"No," said My Lady Charlotina sweetly. "It is our duty to entertain you. We shall all go back to Below-the-Lake and have, oh, a party."
"We were having a party when you turned up," Captain Mubbers pointed out. He sniffed and rubbed at his bulbous nose. "Mind you, I think I know what you mean. Eh?" And he sidled up to her and gave her a nudge in the thigh. "We've been a long time in space, lady."
"Oh, you poor things!" said My Lady Charlotina, putting two of her hands on either side of his face and twiddling his moustachios. "Are there no females of your race now?"
"Not so much as a single old slag." He raised his eyes piteously to contemplate the trees. "It's been a very hard trip, you know. Why, I doubt if I've tickled an elbow in four or five years." He darted a chiding glance at his companions who were leering to a man. Then, smirking, he reached up and put his hand on her bottom. "Why don't you and me go inside the ship and talk about this some more?"
"It would be more comfortable if you returned with us," insisted the Duke of Queens. "You could have some food, a rest, a bath…"
"Bath?" Captain Mubbers started in alarm. "Do what? Come off it, Duke. We've still got a long way to go. What are you trying to suggest?"
"I mean that we can supply anything you desire. We could even create females of your own species for you, reproduce exactly your own environment. It is easily within our power."
"Ho!" said Captain Mubbers suspiciously. "I bet!"
"I'd like to know what their game is." One of the crew got up, picking his teeth (which were pointed and yellow.) His three pupils darted this way and that, regarding the five Earth-people. "You're too sodding eager to please, if you ask me."
The Duke made a vague gesture with his hands. "Surely you can't suspect our motives? As guests on our planet, it is your right to be entertained by us."
"Well, you're the first lot who thought that," said the crewmember, putting his hand into his shirt and rubbing his chest. "No, I agree with the skipper. You come with us." The others nodded their approval of this proposal.
"But," the Iron Orchid told them reasonably, "my scrumptious little space-sailors, you fail to understand our absolute loathing of these vacuous reaches. Why, hardly anyone makes the trip to the nearer planets of our own system any more, let alone plunging willy-nilly into that chilly wilderness between the stars!" Her expression softened, she removed the cap of the one who had just approached. She stroked his bald spot. "It is no longer in our natures to leave the planet. We are set in our ways. We are an old, old race, you see. Space bores us. Other planets irritate and frustrate us because good manners demand that we do not re-model them to our own tastes. What is there for us in your infinity? After all, save for minor differences, one star looks very much like another."
The Lat snatched his hat from her hand and pulled it down over his head. "Thrills," he said. "Adventures. Peril. New sensations."
"There are no new sensations, surely?" said Bishop Castle, willing to hear of one if it existed. "Just modifications of the old ones, I'd have thought."
"Well," said Captain Mubbers decisively, stooping to pick up his instrument. "You're coming with us and that's that. I know a trap when I smell one."
The Duke of Queens pursed his lips. "I think it's time we left. Evidently, an impasse…"
"More like a fait accompli , chummy," said the pugnacious alien, pointing his instrument in the Duke's general direction. "Get 'em down and show 'em up!"
By this time the other Lat had picked their horns and strings from the ground.
"I don't follow you?" the Duke told Captain Mubbers. "Get what down? And shove what up?"
"The trousers and the hands in that order," said Captain Mubbers. And he motioned with his instrument.
Bishop Castle laughed. "I believe they are menacing us, you know!"
My Lady Charlotina gave a squeal of delight. The Iron Orchid put fingers to her lips, her eyes widening.
"Are those weapons as well as musical instruments?" asked Jherek with interest.
"Spot on," said Captain Mubbers. "Watch this." He turned away, directing the oddly shaped device at the nearby trees. "Fire," he said.
A howling, burning wind issued from the thing in his hands. It seared through the trees and turned them to smoking ash. It produced a tunnel of brightness through the gloom of the forest; it revealed a plain beyond, and a mountain beyond that. The wind did not stop until it reached the far-away mountain. The mountain exploded. They heard a faint bang.
"All right?" said Captain Mubbers, turning back to them enquiringly.
His companions smirked. One of them, in a metal helmet, said: "You wouldn't get far, would you, if you tried to run for it?"
"Who would resurrect us?" said Bishop Castle. "How curious? I haven't seen an actual weapon before."
"You intend, then, to kidnap us!" said My Lady Charlotina.
"Mibix unview per?" said Captain Mubbers. "Kroofrudi! Dyew oh tyae, hiu hawtquards!"
In despair, the Duke of Queens had switched off his translator.
7. A Conflict of Illusions
"It is certainly not very much of an advantage," said the Duke of Queens miserably. They all sat together near the spaceship while the Lat kneeled nearby, absorbed in some kind of gambling game. The Iron Orchid and My Lady Charlotina seemed to be the stakes. Only My Lady Charlotina was getting impatient.
She sighed. "I do wish they'd hurry up. They're lovable, but they're not very decisive."
"You think not?" said Bishop Castle, picking at some moss. "They seemed to have reached the decision to kidnap us pretty quickly."
Jherek was miserable. "If they take us into space I'll never see Mrs. Amelia Underwood!"
"Try a disseminator ring on their weapons again," suggested the Iron Orchid. "Mine doesn't work, Bishop, but yours might."
The Bishop concentrated, fiddling with his ring, but nothing at all happened. "They are only effective on things we create ourselves. We could get rid of the rest of the trees, I suppose…"
"There seems little point," said Jherek. He sighed.
"Well," said the Duke of Queens, an inveterate viewer of the bright side, "we might see something interesting in space."
"Our ancestors never did," the Iron Orchid reminded him. "Besides, how are we to get back?"
"Build a spaceship." The Duke of Queens was puzzled by her apparent obtuseness. "With a power ring."
"If they work in the depths of the cosmic void. Do you recall any record of the rings themselves being used away from Earth?" Bishop Castle shrugged, not expecting a reply.
"Did they have power rings all those thousands and thousands of years ago? Oh, dear, I feel very sleepy." My Lady Charlotina was unusually bored. She had gone off the whole idea of making love to the Lat, either singly or all together. "Let's create an air car and go, shall we."
Bishop Castle was grinning. "I have a more amusing notion." He waved the deceptor-gun. "It should cheer us all up and make an exciting end to this adventure. Presumably the gun is conventionally loaded, Jherek?"
"Oh, yes." Jherek nodded absently.
"Then it will fire illusions at random. I remember the craze for these toys. Two players each have a gun, not knowing which illusions will come out, but hoping that one illusion will counter another."