CHAPTER SEVEN
Knud Axel Syrup paused a moment in the after transverse corridor. The bulkhead which faced him bore a stencilled KEEP OUT and three doors: the middle one directly to the engine room, the right-hand one to the machine shop, and the left to his small private cabin. These two side chambers also had doors opening directly on the engine room. It made for a lack of privacy distressing in the present cloak-and-dagger situation.
However, the wild Erseman would no doubt be up on the bridge for hours. Herr Syrup sighed, a little enviously, and went through the central door.
"Awwrk," said Claus, flapping in from the cabin. "Nom d'un nom d'une vache! Schweinhund!
Sanamabiche!"
"Exactly," said Herr Syrup. He entered the little bath-room behind the main energy converter and extracted a bottle of beer from a cooler which he had installed himself. Claus paced impatiendy along a rheostat. Herr Syrup crumbled a pretzel for him and poured a little beer into a saucer. The crow jabbed his beak into the liquid, tilted back his black head, shook out his feathers, and croaked: "Gaudeamus igitur!"
"You're velcome," said Herr Syrup. He inspected the locked electrical cabinet. Duplicating a Yale key would call for delicate instruments and skilled labor. After latching all doors to the outside, he went into the machine shop, selected various items, and returned. First, perhaps, a wire into the slot …
The main door shivered under a mule kick. Faintly through its insulated metal thickness came a harsh roar: "Open up, ye auld scut, or I'll crack the outer hatches an' let ye choke!"
"Yumping Yupiter," said Herr Syrup.
He pattered across the room and admitted Rory McCon-nell, who glared down upon him and snarled: "So 'tis up to your sneakin' tricks ye are again, eh? Throw a pretty face an' long legs at me an'—Aaargh! Be off wi' yez!"
"But," bleated Herr Syrup. "But vas you not talkin' vit' Miss Croft?"
"I was," said McConnell. "'Tis not a mistake I'll make ag'in. Go tell her to save her charms for bigger fools than me. I'm goin' to sleep now." He tore off his various weapons, laid them beside his pack, and sat down on the floor. "Git out!" he rapped, fumbling at a boot zipper. His face was like fire. "Tomorry perhaps I can look at ye wi' out bokin'!"
"Oh, dear," said Herr Syrup.
"Oh, shucks," said Claus, though not in just those words.
Herr Syrup picked up his miscellaneous tools and stole back into the workshop. A moment afterward he remembered his bottle of beer and stuck his head back through the communicating door. McConnell threw a boot at him. Herr Syrup closed the door and toddled out to make another requisition on the cargo.
Having done so, he stopped by the saloon. Emily was there, her face in her arms, her body slumped over the table and shuddering with sobs. At the far end sat Sarmishkidu, puffing his Tyrolean pipe and making calculations.
"Oh, dear," said Herr Syrup again, helplessly.
"Can you console her?" asked Sarmishkidu, rolling an eye in his direction. "I have endeavored to do so, and am sorry to report absolute failure."
Herr Syrup took a strengthening pull from his bottle.
"You see," explained the Martian, "her noise distracts me."
He fumed smoke for a dour moment. "I should at least think," he whined, "that having dragged me here, away from my livelihood and all the small comforts which mean so much to a poor lonely exile among aliens like myself—sustaining, heartening consolations which already I find myself in sore need of—namely a table of elliptic integrals—having so ruthlessly forced me into the trackless depths of outer space, and apparently not even to any good purpose, she would have the consideration not to sit there and weep at me."
"Dere, dere," said Herr Syrup, patting the girl's shoulder. "Uhhhhh," said Emily.
"Dere, dere, dere," continued Herr Syrup.
The girl raised streaming eyes and sobbed pathetically: "Oh, go to hell."
"Vat happened vit' you and de mayor?"
A bit startled, Emily sniffed out: "Why, nothing, unless you mean that time last year when he asked me to preside at the Ladies' Potato Race, during the harvest festi—Oh! The Major!" She returned her face to her arm. "Uhhhh-hoo-hoo-hoo!"
"I gather she tried to seduce him and failed," said Sar-mishkidu. "Naturally, her professional pride is injured."
Emily leaped to her feet. "What do you mean, professional?" she screeched.
"Warum, nothing," stammered Sarmishkidu, retreating into a different character. "I just meant your female prides. All women are females by profession, nicht war? That is a joke. Ha, ha," he added, to make certain he would be understood.
"And I didn't try to—to—Oh!" Emily stormed out of the saloon. A string of firecracker Greek trailed after her.
"Vat is she saying?" gaped Herr Syrup.
Herr von Himmelschmidt turned pale. "Please don't to ask," he said. "I did not know she was familiar with that edition of Aristophanes."
"Helledusse!" said the engineer moodily. "Ve ban hashed now."
"Hmmm," muttered Sarmishkidu. "It is correct that the enemy is armed and we are not. Nevertheless, it is an observational datum that there are three of us and only one of him, and so if we could separate him from his weapons, even briefly, and—"
"And?"
"Oh. Well, nothing, I suppose." Sarmishkidu brooded. "True," he said at last, "one of him would still be equivalent to four or five of us." He pounded the table with an indignant hand. Since the hand, being boneless, merely flopped when it struck, this was not very dramatic. "It is most unfair of him," he squeaked. "Ganging up on us like that."
Herr Syrup stiffened with thought.
"Unlautere Wettbewerb," amplified the Martian. "Do you know—" whispered the Dane.
"What?"
"I hate to do dis. It does not seem right. I know it is not right. But by Yoe, maybe he ban asleep now!"
The idea dawned on Sarmishkidu. "Well, I'll be an un-elegantly proven lemma," he breathed. "So he doubtless is."
"And for veapons, in de machine shop is all de tools. Like wrenches, hammers, vire cable—" "Blowtorches," added Sarmishkidu eagerly. "Hacksaws, sulfuric acid—"
"No, hoy, vait dere! Just a minute! I don't vant to hurt him. Yust a little bonk on de head to make him sleep sounder, vile ve tie him up, dat's all." Herr Syrup leaped erect. "Let's go!"
"Good luck," said Sarmishkidu, returning to his calculations. "Vat? But hey! Is you leaving me to do dis all alone?"
Sarmishkidu looked up. "Go!" he said in a ringing croak. "Remember the Vikings! Remember Gustavus Adolphus! Remember King Christian standing by the high mast in smoke and steam! The blood of heroes is in your veins. Go, go to glory!"
Fired, Herr Syrup started for the door. He stopped there and asked wistfully, "Don't you vant a little glory too?"
Sarmishkidu blew a smoke ring and scribbled an equation. "I am more the intellectual type," he said.
"Oh." Herr Syrup sighed and went down the corridors. His resolution endured till he actually stood in the workshop, by the glow of a dim night light, hefting a pipe wrench. Then he wavered.
The sound of deep, regular breathing assured him that Major McConnell slept in the adjoining bedchamber. But—"I don't vant to hurt him," repeated Herr Syrup. "I could so easy clop him too hard."
He shuddered. "Or not hard enough. I better make another requisition on de cargo first … No. Here ve go." Puffing out his mustache and mopping the sweat off his pate, the descendant of Vikings tiptoed into the engine room.
Rory McConnell would scarcely have been visible at all, had his taste in pajamas not run to iridescent synthesilk embroidered with tiny shamrocks. As it was, his body, sprawled on a military bedroll, seemed in the murk to stretch on and on, interminably, besides having more breadth and thickness than was fair in anything but a gorilla. Herr Syrup hunkered shakily down by the massive red head, squinted till he had a spot, just behind one ear identified, and raised his weapon.