"Come in."
She did so. "Have you had your coffee?"
"Yes."
"So have I."
Neither Belle nor Garlock had recovered; both faces showed strain and drain.
"I think we"d better break this up," Belle said, quietly.
"Check. We"ll have to, if we expect to get any work done."
Belle could not conceal her surprise.
"Oh, not for the reason you think," Garlock went on, quickly. "Your record as a man-killer is still one hundred point zero zero zero percent. I"ve been in love with you ever since we paired. Before that, even."
"Flapdoodle!" she snorted, inelegantly. "Why, I...."
"Keep still a minute. And I"m not going to fight with you again. Ever.
I"m not going to touch you again until I can control myself a lot better than I could last night."
"Oh? That was mostly my fault, of course. But in love? Uh-uh, I"ve seen men in love. You aren"t. I couldn"t make you be, not with the best I could do. Not even in bed. You aren"t, Clee--if you are, I"m an Australian bushman."
"Perhaps I"m an atypical case. I"m not raving about your perfect body--you know what that is like already. Nor about your mind, which is the only one I know of as good as my own. Maybe I"m in love with what I think you ought to be ... or what I hope you will be. Anyway, I"m in love with _something_ connected with you--and with no other woman alive.
Shall we go eat?"
"Uh-huh--let"s."
They joined Lola and James at the table; and if Lola noticed anything out of the ordinary, she made no sign.
And after breakfast, in the Main--
"About three weeks, Jim, you think?" Garlock asked.
"Give or take a couple of days, yes."
"And Belle and I would just be in the way--at least until time to show Deggi about the activation ... and all those Primes to organize ... we"d better leave you here, don"t you think, and get going?"
"I"ll buy that. We"ll finish as soon as possible."
Lola and James moved a few personal belongings planetside; Garlock and Belle shot the _Pleiades_ across a vast gulf of s.p.a.ce to one of the planets they had scanned so fleetingly on their preliminary survey. Its name was, both remembered, Lizoria; its two Primes were named Rezdo Semolo and Mirea Mitala--male and female, respectively.
After sending down a very brief and perfunctory request for audience--which was in effect a declaration of intent and nothing else--Garlock and Belle teleported themselves down into Semolo"s office, where both Lizorian Primes were.
Both got up out of peculiar-looking chairs to face their visitors. Both were tall; both were peculiarly thin. Not the thinness of emaciation, but that of bodily structure.
"On them it looks good," Belle tight-beamed a thought to Garlock.
Both moved fast and with exquisite control; both were extraordinarily graceful. "Snaky" was Belle"s thought of the woman; "sinuous" was Garlock"s of the man. Both were completely hairless, of body and of head--not by nature, but via electric-shaver clipping. Both wore sandals. The man wore shorts and a shirt-like garment of nylon or its like; the woman wore just enough ribbons and bands to hold a hundred thousand credits" worth of jewels in place. She appeared to be about twenty years--Tellurian equivalent--old; he was probably twenty-three or twenty-four.
"We did not invite you in and we do not want you here," Semolo said, coldly. "So get out, both of you. If you don"t, when I count three I"ll throw you out, and I won"t be too careful about how many of your bones I break. One.... Two...."
"Pipe down, Rezdo!" the girl exclaimed. "They have something we haven"t, or they wouldn"t be here. Whatever it is, we want it."
"Oh, let him try, Miss Mitala," Garlock said, through her hard-held block, in the depth of her mind. "He won"t hurt us a bit and it may do him some good. While he"s wasting effort I"ll compare notes with my partner here, Galactic Vice-Admiral Belle Bellamy. I"m glad to see that one of you has at least a part of a brain."
"... Three!" Semolo did his best, with everything he had, without even attracting Garlock"s attention. He then tried to leap at the intruder physically, despite the latter"s tremendous advantage in weight and muscle, but found that he could not move.
Then, through Belle"s solidly-set blocks, "How are you doing, ace?
Getting anywhere?"
"My G.o.d!" came Belle"s mental shriek. "What--how can--but no, you _didn"t_ give _that_ to Fao, surely!"
"I"ll say I didn"t--nor to Delcamp. But you"re going to need it, I"m thinking."
"But _can_ you? Even if you _would_--and I"m just beginning to realize how big a man you really are--can that kind of stuff be taught? I probably haven"t got the brain-cells it takes to handle it."
"I"m not sure, but I"ve reworked our Prime Fields into one and made a couple of other changes. Theoretically, it ought to work. Shall I come in and try it?"
"Don"t be an idiot, darling. _Of course!_"
As impersonally as a surgeon exploring an organ, Garlock went into Belle"s mind. "Tune to the field ... that"s it--fine! Then--I"ll do it real slow, and watch me close--you do like so ... get it?"
"Uh-huh!" Belle breathed, excitedly. "Got it!"
"Then this ... and this ... and there you are. You can try it on me, if you like."
"Uh-uh. No sale. I don"t need practice and I"d like to preserve the beautiful illusion that maybe I _could_ crack your shield if I wanted to. I"ll work on Miss Snake-Hips here, the serpentine charmer--but say, I"ll bet there"s a bone in it. _You_ can block it, can"t you?"
"Yes. It goes like this." He showed her. "It takes full mastery of the Prime Field, but you"ve got that."
"Oh, wonderful! Thanks, Clee darling. But do you mean to actually say I can now completely block you or any other Prime out?"
"You"re going too far, ace. Me, yes--but don"t forget that there very well may be people--or things--as far ahead of us as we are ahead of pointer pups."
"Huh! Balloon-juice and prop-wash! I just _know_, Clee, that you"re the absolute tops of the whole, entire, macrocosmic universe."
"Well, we can dream, of course." Garlock withdrew his mind from Belle"s and turned his attention to the now quiet Semolo. "Well, my over-confident and contumacious young squirt; are you done horsing around or do you want to keep it up until you addle completely what few brains you have?"
The Lizorian made no reply; but merely glared.
"The trouble with you half-baked, juvenile--I almost added "delinquent"
to that, and perhaps I should have--Primes is that you know too d.a.m.ned much that isn"t true. As an old Tellurian saying hath it, "you"re altogether too big for your britches."
"Thus, simply because you have lived a few years on one single planet and haven"t encountered anyone able to stand up to you, you"ve sold yourself on the idea that there"s n.o.body, anywhere, who can. You"re wrong--you couldn"t be more so if you had an army to help you.