"I repeat," said Kzanol. "What kind of deal?"
"I want a partnership share in control of Earth. Our agreement is not to be invalidated if we find other, uh, beings like you, or a government of same. Half to you, half to me, and your full help in building me an amplifier. You'd better have the first helmet; it might not fit my brain. I want your oath, your… Wait a minute, I can't pronounce it." He picked up a bridge sheet and wrote, "prtuuvl," in the dots and curlicues of over-speak. "I want you to swear by that oath that you will protect my half ownership to the best of your ability, and that you will never willingly jeopardize my life or my health, provided that I take you to where you can find the second suit. Swear also that we'll get humans to build me another amplifier, once we get back."
Kzanol thought for a full minute. His mental shield was as solid as the door on a lunar fort, but Kzanol/Greenberg could guess his thoughts well enough. He was stalling for effect. Certainly he had decided to give the oath; for the prtuuvl oath was binding between thrint and thrint. Kzanol need only regard him as a slave…
"All right," said Kzauol. And he gave the prtuuvl oath without missing a single syllable.
"Good," Kzanol/Greenberg approved. "Now swear to the same conditions, by this oath." He pulled a bridge sheet from his breast pocket and passed it over. Kzanol took it and looked.
"You want me to swear a kpitlithtulm oath too?"
"Yes." There was no need to spell it out for Kzanol, nor even to repress his dolphin grin. The kpitlithtulm oath was for use between thrint and slave. If he swore the kpitlithtulm oath and the prtuuvl oath he would be committed for keeps, unless he chose to regard Kzanol/Greenberg as a plant or a dumb animal. Which would be dishonorable.
Kzanol dropped the paper. His mind shield was almost flickering, it was so rigid. Then his jaws opened wide and his lips pulled back from the needle fangs in a smile more terrible than Tyrranosaurus rex chasing a paleontologist, or Lucas Garner hearing a good joke. Seeing Kzanol, who could doubt that this was a carnivore? A ravenous carnivore which intended to be fed at any moment. One might forget that Kzanol was half the weight of a man, and see instead that he was larger than one hundred scorpions or three wildcats or a horde of marchmg soldier ants or a school of piranha.
But Kzanol/Greenberg recognized it as a smile of rueful admiration, a laughing surrender to a superior adversary, the smile of a good loser. With his thrint memories he saw further than that. Kzanol's smile was as phony as a brass transistor.
Kzanol gave the oath four times, and made four invalidating technical mistakes. The fifth time he gave up and swore according to protocol.
"All right," said Kzanol/Greenberg. "Have the pilot take us to Pluto."
"A-a-all right, everybody turn ship and head for three, eighty-four, twenty-one." The man in the lead ship sounded wearily patient. "I don't know what the game is, but we can play just as good as any kid on the block."
"Pluto," said someone. "He's going to Pluto!" He seemed to take it as a personal affront.
Old Smoky Petropoulos thumbed the transmitter. "Lew, hadn't one of us better stop and find out what's with the other two ships?"
"Uh. Okay, Smoky, you do it. Can you find us later with a maser?"
"Sure, boss. No secrets?"
"Hell, they know we're following them. Tell us anything we need to know. And find out where Garner is! If he's in the honeymooner I want to know it. Better beam Woody in Number Six too, and tell him to go wherever Garner is."
"Of course, Pluto. Don't you get it yet?" It was not the first time Kzanol/Greenberg had had doubts about his former self's intelligence. The doubts were getting hard to ignore. He'd been afraid Kzanol would figure it out for himself. But-?
"No," said Kzanol, glowering.
"The ship hit one of Neptune's moons," Kzanol/Greenberg explained patiently, "so hard that the moon was smacked out of orbit. The ship was moving at nearly lightspeed. The moon picked up enough energy to become a planet, but it was left with an eccentric orbit which still takes it inside Neptune at times. Naturally that made it easy to spot."
"I was told that Pluto came from another solar system."
"So was I. But it doesn't make sense. If that mass dived into the system from outside, why didn't it go back out again to complete the hyperbola? What could have stopped it? Well, I'm taking a gamble.
"There's only one thing that bothers me. Pluto isn't very big. Do you suppose the suit may have been blown back into space by the explosion when it hit?"
"If it was, I'll kill you," said Kzanol.
"Don't tell me, let me guess," begged Garner. "Aha! I've got it. Smoky Petropoulos. How are you?"
"Not as good as your memory. It's been a good twenty-two years." Smoky stood behind the two seats, in the airlock space, and grinned at the windshield reflection of the two men. There wasn't room to do much else. "How the hell are you, Garner? Why don't you turn around and shake hands with an old buddy?"
"I can't, Smoky. We've been ordered not to move by a BEM that doesn't take no for an answer. Maybe a good hypnotherapist could get us out of this fix, but we'll have to wait 'til then. By the way, meet Leroy Anderson."
"Hi."
"Now give us a couple of cigarettes, Smoky, and put them in the corners of our mouths so we can talk. Are your boys chasing Greenberg and the BEM?"
"Yeah." Smoky fumbled with cigarettes and a lighter. "Just what is this game of musical chairs?"
"What do you mean?"
Old Smoky put their cigarettes where they belonged. He said, "That honeymoon special took off for Pluto. Why?"
"Pluto!"
"Surprised?"
"It wasn't here," said Anderson.
"Right," said Garner. "We know what they're after, and we know now they didn't find it here. But I can't imagine why they think it's on Pluto. Oops! Hold it" Garner puffed furiously at his cigarette: good honest tobacco with the tars and nicotine still in it. He didn't seem to have any trouble moving his face. "Pluto may have been a moon of Neptune once. Maybe that has something to do with it. How about Greenberg's ship? Is it going in the same direction?"
"Uh uh. Wherever it is, its drive is off. We lost sight of it four hours ago."
Anderson spoke up. "If your friend is still aboard he could be in trouble."
"Right," said Garner. "Smoky, that ship could be falling into Neptune with Lloyd Masney aboard. You remember him? A big, stocky guy with a mustache."
"I think so. Is he paralyzed too?"
"He's hypnotized. Plain old garden-variety hypnotized, and if he hasn't been told to save himself, he won't. Will you?"
"Sure. I'll bring him back here." Smoky turned to the airlock.
"Hey!" Garner yelped. 'Take the butts out of our mouths before our faces catch fire!"
From his own ship Smoky called Woody Atwood in Number Six, the radar proof, and told his story. "It looks like the truth, Woody," he finished. "But there's no point in taking chances. You get in here and stick close to Garner's ship; if he makes a single move he's a bloody liar, so keep an eye open. He's been known to be tricky. I'll see if Masney is really in trouble. He shouldn't be hard to find."
"Pluto's a week and a half away at one gravity," said Anderson, who could do simple computations in his head. "But we couldn't follow that gang even if we could move. We don't have the fuel."
"We could refuel on Titan, couldn't we? Where the hell is Smoky?"
"Better not expect him back today."