But they did not run out of time. At planet number four-hundred-something, Belle suddenly emitted a shriek--vocally as well as mentally. "Clee!
Hold it! Here"s something, I think!"
"I"m sure there is, and I"m gladder to see you two people than can possibly be expressed."
Belle whirled; so did Garlock. A man stood in the middle of the Main; a man shaped very much like Garlock, but with long, badly-tousled hair and a bushy wilderness of fiery-red whiskers.
"Please excuse this intrusion, Admiral--or should it be plural? Improper address, I"m sure, but your joint tenure is a concept so new and so vast that I am not yet able to grasp it fully--but you are working at such high speed that I had to do something drastic. You will, I trust, remain here long enough to discuss certain matters with my wife and me?"
"We"ll be very glad to."
"Thank you. I will return, then, more decorously, and bring her. One moment." He disappeared.
"_Wife!_" Belle exclaimed, more than half in dismay. "They must be, then...."
"Yeah." The thought of a wife did not bother Garlock at all. "Talk about _power!_ And _speed!_ To get all that stuff and "port up here in the millisecond or so we had the screens open? Baby Doll, there"s a guy who is what a Prime Operator _ought_ to be!"
In less than a minute the man reappeared, accompanied by a woman who was very obviously pregnant--eight months or so. Like the man, she was dressed in tight-fitting coveralls. Her hair, however--it was a natural red, too--was cut to a uniform length of eight inches, and each hair individually stood out, perfectly straight and perfectly perpendicular to the element of the scalp from which it sprang.
"Friends Belle and Clee of Tellus, I present Therea, my wife; and Alsyne, myself; of this planet Thaker. We have numbers, too, but they are never used among friends."
Acknowledgments were made and a few minutes of conversation ensued, during which the two couples studied each other.
"This looks mighty good to me," Garlock said then. "Shall we go screens half-down, Alsyne, and cry in each other"s beer?"
In thirty seconds of flashing communication each became thoroughly informed. Those minds could send, and could receive, an incredibly vast amount of information in an incredibly brief s.p.a.ce of time.
"Your ship should work and doesn"t," Garlock said. "Show me; in detail."
Alsyne showed him.
"Oh, I see. You didn"t work out quite all the theory. It has to be activated. Like this...." Garlock showed Alsyne.
"I see. Thanks." Alsyne disappeared and was gone for some ten minutes.
He reappeared, grinning hugely behind his flaming wilderness of beard.
"It works perfectly; for which our heartfelt thanks. And now that my mind is at complete peace with the universe, we will consider the utterly fascinating subject of your proposed Galactic Service. You two Tellurians, immature although you are, have made two tremendous contributions to the advancement of the Scheme of Things--three, if you count the starship, which is comparatively unimportant--each of such import that no human mind can foresee any fraction of its consequences.
First, your Prime Field, the probe and its screen...."
"Clee!" Belle drove the thought. "You _didn"t_ give him _that_, surely!"
"Tut-tut, my child," Therea soothed her. "You are alarming yourself about nothing."
"The only trouble with you two youngsters is that you aren"t quite--very nearly, of course, but very definitely not quite--grown up." Alsyne smiled again; not only with mouth and eyes, but with his whole hairy face. "To the mature mind there is no such thing as status. Each knows what he can do best and does it as a matter of course. Rank is not necessary.
"Second, the unimaginably important contribution of the ability to combine two dissimilar but intimately compatible minds into one tremendously effective fusion. While Therea and I have had only a few moments to play with it, we realize some of its possibilities. Thus, since she is a Doctor of Humanities...."
"Oh," Belle interrupted. "_That"s_ why you knew what I was thinking about, even though I tight-beamed the thought and my screens were tight?"
"Exactly so. But to continue. With her sympathy and empathy, and my driving force and so on, the job of licking these young Primes into shape is, as your idiom has it, "strictly our dish." It is a truly delicious thought.
