"Where's your third passenger?"
"He'll be along."
The cabin had bunks for four. Alicia said: "The professor will make a third, if you get him. But what'll we do if Minyev shows up?"
Mjipa: "I think we've seen the last of Minyev. If the beggar does appear, I'll tell him to flake off. After he ran out on us a second time, we owe him nothing."
"It's too bad in a way," said Alicia. "We Earthlings need a class of friendly, intelligent go-betweens as buffers between us and the Krishnans. I think Minyev might have made a good one."
"I daresay. Well, I'll see whether Captain Farrá has room for another. If he doesn't, that'll be too bad for Minyev. Now I must try to find a chemist's while the shops are open."
As the dark of evening strengthened and the bijars flitted like a host of twinkling black specs against the deepening blue, Mjipa, as a tailed Krishnan, approached Vuzhov's Tower. This time, instead of stealing stealthily, he approached it openly, weaving a little. As he neared the two watchmen, one gave a derisive laugh.
"Behold the drunken monkey!" he cried. The word he used was phwchuv, Khaldoni for an arboreal beast bearing the same relation to Krishnans as monkeys do to human beings.
"Not drunk!" mumbled Mjipa. "Just a little happy! Want to make everybody happy! Have a drink?" He proffered a flask to the watchmen.
The Krishnans looked at each other. One said:"Belike we ought not on duty ..."
"Oh, one minikin sip won't hurt," said the other. "Let's see that flask. For a monkey, ye be a good fellow!"
He tilted the flask. The other watchman said: "Ho! Hast taken three swallows at least! Now 'tis my turn."
"Methought ye'd have nought to do with the stuff," said the first watchman, handing over the flask. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Monkey, whence gat ye such good liquor?"
Mjipa squinted and waved a forefmger before his face. "Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies."
"Stole it from's master, I'll warrant. But that makes it taste no less good. Give me back the flask, Vichum, ere ye drain it dry!"
Soon the flask was empty of doctored kvad. Mjipa had laced it with the soporific he had bought from an apothecary on the pretext of sleeplessness.
"Whence come ye, monkey?" said the first watchman.
"The isle of Za, lord. But my employment has carried me far and wide."
"Had ye adventures to make a tale? We were pleased to hear such. Life's a bore in Kalwm City; nought ever happens here."
"Well, I can spin a yarn or two ..." Mjipa began a story, based upon the tale of Siegfried in Wagner's Ring of the Niebelungen, with Mjipa as the archetypical hero of Nordic myth.
Another half-hour, and the two watchmen were curled up against the bricks of the tower, sleeping. Mjipa opened the front doors with his key and slipped in.
VIII
ENTRAPMENT
Mjipa softly closed the valves of the portal behind him. He paused to let his eyes adjust to the darkness, relieved only by faint light from openings higher up in the thick brickwork. As his vision cleared, he made out the foot of the spiral stair, a series of geometrical shapes in the dimness. He started towards the stair, stumbled on some unseen obstacle, and cursed a bruised toe.
Reaching the stair, with all his senses keyed up, he ascended, step after cautious step. He kept a hand on his hilt, lest the silence conceal an ambush. Somewhere in the darkness, a Krishnan arthropod trilled its mating song, much as do crickets and katydids on Terra.
Reaching the third floor, he groped along the gallery until he came to the door of the tool room. He rapped with his knuckles, saying softly: "Doctor Isayin! Open the door!"
There was no response. Mjipa rapped harder and repeated his call more loudly. Still silence. Mjipa wondered if the Krishnan scholar had been discovered and dragged away or slain, or whether he had succumbed to some sudden ailment.
Still hearing no response, Mjipa drew his dagger, pounded on the door with the pommel, and raised his voice to a near-shout: "Doctor Isayin! Open up!"
The tower remained silent. Mjipa cocked his head, listening. Below, the arthropod still chirped. From afar the consul could detect faint urban night sounds: a distant cry, the rumble of a laden wain, a few notes of music. But nothing implied the presence of other intelligent life within the tower.
Mjipa began feeling around the edges of the door for a clue. Along the bottom, his fingers encountered the thin edge of the wooden wedge he had given Isayin to secure the door. Isayin had evidently driven the wedge between the door and the floor, and the point of the wedge stuck out on the other side. So the Krishnan must still be within.
After thinking, Mjipa began whittling away at the edge of the wood with his dagger. By removing nearly a centimeter of wood, he achieved a flat vertical surface. He sheathed his dagger, unhooked it from his belt, and applied the chape at the end of the sheath to the end of the truncated wedge.
By tapping the pommel of his dagger with the hilt of his sword, Mjipa at last detected a slight movement of the wedge. When the end of the wedge disappeared beneath the door, he withdrew the dagger again, inserted the point beneath the door, and pushed. The wedge gave way. Mjipa got up, grasped the handle near the latch, and opened the door.
He slipped inside, throwing a glance around the bare chamber. The dim light showed a huddled figure in one far corner. Mjipa hurried over and grasped an arm of the naked body. It felt warm.
The body stirred, and Isayin opened his eyes. "What— where am I?" he mumbled. "Oh, ah, aye; now it comes back. You are the Terran who hath brought me to Vuzhov's tower."
"Didn't you hear me banging and shouting outside your door?" grated Mjipa.
"Nay, good sir; I was fast in the arms of Varzai." The scholar got up slowly and creakily. "Sleeping on bricks goes ill with my years. A tricksy irony, is it not, that I, condemned for upholding the world's sphericity, should find refuge in a tower dedicated to the contrary belief? Now set we forth to your ship?"
"Yes indeed. Let's waste no time." Mjipa started for the door, Isayin wobbling sleepily behind him. Then he halted so suddenly that the scholar bumped into him.
Through the door, which stood ajar, came the sound of men moving. Footsteps drummed on the spiral stair, mingled with the creak of harness, the clatter of weapons, and the murmur of voices.
Mjipa leaped to the door and peered through the crack. His eyes caught movement in the direction of the stair. Believing that retreat from the tower was already cut off, he seized the doorknob and pulled the door closed. The sounds quickly grew louder until they came from just outside. A stentorian voice rang out:
"The Terran stink stops here; he must needs be in this chamber! Open it, my bullies; but with care. This Terran's no feeble recusant." Mjipa recognized the Zhamanacian dialect of Verar, King Khorosh's envoy.
A sudden pull from the other side opened the door a crack. Exerting his strength, Mjipa slammed it shut again, cursing the lack of a bolt or other fastener. Again and again, stress was applied to the outer handle. Mjipa's muscles strained and sweat ran down his torso, as he braced himself to keep the door closed.
"What shall we do? What shall we do?" moaned Isayin, dancing about in an agony of apprehension. "If they hold us here till morn, the soldiers will come; but they'll arrest us along with them!"
"Drive that wedge under the door with the hammer again!" growled Mjipa. When Isayin seemed dazed, he repeated the instruction. He wished for his Webley and Scott 6-millimeter; that would soon have routed the miscreants.
A babel of voices outside seemed to discuss some method of access. Mjipa caught the phrase: "... thrust it under the handle, thus ..."