Gregor suddenly became invisible except for his clothes.
"How do you feel?" Arnold asked.
"No different."
"Eat some more."
Gregor ate another double handful of leaves. And, suddenly, he was gone. Clothes and all, he had vanished.
"Gregor?" Arnold called anxiously.
"Are you anywhere around?" Arnold asked.
There was still no answer.
"He's gone," Arnold said out loud, "I didn't even wish him luck."
Arnold turned to his solutions boiling on the stove and lowered the flame under them. He worked for fifteen minutes, then stopped and stared around the room.
"Not that he should need any luck," Arnold said. "There can't be any real danger."
He prepared his dinner. Halfway through it, with a forkful of food poised in front of his mouth, he added, "I should have said good-by."
Resolutely, he put all dark thoughts out of his mind and turned to his experiments. He labored all night and fell exhausted into bed at dawn. In the afternoon, after a hurried breakfast, he continued working.
Gregor had been gone over twenty-four hours.
The Seerian telephoned that evening and Arnold had to assure him that the slegs were nearly under control. It was just a matter of time.
After that, he read through his rodent manuals, straightened his equipment, rewired an armature in the Morganizer, played with a new idea for a sleg trap, burned a new crop of invisible plants and slept again.
When he awoke, he realized that Gregor had been gone over seventy-two hours. His partner might never return.
"He was a martyr to science," Arnold said. "I'll raise a statue to him." But it seemed a very meager thing to do. He should have eaten the plant himself. Gregor wasn't much good in unusual situations. He had courage — no one could deny that — but not much adaptability.
Still, all the adaptability in the world wouldn't help you inside a sun, or in the vacuum of space, or—
He heard a noise behind him, and whirled eagerly, shouting, "Gregor!"
But it was not Gregor.
The creature who stood before Arnold was about four feet tall and had entirely too many limbs. His skin color appeared to be a grayish-pink, under a heavy layer of dirt. He was carrying a heavy sack. He wore a high peaked hat on his high peaked head, and not much else.
"You aren't Gregor, are you?" Arnold asked, too stunned to react properly.
"Of course not," the creature replied. "I'm Hem."
"Oh… Have you seen my partner, by any chance? His name is Richard Gregor. He's about a foot taller than I, thin and—"
"Of course I've seen him," Hem said. "Isn't he here?"
"No."
"That's odd. Hope nothing went wrong." He sat down and proceeded to scratch himself intently under three armpits.
Feeling giddy, Arnold asked, "Where do you come from?"
"From Oole, naturally," Hem said. "That's where we plant the scomp. And it comes out here."
"Just a moment." Arnold sat down heavily. "Suppose you start at the beginning."
"It's perfectly simple. For generations, we Oolens have planted the scomp. When the scomp is young, it disappears for a few weeks. Then the mature plant appears again in our fields and we harvest it and eat it."
"You're going too fast for me. Where did you say Oole is?"
"Gregor says Oole is in a parallel universe. I wouldn't know about that. He appeared in the middle of my fields about two months ago and taught me English. Then—"
"Two months?" Arnold echoed. He considered. "Different time framework, I suppose. Never mind. Go on."
"Do you have something to eat?" Hem asked, "Haven't eaten in three days. Couldn't, you know." Arnold handed him a loaf of bread and a jar of jam. "Well, when they opened the new North Territory," Hem said, "I put in an early bid. So I packed my animals, purchased three class B wives and departed for my claim. Once there, I—"
"Stop!" Arnold begged. "What has this got to do with anything?"
"This is how it all happened. Don't interrupt."
Scratching his left shoulder with one hand while stuffing bread and jam in his mouth with two others, Hem explained, "I reached the new territory and planted scomp. It blossomed and disappeared, as always. But when it reappeared, most of it had been consumed by some creature. Well, farmers have to expect trouble, so I planted again. The next crop was still too poor to harvest. I was furious. I determined to continue planting. We pioneers are a determined lot, you understand. But I was just about to give up and return to civilization when your partner came—"
"Let me see if I understand so far," Arnold said. "You are from a universe parallel to ours. This scomp you plant grows in two universes, in order to complete its development."
"That's correct—at least it's how Gregor explained it to us."
"It seems an odd way to grow food."
"We like it," the Oolen said stiffly. He scratched behind all four knees. "Gregor says that our plants usually penetrate some uninhabited part of your universe. But this time, when I sowed in new territory, the scomp came up here."
"Aha!" Arnold cried.
"Aha? He didn't teach me that word. Anyhow, Gregor helped me. He told me I didn't have to abandon my land; I just had to use my other fields. Gregor assures me that there is no one-to-one spatial correspondence between parallel universes, whatever that means. And this is in payment for our other business."
Hem dropped the heavy sack on the floor. It made a loud clunk as it landed. Arnold opened it and peered inside.
The bars of yellow metal looked exactly like gold ingots.
Just then, the telephone rang. Arnold picked it up.
"Hello," Gregor said, from the other end. "Is Hem there yet?"
"Yes…"
"He explained it all, didn't he? About the parallel universe and how the scomp grows?"
"I think I understand," Arnold said. "But—"
"Now listen," Gregor continued, "Before, when we destroyed the plants, he sowed them again. Since his time is much longer than ours, they grew here overnight. But that's over. He's moving his fields. The next time you destroy the scomp, it'll stay destroyed. Wait a week, then turn the cats and the Morganizer loose."
Arnold shut his eyes tightly. Gregor had had two months to figure all this out. He hadn't. It was happening too fast for him.
"What about Hem?" he asked.
"He'll eat some scomp and go home. We had to starve it out of ourselves to get here."
"All right," Arnold said. "I think I—just a minute! Where are you?"
Gregor chuckled. "There's no one-to-one correspondence between parallel universes, you know. I was standing on the edge of the field when the scomp wore off. I came out on the planet Thule."
"But that's on the other side of the Galaxy!" Gregor gasped.
"I know. I'll meet you back on Earth. Be sure to bring the gold."
Arnold hung up. Hem had gone.
It was only then that Arnold realized he hadn't asked Gregor what the other business was, the business that the Oolen had paid for in solid gold.
He found out later, when they were both back on Earth, in the offices of AAA Ace. The job was done. The slegs, returned to visibility, had been decimated by the cats and the Morganizer. Their contract was completed. They had to forfeit part of their profit, because the job ran two weeks overtime, but the loss was more than made good by the bars of Oolen gold.
"His fields were overrun with our cats," Gregor told Arnold. "They were scaring his livestock. I rounded them all up and we sold them to the Oole Central Zoo. They never saw anything like them. He and I split the take."