He had enlarged his private laboratory by tearing out four storerooms adjoining it; and the whole immense room was stacked to the ceiling with new apparatus and equipment. He was standing on a narrow catwalk, rubbing his bristly chin with the back of his hand as he wondered where he could put another two-ton tool, when Mergon and Luloy came swinging in; hand in hand as usual. Vastly different from Tammon, Mergon was not at all happy about the status quo.
“Listen, Tamm!” he burst out. “I’ve been yapping at you for a week and a half for a decision and your time is up as of right now. If you don’t pull your head out of the fourth dimension and make it right now I’ll do it myself and to hell with you and your authority as Captain-Commander.”
“Huh? What? Time? Decision? What decision?” It was plain that the old savant had no idea at all of what his first assistant was so wrought up about.
“You set course for Mallidax and said we were going back to Mallidax. That’s sheer idiocy and you know it. Of all places in the charted universe we should not go to, Mallidax is top and prime. We’re too close for comfort already. Even though Klazmon must have lost us back there in Sol’s system, he certainly picked us up again long ago and he’d give both wings and all his teeth for half the stuff you have here,” and Mergon waved both arms indicatively around the jam-packed room.
“Oh?” Tammon gazed owlishly at the pair. “There was some talk… but why should I care where we go? This is the merest trifle, Mergon. Do not bother me with trivia any more,” and Tammon cut communications with them as definitely as though he had thrown a switch.
Mergon shrugged his shoulders and Luloy giggled. “You’re it, boy. That’s what you get for sticking your neck out. All hail our new Captain-Commander!”
“Well, somebody had to. All our necks would have been in slings in another week. So pass the word, will you, and I’ll skip up to the control room and change course.”
Luloy spread the word; which was received with acclaim. Practically everybody aboard who was anybody agreed with Sennlloy when she said, “It’s high time somebody took over and Merg’s undoubtedly the best man for the job. Tammy’s a nice old dear, but ever since he got bitten by that fourth dimension germ he hasn’t known what month it is or which way is up or within forty million parsecs of where he it in space.”
“You see, Merg?” Luloy crowed, when it became evident that the shift in command was heartily approved. “I wouldn’t even dream of ever saying ‘I told you so’, but I said at the first meeting that you should be Captain commander, and now everybody thinks so, almost.”
“Yeah, almost,” he agreed; not at all enthusiastically. “Everybody except the half-wits. Pass the buck. Let George do it. Nobody with a brain firing on three barrels wants the job.”
“Why, that isn’t so, Merg. You know it isn’t!” she protested, indignantly.
“Well, I don’t want it,” he broke in, “but since Tamm wished it onto me I’ll take a crack at it.”
The Mallidaxian, swinging wide and braking down, hard, skirted the outermost edge of the Realm; the edge farthest away from Llurdiax. Mergon did not approach or signal to any planet of the Jelmi. Instead, he picked out an uninhabited Tellus-type planet four solar systems away from the Border and landed on it. And there, under cover of the superdreadnaught’s mighty defensive screens and with Captain-Commander Mergon tensely, on watch, the engineers and scientists disembarked, set up their high-order projectors, and went furiously to work building an enormous and enormously powerful dome.
The work went on uninterruptedly, day after day; for so many days that both Mergon and Luloy became concerned — the girl very highly so. “Do you suppose we’ve figured wrong?” she asked.
Mergon frowned. “I can’t be sure, of course, but I don’t think so. Pure logic, remember. Everything we’ve done has been designed to keep Klazmon guessing. Off balance. He’s fortified Llurdiax, that’s sure, but we don’t know how heavily and we can’t find out.”
He paused.
“Without using the gizmo, which of course is out,” said Luloy.
“Check. We haven’t sent any spy-rays or anything else. They wouldn’t have got us anything. But he certainly expected us to try. He’ll think we don’t care… which as a matter of fact, we don’t… too much. It’s almost a mathematical certainty that we can handle anything he can throw at us as of now. But if we give him time enough to build more really big stuff it’ll be just too bad.”
“And the horrible old monster is probably doing just exactly that,” Luloy said.
“I wouldn’t wonder. But we can finish the dome before he can build enough stuff, and he can’t let that happen. Especially since we’re not interfering with his prying and spying, but are treating him with the same contempt he used to treat us. That’ll bother him no end. Burn him up! Also… remember that stuff in the dome that no Llurd can possibly understand.”
Luloy laughed. “Because it isn’t anything whatever, really, except Llurd-bait? I’m scared that maybe they will understand it yet — even though I’m sure they won’t.”
“They can’t. Their minds won’t stretch that far in that direction,” Mergon said positively.
“They knew we made a breakthrough, so they’ll know that what they see is only a fraction of what the thing really is; and that’ll scare ’em. As much as Llurdi can be scared, that is. Which isn’t very much. So Klazmon will do something before our dome is finished. As I read the tea-leaves, he’ll have to.”
“But just suppose he doesn’t take the bait?”
“Then we’ll have to take the initiative. I don’t want to — it’d weaken our bargaining position tremendously — but I will if I have to.”
He did not have to. His analysis of the Llurdan mentality and temperament had been accurate.
Four full days before the scheduled date of completion of the dome, Klazmon’s full working projection appeared in the Mallidaxian’s control room. Mergon had detected its coming, but had done nothing to interfere with it. The Llurd quite obviously intended parley, not violence.
“Hail, brother Ilanzlan, Klazmon of the Llurdi,” Mergon greeted his visitor quietly, but in the phraseology of one ruler greeting another on the basis of unquestionable equality.
“Is there perhaps some service that I, Llanzlan Mergon of the Realm of the Jelmi, may perform for you and thus place you in my debt?”
This, to a human dictator, would have been effrontery intolerable; but Mergon had been pretty sure that it would have little or no effect, emotionally, upon Klazmon. Nor did it; to all seeming it had no effect at all. The Llurd merely said, “You wish me to believe that you Jelmi have made a breakthrough sufficiently important to justify the establishment of an independent but coexistent Realm of the Jelmi.”
This was in no sense a question; it was a flat statement. Mergon had been eminently correct in his assumption that he would not have to draw the Llurd a blueprint. Mergon quirked an eyebrow at Luloy, who pressed the button that signaled all the savants in the dome to drop their tools and dash back into the ship.
“That is correct,” Mergon said.
Klazmon’s projection remained motionless and silent; both Jelmi could almost perceive the Llurd’s thoughts. And Mergon, who had tracked the Llurd’s thoughts so unerringly so far, was practically certain that he was still on track.
Klazmon did not actually know whether the Jelmi had made a breakthrough or not. The Jelmi intended to make him believe that they had, and that breakthrough was something that made them either invulnerable or invincible, or both. Any of those matters or assumptions could be either true or false. One of them, the question of invulnerability, could be and should be tested without delay. If they were in fact invulnerable, no possible attack could harm them. If they were not invulnerable they were bluffing and lying and should therefore be eliminated.