“Oh, she’s out at the landing field,” Rabd answered, “supervising last-minute stuff going into the ship. After all, we begin our mating flight tonight.”
“A wonderful female,” Glomg told him in a “voice” that was now barely audible. “You’re a very lucky flefnobe.”
“I know that, Pop,” Rabd assured him. “Don’t think I don’t know that. The most plentiful bunch of eye-ended tentacles this side of Gansibokkle and they’re mine, all mine!”
“Tekt is a warm and highly intelligent female flefnobe,” his father pointed out severely from a great distance. “She has many fine qualities. I don’t like you acting as if the mating process were a mere matter of the number of eye-ended tentacles possessed by the female.”
“Oh, it isn’t, Pop,” Rabd assured him. “It isn’t at all. The mating process is a grave and—er, a serious matter to me. Full of responsibilities—er, serious responsibilities. Yes, sir. Highly serious. But the fact that Tekt has over a hundred and seventy-six slime-washed tentacles, each topped by a lovely, limpid eye, won’t do our relationship a bit of harm. Quite the contrary, Pop, quite the contrary.”
“A superstitious old crank and a brash bumpkin,” Professor Lirld commented bitterly. “But between them, they can have my appropriation shut off, Srin. They can stop my work. Just when it’s showing positive results. We’ve got to prepare counter-measures!”
Manship was not interested in this all-too-familiar academic despair, however. He was straining desperately after the receding minds of Glomg and Rabd. Not that he was at all intrigued by the elder’s advice on How to Have a Sane and Happy Sex Life Though Married.
What had excited him prodigiously was a mental by-product of a much earlier comment. When Rabd had mentioned the last-minute loading of his ship, another part of the flefnobe’s mind had, as if stimulated by association, dwelt briefly on the construction of the small vessel, its maintenance and, most important, its operation.
For just a few seconds, there had been a flash of a control panel with varicolored lights going on and off, and the beginnings of long-ago, often-repeated instruction: “To warm up the motors of the Bulvonn Drive, first gently rotate the uppermost three cylinders…Gently now!”
It was the kind of subliminal thought-picture, Manship realized excitedly, that had emanated from Srin a short while ago, and had enabled him to guess that the shifting light-patterns on the sphere the laboratory assistant held were actually meter readings. Evidently, his sensitivity to the flefnobe brain went deeper than the mental statements that were consciously transmitted by it and penetrated, if not the unconscious mind, at least the less submerged areas of personal awareness and memory.
But this meant—this meant—seated as he was, he still managed to stagger at the concept. A little practice, just a little acquired skill, and he could no doubt pick the brain of every flefnobe on the planet.
He sat and glowed at the thought. An ego that had never been particularly robust had been taking an especially ferocious pounding in the past half-hour under the contemptuous scrutiny of a hundred turquoise eyes and dozens of telepathic gibes. A personality that had been power-starved most of its adult life abruptly discovered it might well hold the fate of an entire planet in the hollow of its cerebrum.
Yes, this certainly made him feel a lot better. Every bit of information these flefnobes possessed was his for the taking. What, for example, did he feel like taking? For a starter, that is.
Manship remembered. His euphoria dwindled like a spat-upon match. There was only one piece of information he desired, only one thing he wanted to know. How to get home!
One of the few creatures on this planet, possibly the only one for all he knew, whose thoughts were of a type to make this possible, was on his way with his father to some flefnobe equivalent of Tony’s Bar and Grill. Rabd had, in fact, to judge from the silence reigning on the subject, just this moment passed out of effective telepathic range.
With a hoarse, anguished, yearning cry, similar to that of a bull who—having got in a juicy lick with his horns and having been carried by the momentum of his rush the full length of the bull-ring—turns, only to see the attendants dragging the wounded matador out of the arena…with precisely that sort of thoroughly dismayed bellow, Clyde Manship reached up, tore the surrounding material apart with one mighty two-handed gesture, and leaped to his feet on the in-and-out curving tabletop.
“…And seven or eight charts in full color, representing the history of teleportation prior to this experiment,” Lirld was telling his assistant at that moment. “In fact, Srin, if you have time to make three-dimensional charts, the Council is even more likely to be impressed. We’re in a fight, Srin, and we’ve got to use every—”
His thoughts broke off as an eyestalk curled around and regarded Manship. A moment later his entire complement of eyestalks as well as those of his assistant swished about and stopped, quivering, with their focus on the erect, emergent human.
“Holy, concentrated Qrm,” the professor’s mind barely transmitted the quavering thought. “The flat-eyed monster. It’s broken loose!”
“Out of a cage of solid paper!” Srin added in awe.
Lirld came to a decision. “The blaster,” he ordered peremptorily. “Tentacle me the blaster, Srin. Appropriation or no appropriation, we don’t dare take chances with a creature like this. We’re in a crowded city. Once it got out on a rampage—” He shuddered the entire black suitcase length of him. He made a rapid adjustment in the curlicued instrument that Srin had given him. He pointed it at Manship.
Having actually fought his way out of the paper bag, Manship had paused, irresolute, on the tabletop. Far from being a man of action in any sense, he now found himself distinctly puzzled as to just which way to act. He had no idea of the direction taken by Glomg pere and fils; furthermore he was at a loss as he looked around for anything that in any way resembled a door. He regretted very much that he had not noticed through which aperture Rabd had entered the room when the younger flefnobe had joined their jolly little circle.
He had just about made up his mind to look into a series of zigzag indentations in the opposite wall when he observed Lirld pointing the blaster at him with determined if unprofessional tremulousness. His mind, which had been filing the recent conversation between professor and assistant in an uninterested back-portion, suddenly informed him that he was about to become the first, and probably unrecorded victim, in a War of Worlds.
“Hey!” he yelped, entirely forgetting his meager powers of communication. “I just want to look up Rabd. I’m not going on any ramp—”
Lirld did something to the curlicued instrument that seemed like winding a clock, but was probably more equivalent to the pressing of a trigger. He simultaneously shut all of his eyes—no mean feat in itself.
That, Clyde Manship reflected later—when there was time and space to reflect—was the only thing which saved his life. That and the prodigious sideways broad-jump he made as millions of crackling red dots ripped out of the instrument toward him.
The red dots sped past his pajama-tops and into one of the lower vaults that made up the ceiling. Without a sound, a hole some ten feet in circumference appeared in the masonry. The hole was deep enough—some three or four feet—to let the night sky of the planet show through. A heavy haze of white powder drifted down like the dust from a well-beaten rug.