Shoemaker was not a moral man, but the sense of personal doom was strong upon him. Suppose there really were a Hell, he thought, only the preachers were wrong about everything but the heat … A splitting skull … No liquor … No women … A stinking, slime-blue seascape that was the same right-side up, upside-down, or crossways … And the little green men. He had almost forgotten them.
When he looked up, he remembered.
The third little man was slimmer, and had no whiskers at all. He carried a shiny golden dagger, almost as big as himself. He was walking forward purposefully.
Shoemaker waited, paralyzed.
The little man fixed him with his gleaming eye. “We’re through kidding around,” he said grimly. “Question is now!”
And he laid the golden dagger in Shoemaker’s quaking palm.
Shoemaker’s first impulse was to cut his own throat. His second was to throw the dagger as far away as possible. Those two came in flashing tenths of a second. The third was stronger. He rose effortlessly into the air, landed facing the sallyport, and, mouth wide open but emitting no sound, ran straight through it. He passed the closed inner door more by a process of ignoring it than by bursting it open.
Directly opposite was the door of Burford’s chubby, just now open far enough to show Burford’s startled face. When he saw Shoemaker, he tried hastily to shut the door, but Shoemaker by now had so much momentum as to have reached, for practical purposes, the status of an irresistible force. In the next second, he came to a full stop; but this was only because he was jammed against Burford, who was jammed against the far wall of the room, which was braced by five hundred tons of metal.
“Ugg,” said Burford. “Whuff-where did you get that knife?”
“Shut up and start talking,” sad Shoemaker wildly. “Where’s the microspectrograph?”
Burford opened his mouth to yell. Shoemaker shut it with a fist, meanwhile thrusting the knife firmly against Burford’s midriff to illustrate the point.
Burford spat out a tooth. As Shoemaker put a little more pressure on the blade, he said hastily, “It’s in the-uhh!-fuel reservoir.”
Shoemaker whirled him around and propelled him into the corridor, after a quick look to make sure that the way was clear. They proceeded to the engine room, in this order: Burford, knife, Shoemaker.
Without waiting to be persuaded, Burford produced a ring of keys, unlocked the reservoir, and withdrew the microspectrograph. “Hook it up,” said Shoemaker. Burford did so.
“Uhh,” said Burford. “Now what-whiskey?”
“Nope,” said Shoemaker incautiously. “We’re taking off.”
Burford’s eyes bulged. He made a whoofling noise and then, without warning, lunged forward, grabbing Shoemaker’s knife arm with one hand and punching him with the other. They rolled on the deck.
Shoemaker noticed that Burford’s mouth was open again, and he put his hand into it, being too busy keeping away from Burford’s knee to take more effective measures. Burford bit a chunk out of the hand and shouted, “Hale! Davies! Help!”
There were bangings in the corridor.
Shoemaker decided the knife was more of a hindrance than a help, and dropped it. When Burford let go to reach for it, he managed to roll them both away, at the same time getting a good two-handed grip on Burford’s skinny throat. This maneuver had the disadvantage of putting Burford on top, but Shoemaker solved the problem by lifting him bodily and banging his skull against the nearby bulkhead.
Burford sagged. Shoemaker pushed him out of the way and got up, just in time to be knocked down hard by Hale’s chunky body.
“Old idiot,” panted Hale, “oof! Help me, Davies!”
Shoemaker got an ear between his teeth, and was rewarded by a bloodcurdling scream from Hale. Davies was hopping ponderously around in the background, saying, “Boys, stop it! Oh, my-the guns are all locked up. Charley, give me the keys!”
Shoemaker pulled himself loose from Hale, sprang up, and was immediately pulled down again. Burford, who was getting dizzily to his feet, tripped over Shoemaker’s head and added himself to the tangle. Shoemaker got a scissors on him and then devoted himself to the twin problems of avoiding Burford’s wildly threshing heels and keeping Hale away from his throat. Suddenly inspired, he solved both by bending Burford’s body upward so that the latter’s booted feet, on their next swing, struck Hale squarely in the middle of his fat face.
At this point he noticed that Davies was standing nearby with one foot raised. He grasped the foot and pushed. Davies hit the deck with a satisfying clang.
Shoemaker got up for the third time and looked around for the dagger, but it had been kicked out of sight. He paused, wondering whom to hit next, and in the interval all three of his opponents scrambled up and came at him.
Shoemaker thought, this is it. He spat on his fist for luck and hit Burford a beauty on the chin. Burford fell down, and, astonishingly, got up again. A little disheartened, Shoemaker took two blows in the face from Hale before he knocked the little man into a far corner. Hale got up again. Shoemaker, who had been aware for some time that someone was pummeling his back, turned around unhappily and knocked Davies down. Davies, at any rate, stayed down.
Burford, whose face was puffy, and Hale, who was bleeding from assorted cuts, came toward him. Hale, he saw, had the dagger in his hand. Shoemaker stepped back, picked up the unconscious Davies by collar and belt, and slung him across the deck. This time both men went down (Hale with a soggy bloomp), and stayed there. The dagger skidded out of Hale’s hand and came to rest at Shoemaker’s feet.
He picked it up, knelt at a convenient distance to cut off Hale’s and Burford’s noses, and threatened to do just that. Burford intimated that he would do as he was told. Hale said nothing, but the expression on his face was enough.
Satisfied, Shoemaker opened a locker with Burford’s keys, got a coil of insulated wire and tied up Davies and Hale, after which, with Burford’s help, he strapped them into their acceleration seats. Burford was acting a little vague. Shoemaker slapped him around until he looked alive, then set him to punching calculator keys. After a few minutes of this, Burford looked as if he wanted to say something.
“Well, spit it out,” said Shoemaker, waving the golden knife.
“You’ll get yours,” said Burford, looking scared but stubborn. “When we get back to New York-”
“South Africa,” corrected Shoemaker, “where the Supreme Council can’t ask us any questions.”
Burford looked surprised, then said it was a good idea.
It was, too.
The lone star winked out in the blue-green heavens, and the winds of its passing died away. The throng of little rabbit-eared green men, floating on their placid ocean, gazed after it long after it had disappeared.
“What do you think?” said the slim one without whiskers. “Did they like us?”
The one addressed was yards away, but his long ears heard the question plainly. “Can’t say,” he answered. “They acted so funny. When we spoke to that one in their own language, so as to make him feel at home-”
“Yes,” said a third, almost invisible in the mist. “Was that the right thing to do, d’you suppose? Are you sure you got the words right, that last time?”
“Sure,” said the first, confidently. “I was right next to the ship all evening, and I memorized everything they said …”
They considered that for a while, sipping from their flasks. Other voices piped up: “Maybe we should have talked to them when they were all together?”
“Nooo. They were so big. That one was much the nicest, anyway.”