"You two, on the other hand, have much that we lack. Breadth and depth and scope of imagination and of vision; yet almost incredible will-power and stamina and resolve...."
"_That"s the word I was trying to think of--will-power_," Belle flashed a thought at Garlock.
"... qualities virtually always mutually exclusive; but the combination of which makes your fusion uniquely qualified to lead and direct this new and magnificent movement. But Therea and I have been idle and frustrated far too long. We can be of most use, at the moment, on Margonia; working with the Fao-Deggi unit. Therefore, with renewed deep thanks, we go."
Man and wife disappeared; and, ten seconds later, the Thakern starship vanished from its world.
"Well, _what_ do you think of _that_?" Belle gasped. "I was actually afraid to think, even behind a Prime screen. I don"t know _yet_ whether I want to kiss "em or kill "em."
"I do. That guy is really a Prime, Belle. He"s older, bigger, and a lot better than I am."
"Uh-uh," she demurred, positively. "Older, yes. More mature--you _baby_, you!" She snickered gleefully. "If he hadn"t included you in that crack I"d"ve stabbed him, so help me, even though it wasn"t true. He said himself it"s _you_ who has got what it takes to lead and direct, not him."
"Us. We, I mean," he corrected, absently.
"Uh-huh; us-we. One, now and forever. Hot Dog! Anyway, he wants us to and we want to so everything"s lovely and so let"s get to work on Fatso and his Foster. I think we ought to have some fun for a change and that"ll be a lot. When do we want to hit him?"
"Any day Monday through Friday. Nine-fifteen A.M. Eastern Daylight time.
Plus or minus one minute."
"Nice! Catch him _in flagrante delicto_. Lovely--shovel on the coal, my intrepid engineer!"
On a Wednesday morning, then, at twelve minutes past nine EDT, the _Pleiades_ hung poised, high over the Chancellery of Solar System Enterprises, Incorporated.
"Remember, Belle!" Garlock was pacing the Main. "To keep "em staggering we"ll have to land slugging and beat "em to every punch. You did a wonderful job on her last time, and it"s been eating on her ever since.
She"s probably been rehearsing in front of a mirror just how she"s going to tear you apart next time and just how she"s going to spit out the pieces. Last time, you were cold, stiff, rigidly formal, and polite. So this time it"ll be me, and I"ll be hot and bothered, dirty, low, coa.r.s.e, lewd, and very, very rough."
Belle threw back her head and laughed. "Rough? Yes. Vicious, contemptuous, or ugly; yes. A master of fluent, biting, and pyrotechnic profanity; yes. But low or dirty or coa.r.s.e or lewd, Clee? Or any one of the four, to say nothing of them all? Uh-uh. Ferber"s a filthy beast, of course; but even he knows you"re one of the cleanest men that ever lived. They"d _know_ it was an act."
"Not unless I give "em time to think--or unless you do, before he fires Jim--in which case we"ll lose the game anyway. But how about you? If I can knock "em too groggy to think, will you carry on and keep "em that way?"
"Watch my blasts!" Belle giggled gleefully. "I never tried anything like that--any more than you have--but I"ll guarantee to be just as low, dirty, coa.r.s.e, lewd, and crude as you are. Probably more so, because in this particular case it"ll be fun. You see, you"re a man--you can"t possibly despise and detest that slimy stinker either in the same way or as much as I do."
"This ought to be good. Cut the rope, Jim."
Even before the starship came to rest, Garlock drove a probe into the _sanctum sanctorum_ of the Chancellery--an utterly unheard-of act of insolence.
"Foster! This is the _Pleiades_ coming in. Garlock calling. Hot up the tri-di and the recorder, Toots. Put Fatso on, and snap into it.... I said shake a leg!"
"Why, I.... You...."
"Stop stuttering and come to life, you half-witted bag! Gimme Ferber and hurry it up--this ship"s tricky."
"Why, you ... I never...." Ferber"s outraged First Secretary could scarcely talk. "He ... he is...."