Madlyn Mannis and Charles K. van der Gleiss were facing each other across a small table in a curtained booth; a table upon which a waiter was placing a pint of bonded hundred-proof bourbon and the various items properly accessory thereto. As soon as the curtain fell into place behind the departing waiter the girl seized the bottle, raised it to her mouth, and belted down a good two fingers — as much as she could force down before her coughing, choking, and strangling made her stop.
“Hey! Take it easy!” the man protested, taking the bottle from her hand and putting it gently down on the table. “You’re not used to guzzling it like that; that’s for plain damn sure.”
She gulped and coughed a few times; wiped her streaming eyes. “I’ll tell the world I’m not; two little ones is always my limit, ordinarily. But I needed that jolt, Charley, to keep from flipping my lid completely. Don’t you need one, too?”
“I certainly do. A triple, at least, with a couple of snowflakes of ice and about five drops of water.” He built the drink substantially as specified, took it down in three swallows, and drew a profoundly deep breath. “You heard me tell them I’m a petrochemical engineer, tee eight. So maybe that didn’t hit me quite as hard as it did you, but bottled courage helps, believe me.” He mixed another drink — a single — and cocked an eyebrow at the girl. “That’ll you have as a chaser for that God-awful belt?”
“A scant jigger — three-quarters, about — in a water glass,” she said, promptly. “Two ice-cubes and fill it up with acceptor.” He mixed the drink and she took a sip. “Thanks, Charley. This is much better for drinking purposes. Now maybe I can talk about what happened without blowing my top. I was going to wonder why we’ve been running into each other all the time lately, but that doesn’t amount to anything compared to… I actually thought… in fact, I know very well… we were on… weren’t we? Both of us?”
“We were both on the moon,” he said flatly. “To make things worse, we were inside a spaceship that I still don’t believe can be built. Those are facts.”
“Uh-uh; that’s what I mean. Positively nobody ever went to the moon or anywhere else off-Earth without being in something, and we didn’t have even the famous paddle. And posi-damn-tively nobody — but nobody! — ever got into and out of a tightly closed, vacuum-tight spaceship without anybody opening any doors or ports or anything. How do you play them tunes on your piccolo, friend?”
“I don’t; and the ship itself was almost as bad. Not only was it impossibly big; it was full of stuff that makes the equipment of the General Hoyt S. Vandenberg look like picks and shovels.” She raised an eyebrow questioningly and he went on, “One of the missile-tracking vessels — the hairiest hunks of electronic gadgetry ever built by man.
What it all adds up to is a race of people somewhere who know as much more than even the Norlaminians do as we do than grasshoppers. So I think we had better report to the cops.”
“The cops!” she spat the word out like an oath. “Me? Madlyn Mannis? Squeal to the fuzz? When a great big gorilla slugs me in the brisket and heists fifteen Brands’ worth of diamonds off of me and I don’t get…”
She broke off suddenly. Both had avoided mentioning the diamonds, but now the word was accidentally out. She shook her head vigorously, then said, “Uh-uh. They aren’t there. Who ever heard of diamonds by the quart? Anyway, even if that Luloy could have done it and did, I’ll bet they evaporated or something.”
“Or they’ll turn out to be glass,” he agreed. “No use looking, hardly, I don’t think. Even if they are there and are real, you couldn’t sell ’em without telling where they came from — and you can’t do that.”
“I couldn’t? Don’t be naive, Charley. Nobody ever asks me where I got any diamonds I sell — I’d slap his silly face off. I can peddle your half, too, at almost wholesale. Not all at once, of course, but a few at a time, here and there.”
“Half, Uh-uh,” he objected. “I was acting as your agent on that deal. Ten per cent.”
“Half,” she insisted; then grinned suddenly. “But why argue about half of nothing? To get back onto the subject of cops — the lugs! — they brushed my report off as a stripper’s publicity gag and I didn’t get even one line in the papers. And if I report this weirdie they’ll give me a oneway, most-direct-route ticket to the nearest funny-farm.”
“You’ve got a point there.” He glowered at his drink. “I can see us babbling about instantaneous translation through the fourth dimension and an impossible spaceship on the moon manned by people exactly like us — except that the men all look like Green Bay Packers and all the girls without exception are stacked like… like…” Words failed him.
Madlyn nodded thoughtfully. “Uh-huh,” she agreed. “They were certainly stacked. That Luloy… that biologist Sennlloy, who was studying all those worms and mice and things… all of ’em. And they swap hundred-carat perfect blue-white diamonds for books.”
“Yeah. We start babbling that kind of stuff and we wind up in wrap-arounds.”
“You said it. But we’ve got to do something!”
“Well, we can report to an Observer—”
“I’ve got a better idea. Let’s tie one really on.”
Neither of them remembered very much of what happened after that, but at about three o’clock the following afternoon Charley van der Gleiss struggled upward through 4 million miles of foul-tasting molasses to consciousness. He was lying on the couch in his living room; fully dressed, even to his shoes. He worked himself up, very carefully, to a sitting position and shook his head as carefully. It didn’t quite explode. Good — he’d probably live.
Walking as though on eggs, he made cautious way to the bedroom. She was lying, also fully dressed, on his bed. On the coverlet. As he sat gingerly down on the side of the bed she opened one eye, then the other, put both hands to her head, and groaned; her features twisting in agony. “Stop shaking me, you… please,” she begged. “Oh, my poor head! It’s coming clear off… right at the neck…”
Then, becoming a little more conscious, she went on, “It didn’t go back into the woodwork, Charley, did it? I’ll see that horrible moonscape and that naked Luloy as long as I live.”
“And I’ll see that nightmare of a spaceship. While you’re taking the first shot at the bathroom I’ll have ’em send up a gallon of black coffee, a couple of quarts of orange juice, and whatever the pill-roller downstairs says is good for what ails us. In the meantime, would you like a hair of the dog?”
“My God, no!” She shuddered visibly. “I never got drunk in my life before — I have to keep in shape, you know — and if I live through this I swear I’ll never take another drink as long as I live!”
When they began to feel better Madlyn said, “Why don’t you peek into that drawer, Charley? There just might be something in it.”
He did, and there was, and he gave her the honor of lifting the soft plastic bag out of the drawer.
“My God!” she gasped. “There’s four or five pounds of them!” She opened the bag with trembling fingers and stood entranced for half a minute, then took out a few of the gems and examined them minutely.
“Charley,” she said then, “if I know anything about diamonds — and I admit that I know a lot — these are not only real, but the finest things I have ever seen. I’m almost afraid to try to sell even the littlest ones. Men just simply don’t give girls rocks like that. I’m not even sure that there are very many others like those around. If any.”
“Well, we would probably have had to talk to an Observer anyway, and this makes it a forced putt. Let’s go, Maddy.”