himself off the floor and staggered in a great circle to the control board.

A thin seizure beam stabbed at a corner of the fuel, broke off a generous chunk. Under O'Dea's trained fingers, it moved toward the ship, through the belly lock.

Then it was in the cabin.

IV

Hawthorne had been doctoring the thermostats. In the heated room the highly volatile _quintol_-base fuel started swiftly to vaporize. O'Dea felt his head beginning to reel as the acrid fumes filled his lungs. His eyes burned.

But the effect on the Centaur was greater. He became rigid and turned even more glassy-eyed. He swayed and for a tense second seemed about to fall over. Then his eyes focussed with a desperate effort, almost sobered by fear.

"_Quintol!_" He raised the whip. "Not oshygen!"

He lost his footing as Hawthorne banked the ship. Ordinarily this would have been no strain on his Centaur sense of balance. But the _quintol_ was too much for him. He crashed to the floor. When he picked himself up, he stood for a few seconds, stiff as rigor mortis, then he pitched down again on his face.

O'Dea unwrapped himself from a chenille curtain. He rubbed his head and stared at the prostrate Centaur.

"What a skinful! He looks almost as bad as you, Paul! Must be something he ate. Let's dump him through the lock and hurry back to Earth."

"Get into a space suit and stow the fuel away," growled Hawthorne. "I'll chain this critter up and we'll take him home with us. But first, we'll leave a souvenir to those Centaurs on Avignon!"

The fuel stowed in the tanks, O'Dea climbed back into the ship and pulled at his space suit fastenings. He looked happily at the well-manacled Centaur, still in a drunken stupor.

"The air is better now," he observed. "Let's get on our way back to Earth and--hey! What're you up to?"

Hawthorne was ripping the flowery seat covers and soft curtains from their fastenings, piling them near the airlock. When they were all gathered, he shoved them out and watched happily through the vision plate as they floated away from the ship.

O'Dea grinned. "You're cooking with _quintol_, at that. The boys would never let us forget it if we came home furnished like that!"

Hawthorne grunted and pulled at Morguma's manacles. He went back to the telescope, studied space ahead for a while. Then he nodded, satisfied.

"That one should do," he mused.

"Should do what?" O'Dea wondered.

"That big rock ahead should be a good farewell gift to the Centaurs. We'll fly over their camp, and--"

A knowing smile was on Hawthorne's lips as he nosed up on a tiny asteroid. When they came close enough, the asteroid proved to be bigger than the ship.

Gradually, they trapped it in the seizure beams. Hawthorne fought grimly against inertia. The asteroid began to pull ahead of its orbit, and finally it was under full control of their engines.

* * * * *

Space was clear all the way back to Avignon. No Centaur ships were off the ground--there was nothing to challenge them. Hawthorne blasted straight for the valley of Centaur ships.

The motors strained, overheated, with the huge asteroid they lugged. When they entered the atmosphere, the vessel dropped almost like a dead weight.

O'Dea looked worried.

"That big factory, Paul. That's the best objective, and you're way off from it. Bear right--"

"Small game!" Hawthorne leered, a superior smile on his lips. "Just do what I said--keep your fingers one inch above the release key and push down fast when I give the word!"

O'Dea stared into the valley below. They were falling fast and the huge chunk of rock almost cut off the vision. But they were moving forward as well as down, and the long lines of Centaur ships and factories were being left far behind. O'Dea shook his head, fingered with one hand some of his bruises.

Then his eyes widened. Dead ahead and coming up fast to meet them, was a mountain. From a pit in its narrow tip rose a trickle of smoke.

"Get ready!" Hawthorne shouted.

O'Dea could almost see into the crater. He held his sweating palm ready.

"Now!"

Before Hawthorne finished barking the command, O'Dea's hand shot down, releasing the seizure beams. The ship catapulted skyward as the weight was suddenly dropped. The pilot fought the pounding rockets. When it was under control, Hawthorne circled back over the valley.

They stared at the mass of earth that tumbled down the mountain side in a gathering avalanche. Their asteroid plunged bouncing into the valley below, shaking the entire volcano each time it hit. New avalanches started in its wake.

Then the volcano exploded.

A thousand feet of rocky cone disappeared in a fiery murderous cloud. Flaming lava and flying rock filled the air for miles. Hawthorne worked frantically for altitude as molten crimson streamers of hell streaked skyward.

In Avignon's stratosphere, they looked down through the glaring lava that hid the valley.

An anguished voice broke in:

"Oh I cannot believe it of you!"

And Morguma started to cry.

O'Dea pulled the pilot's chair to one side, reached into an opening in the floor beneath it. He drew forth two bundles of clothing. The two men stripped off their greasy coveralls, put on the clean clothes.

Morguma stared unbelievingly at the crisp olive green uniforms of Earth's space force. The grimy faces of Hawthorne and O'Dea grinned happily from under the jaunty caps. On the shoulders of each were the twin platinum bars of space captains.

"Spies! Oh you unnatural men, to bite the very hand that fed you--"

"--and cracked the whip," O'Dea finished sharply. "If you want to be technical, we were in uniform all the time--those coveralls are regulation work clothes. And all is fair in love and war, you know. We came to Centauri on a reconnaissance job, and ran into some luck."

He sighed happily, turned his eyes to the portrait above the control board.

Hawthorne chuckled. He was reading a thin tape that ran through his fingers.

"I have the ethertype machine running," he said. "News from Earth. And look at the very first item!"

He passed it over. O'Dea's grin disappeared as he read. He growled at the tape, flung it from him.

"So she married a rocket hand while my back was turned! Well--"

He frowned for a moment. Then his shoulders rose and fell in a carefree shrug.

"I go bigger for blondes, anyway. First thing I'm going to do after we report is head for Lidice, Venus, and go on the biggest tear in the history of the space guard. That'll be--"

There was a faintly disturbed look in Paul Hawthorne's eyes. But he soothed his conscience with the thought that O'Dea would be just as well off without Mercedes. So he saw no reason to tell Captain Lance O'Dea that he had typed out the story on the ethertype himself. Because all is fair in love as well as in war.

And Captain Paul Hawthorne was in love with Mercedes, too.