"Yes."
"Well, I know all about the Flying Cube and what it's going to do to you, Roc. Get that food and we'll talk." Roc did not answer. He went through the doorway; and Jimmy heard the snap of the door-slide as it closed upon him.
Left alone, Jimmy examined the room in which he was imprisoned. No way, apparently, of getting out. Much good it would do him, to get out until they landed on Mercury.
He went to the window. The Earth hung level with it, a great disk spreading half across the firmament. The ball had now a very slow axial rotation. The Earth, the Moon and all the starfield slowly swung; presently the Sun was visible.
Roc did not return. He sent in the meal. Jimmy confronted the sullen woman who had attacked Rowena.
"Where is Roc?"
"He no come. Not now. Once again maybe, later." She put down the thin metal slab on which Jimmy's meal was arranged. She had left the door-slide open; Roc evidently did not much fear that Jimmy would try leaving the room. As she closed the door-slide, Jimmy called: "Tell Roc to come in here!" But Roc did not come. Jimmy bad no way of calculating the time. He slept, and Muta served him his meals. The ball's axial rotation continued. Outside Jimmy's single window the heavens passed in slow horizontal procession.
Then Roc brought Jimmy's meal. While Jimmy ate he squatted on the floor. He thumped his chest.
"Master of Mercury, and Tama my mate to help me rule iti" A crafty look was on the Mercurians face. "I love Tama.
It was a fortunate choice tor me. She is leader of the flying virgins. They have always been rebellious. With Tama as my mate I can win them.'"
"Diplomacy," said Jimmy, "is a great thing. But maybe Tama is rebellious too?"
"I shall win her."
"Not force her?"
"No, unless she makes it necessary."
"What do you want of me?"
"Perhaps as what you call a hostage," Roc promptly returned. "The Earth vehicle might attack us. They would not want me to kill you. That Cube is in sight now"
"Is it?" Jimmy involuntarily turned to the window, but Roc stopped him.
"Eat your meal. It is not visible yetonly with my detection instruments."
"Will you attack It?" Jimmy held his breath.
"No. I cannot. And it will not attack me. That is one advantage of having you here. You and Tama and that big Earth-girl you call Rowena." Roc rose to his feet. "We will talk again."
"Sit down a minute," Jimmy urged. "You mention Rowena.
What do you want of her?"
"I brought her," said Roc, "for Dorrek. Or at least, he Rmbcs ao." Roc's crafty look came back; again he lowered his voice. "I would rather trust you, Earthman, than any Mercurian of the Cold Country. This Rowena makes a good hostage now. That is what interests me. I do not wish to harm her."
"No, I believe you don't. But there's Dorrek"
"A leader of many men, is Dorrek. I need them so I need him. Yet" His voice fell still lower: "I have been in the Light Country for many years. This Dorrekthese eight other men with us here nowthey are strange to me. I command them, because I am my father's son. But I cannot trust them. I did not realize it when we started for Earth, but I do now. So you see, Jimmy Turk, why I want to make friends with you? I am really alone here on this flight." A pulse was pounding in Jimmy's throat. For the first time l,Ai.ViA, Z \11* Uuu v-I------ -'he felt that he and Roc were talking without duplicity. A bond was between them. They both desired, at least, the present safety of Tama and Rowena. And they were shut up here with what Jimmy now realized were barbarians, savages of a strange planet. Roc was bad enough; but Jimmy realized now these others were infinitely worse.
"You mean," said Jimmy tensely, "he might slip a knife into you? Now that your father is out of the way, if he got rid of you, would he be the leader then of this invasion or conquest or whatever it is you are planning?"
"Yes."
"Look here," pursued Jimmy, "hadn't you better give me a weapon?"
"And have you turn it on me?"
"Don't be a fool, Roc. I'm with youfor this flight, anyway. See here, we're shut up in this damn little ball" They were startled by a sound outside the door. Roc's cylinder weapon sprang into his hand. He shoved it back to his belt with a laugh.
"Talking like this makes me nervous." He and Jimmy were on their feet. Jimmy gripped him, whispered, "See herethose girls, don't let anything happen to them" The slide abruptly opened. It was the giant, DoJ,tde.What had he heard? His face was impassive as he stooped and squeezed through the little doorway. He spoke to Roc in the Mercurian tongue. Roc said in English: "The Earth vehicle can be seen now." They went to the window, waited a moment for the ball's axial rotation to bring the Earth into view. Jimmy stood gazing at the slowly shifting, starfield; but he was very conscious of the giant Mercurian beside him. Roc was undoubtedly an unscrupulous, crafty scoundrel. But at least one could talk to him, perhaps almost reason with him.
Jimmy's surreptitious, gaze roved Doirek. Six and a half feeta gigantic hulk of a man, with a gray, flat, flabby face, heavy jowls and a broken nose. An animalskin was draped now across his bulging, hairless chest.
Other Mercurians crowded in to question Roc about the approaching Eaitilship. Men of smaller stature, but with the same heavy barbaric look that characterized Dorrek.
' A babble of unintelligible Mercurian words enveloped Jimmy. Suddenly Jimmy thought of the girls on the lower tier.
The woman Muta might be down there alone with them.
He flashed Roc a significant look.
"Let's go down, see it from below. Why wait up here?" Tama and Rowena were standing at one of the lower windows. Strangely contrasting types, these girls of different worlds. They stood with arms around each other. Rowena's tall figure was draped in the brown dressing gown; her hair fell in brown braids down her back. Her extended arm with the robe was thrown out over Tama's wings, enveloping the small Mercurian girl who leaned affectionately against her.
Their backs were to the room; and its only other occupant at the moment was Muta. She stood against the wall gazing with heavy brooding eyes at Rowena.
They saw the Cube draw level and check its accelera-' tton, sweeping along with them some ten miles away. They saw me leave as a tiny projectile hurtling toward them across the intervening void. Roc kept everyone away from the windows; he threw his mechanism to neutral so that 't~~e attractive mass of the ball might capture and hold me. ' Roc had' no way of knowing the identity of this emissary sent by the Earth vehicle. But when I had closely approached, Jimmy could guess. He thought it likely that the personnel of the Cube now was the same as upon its first flight, when Jimmy himself had been aboard. And as my bloated, grotesquely helmeted figure now encircled Roc's ship, drawing inward until I fell against the gleaming side, Jimmy guessed who it was, for I was by far the tallest man on the Cube.
The occupants of the ball crowded one of its lower compartments at the inner entrance of the air lock chamber.
The inner slide was closed.
Jimmy said nothing. He stood tense beside Roc at the gauges of the pressure port. They saw my figure as I crawled like a fly outside the windows. I came against the outer entrance slide. Roc shoved at a lever.
They felt the vibration of the metal wall as I tumbled to the floor of the air lock.
VI WEAPONS THE AIR LOCK was black. I lay huddled on its floor. I could feel the air pressure coming into it. For a moment or two I crouched, clinging to my knife. When the air in the lock reached the pressure of the interior of the hall, the inner door would open, no doubt; and the Mercurians would leap upon me. I had an instinct to put up a -fight, if I saw that Jimmy was free. It was a chance for us. But now I felt that it would be too dangerous, shut up here in this tiny world, to start acts of violence with Rowena and Tama aboard.