“It could be arranged, Trader Mallow. But tomorrow, tomorrow. Would you dine with us tonight?”
“My men—” began Mallow.
“Let them all come,” said the Commdor, expansively. “A symbolic friendly union of our nations. It will give us a chance for further friendly discussion. But one thing,” his face lengthened and grew stern, “none of your religion. Don’t think that all this is an entering wedge for the missionaries.”
“Commdor,” said Mallow, dryly, “I give you my word that religion would cut my profits.”
“Then that will do for now. You’ll be escorted back to your ship.”
6
The Commdora was much younger than her husband. Her face was pale and coldly formed and her black hair was drawn smoothly and tightly back.
Her voice was tart. “You are quite finished, my gracious and noble husband? Quite, quite finished? I suppose I may even enter the garden if I wish, now.”
“There is no need for dramatics, Licia, my dear,” said the Commdor, mildly. “The young man will attend at dinner tonight, and you can speak with him all you wish and even amuse yourself by listening to all I say. Room will have to be arranged for his men somewhere about the place. The stars grant that they be few in numbers.”
“Most likely they’ll be great hogs of eaters who will eat meat by the quarter-animal and wine by the hogshead. And you will groan for two nights when you calculate the expense.”
“Well now, perhaps I won’t. Despite your opinion, the dinner is to be on the most lavish scale.”
“Oh, I see.” She stared at him contemptuously. “You are very friendly with these barbarians. Perhaps that is why I was not to be permitted to attend your conversation. Perhaps your little wizened soul is plotting to turn against my father.”
“Not at all.”
“Yes, I’d be likely to believe you, wouldn’t I? If ever a poor woman was sacrificed for policy to an unsavory marriage, it was myself. I could have picked a more proper man from the alleys and mudheaps of my native world.”
“Well, now, I’ll tell you what, my lady. Perhaps you would enjoy returning to your native world. Only to retain as a souvenir that portion of you with which I am best acquainted, I could have your tongue cut out first. And,” he lolled his head, calculatingly, to one side, “as a final improving touch to your beauty, your ears and the tip of your nose as well.”
“You wouldn’t dare, you little pug-dog. My father would pulverize your toy nation to meteoric dust. In fact, he might do it in any case, if I told him you were treating with these barbarians.”
“Hm-m-m. Well, there’s no need for threats. You are free to question the man yourself tonight. Meanwhile, madam, keep your wagging tongue still.”
“At your orders?”
“Here, take this, then, and keep still.”
The band was about her waist and the necklace around her neck. He pushed the knob himself and stepped back.
The Commdora drew in her breath and held out her hands stiffly. She fingered the necklace gingerly, and gasped again.
The Commdor rubbed his hands with satisfaction and said, “You may wear it tonight — and I’ll get you more. Now keep still.”
The Commdora kept still.
7
Jaim Twer fidgeted and shuffled his feet. He said, “What’s twisting your face?”
Hober Mallow lifted out of his brooding. “Is my face twisted? It’s not meant so.”
“Something must have happened yesterday — I mean, besides that feast.” With sudden conviction, “Mallow, there’s trouble, isn’t there?”
“Trouble? No. Quite opposite. In fact, I’m in the position of throwing my full weight against a door and finding it ajar at the time. We’re getting into this steel foundry too easily.”
“You suspect a trap?”
“Oh, for Seldon’s sake, don’t be melodramatic.” Mallow swallowed his impatience and added conversationally, “It’s just that the easy entrance means there will be nothing to see.”
“Atomic power, huh?” Twer ruminated. “I’ll tell you. There’s just about no evidence of any atomic power economy here in Korell. And it would be pretty hard to mask all signs of the widespread effects a fundamental technology such as atomics would have on everything.”
“Not if it was just starting up, Twer, and being applied to a war economy. You’d find it in the shipyards and the steel foundries only.”
“So if we don’t find it, then—”
“Then they haven’t got it — or they’re not showing it. Toss a coin or take a guess.”
Twer shook his head. “I wish I’d been with you yesterday.”
“I wish you had, too,” said Mallow stonily. “I have no objection to moral support. Unfortunately, it was the Commdor who set the terms of the meeting, and not myself. And that outside there would seem to be the royal ground-car to escort us to the foundry. Have you got the gadgets?”
“All of them.”
8
The foundary was large, and bore the odor of decay which no amount of superficial repairs could quite erase. It was empty now and in quite an unnatural state of quiet, as it played unaccustomed host to the Commdor and his court.
Mallow had swung the steel sheet onto the two supports with a careless heave. He had taken the instrument held out to him by Twer and was gripping the leather handle inside its leaden sheath.
“The instrument,” he said, “is dangerous, but so is a buzz saw. You must have to keep your fingers away.”
And as he spoke, he drew the muzzle-slit swiftly down the length of the steel sheet, which quietly and instantly fell in two.
There was a unanimous jump, and Mallow laughed. He picked up one of the halves and propped it against his knee. “You can adjust the cutting-length accurately to a hundredth of an inch, and a two-inch sheet will slit down the middle as easily as this thing did. If you’ve got the thickness exactly judged, you can place steel on a wooden table, and split the metal without scratching the wood.”
And at each phrase, the atomic shear moved and a gouged chunk of steel flew across the room.
“That,” he said, “is whittling — with steel.”
He passed back the shear. “Or else you have the plane. Do you want to decrease the thickness of a sheet, smooth out an irregularity, remove corrosion? Watch!”
Thin, transparent foil flew off the other half of the original sheet in six-inch swaths, then eight-inch, then twelve.
“Or drills? It’s all the same principle.”
They were crowded around now. It might have been a sleight-of-hand show, a corner magician, a vaudeville act made in high-pressure salesmanship. Commdor Asper fingered scraps of steel. High officials of the government tiptoed over each other’s shoulders, and whispered, while Mallow punched clean, beautiful round holes through an inch of hard steel at every touch of his atomic drill.
“Just one more demonstration. Bring two short lengths of pipe, somebody.”
An Honorable Chamberlain of something-or-other sprang to obedience in the general excitement and thought-absorption, and stained his hands like any laborer.
Mallow stood them upright and shaved the ends off with a single stroke of the shear, and then joined the pipes, fresh cut to fresh cut.
And there was a single pipe! The new ends, with even atomic irregularities missing, formed one piece upon joining. Johannison blocks, at a stroke.
Then Mallow looked up at his audience, stumbled at his first word and stopped. There was the keen stirring of excitement in his chest, and the base of his stomach went tingly and cold.