Norvis shrugged. "You're being ridiculously cryptic, but—no matter. What I wanted to ask was—why? Why did you have me thrown out of school? Why did you lie? Why did you wreck my life and the life of Nidor?"
"Why? To save your life, Norvis. Remember what happened to Dran peNiblo Sesom?"
Norvis nodded slowly. Dran peNiblo, the sniveling blockhead who had received the credit for discovering the growth hormone Norvis had worked so long and hard to find— Dran peNiblo had been mobbed and hanged because his discovery had caused the Great Depression.
"If you had taken credit for your work," the Earthman went on inexorably, "you would have died as surely as he did. Didn't you ever wonder why such a stupid, mean little creature was ever allowed to enroll at Bel-rogas?"
Norvis blinked. "You let him in just to use him as a scapegoat?"
"Why else? He was expendable— you weren't. And did we really ruin your life? You've been wealthier, happier, and more powerful this way than if you'd been hailed as the discoverer of the Growth Hormone."
"So poor Dran peNiblo was framed for death. You're a pack of ruthless scoundrels, Smith!" His finger tightened on the trigger, but he didn't quite press it—yet.
"So now it's 'poor Dran,' is it?" Smith asked sardonically. "And we're ruthless scoundrels? You're thinking isn't very clear tonight, Norvis peRahn. Are we more ruthless than you? Who was it who murdered the man who had befriended him and given him a good job when he was a youth without a weight to his name? Who was it who shot down Del peFenn Vyless in cold blood?"
Norvis' gun hand shook. How had the Earthman known that? How did they know so much? How—? He clamped down on his whirling thoughts.
"I did it for the good of Nidor," he said harshly. "Do you think I liked doing it? If Del had gone on with his tirades against the priests, the Merchants' Party would have collapsed in a year. He would never have stepped down peacefully and let Kris peKym take over. I had to do it—don't you see?" His voice became almost pleading at the end.
Smith answered softly, "We do see, Norvis. But we want you to see, too. Now do you know how we felt when they hanged an innocent boy? Now do you know how we felt when the students and priests of Bel-rogas were butchered by a howling mob? We could have stopped it. We knew the cobalt was buried there. Do you think Kris could have carried off such a stupid trick if we hadn't helped him?" Smith smiled. "We knew what would happen, and we didn't lift a finger to stop it—because it was for the good of Nidor."
For the first time, Norvis thought he saw a glimmer of light. "How?" he said. "Why?"
"Why? Now that you've lowered that pistol, I'll tell you."
Norvis looked at his gun hand. The pistol was pointed at the wet rock at his feet. He brought it up again—and stuck it in his belt.
"All right," he said. "Let's hear it."
Smith's bearded face broke into a grin. "Not here; you must be soaking wet."
"It's nothing. I—" And then, for the first time, he saw that Smith, standing there in the driving rain, was comfortably dry. The raindrops, now that he looked closer, seemed to be going around the Earthman somehow.
He suddenly felt very foolish. "The bullet would have done the same thing," he said aloud.
Smith nodded. "I'm afraid so. I didn't think you'd shoot, but I value my life very much." He reached inside the pearl-gray shirt and took out a small, flat box which had a belt attached to it. "Put this on," he said, handing it to Norvis. "It's a remote-control job, connected to my own; I'm afraid you couldn't handle the controls without practice."
Numbly, Norvis strapped on the little force-field generator. Smith did something with the box at his own waist, and Norvis felt himself suddenly surrounded by a warm thickening of the air around him.
"We're going up," said the Earthman. "Don't panic."
"I won't," Norvis said. Suddenly the ground dropped away from beneath him. He had no sense of motion; it was as though Nidor itself were falling away. He gasped. It was more frightening than anything he had ever felt.
"Relax," Smith said. "Don't look down. Look at me."
Norvis forced his head up. There was Smith, just standing there— with nothing below him. It was as though they were still on the ground.
"It's a little surprising the first time," Smith said. "But you get used to it."
"But—" There was something missing, and Norvis couldn't place it at first. Then it hit him. "Where's ... where's the blue glow?" he asked.
"This?" Smith touched his belt, and the familiar blue aura surrounded him for a few seconds. Then it blinked off.
"I see," Norvis said. "It isn't a necessary part of the machine's effect; it was just to impress us."
"Partly," agreed Smith, "but it was more to mislead you. If you Nidorians had thought we could float around in the air unseen, you'd have been constantly on the lookout for us at night. But as long as you expected a blue glow, we could do our snooping unsuspected and undetected."
A sudden fog enveloped them, and Norvis felt as though he were hanging suspended in nothingness. "Where are we going, Smith?" His voice sounded strangled and helpless.
"Hold on, Norvis. We're going through the cloud layer."
Suddenly, above him, Norvis saw a glow of light. It seemed to be moving toward him, brightening as it came.
"And what's that, Smith?"
"Just the open door of a spaceship," the Earthman said. "The men inside are guiding us toward it now."
They were floating just outside it, It was an open door in a wall of metal—hanging in the sky. Norvis' brain felt as though it were spinning dizzily with fear.
And then he and Smith were floating inside. The door closed behind them, and abruptly everything was all right again. He was standing in an ordinary room—well, all that metal and the queer things around the walls were strange, but it was a room—just a room. Not the terrifying nothingness he had just experienced. He stamped on the floor, enjoying the solid feel of the plastic-covered metal floor beneath his feet.
"Don't rock the boat, Norvis peRahn," said one of the Earthmen, laughing pleasantly.
Norvis looked at the two other Earthmen in the room. "Boat?" he said blankly. "Is this a boat?"
"Something like it," said Smith. "Norvis peRahn, I'd like you to meet my friends, Harrison and Davis."
Norvis nodded mutely. The Earthman Davis looked very much like Smith; Harrison's skin was darker, and he was beardless.
Then he noticed that the Earthmen were looking at him closely. "What's ... the ... matter?"
Davis and Harrison grinned. "Sorry," Davis said. "We've just never seen a Nidorian in the flesh before. You're a very handsome people."
"They're the crew of this small ship," Smith explained. "They've never seen the populated parts of Nidor, only the spacefield."
Norvis let out his breath. "Can I sit down?"
"Sure," Harrison said. He touched something on the wall, and a small, cunningly-concealed seat slid out. Norvis sat down gratefully. "You call this a ship," he said. "The idea of a ship that sails through the sky is fantastic!"
"Think so? How would you like to see the Great Light?"
In spite of himself, Norvis felt a tingle of shock.
"Before we do," Smith went on, "I'll explain what the Great Light is. It's simply a huge ball of incandescent gas."
"It?" Norvis had never heard the Great Light referred to with a neuter pronoun.
"It's a great ball of gas," Smith continued. "So big that your mind may have trouble grasping it, and so distant from Nidor that it's unbelievable. If there were a road leading from Nidor to the Great Light, and you had a fast deest that would never tire, and you rode at top speed, day and night—it would take you more than a thousand years to reach it!"