XIX
Torlos spread his hands eloquently. "That is the history of our war. Canyou wonder that my people were suspicious when your ship appeared? Canyou wonder that they drove you away? They were afraid of the men ofSator; when they saw your weapons, they were afraid for theircivilization.
"On the other hand, why should the men of Sator fear? They knew that ourcode of honor would not permit us to make a treacherous attack.
"I regret that my people drove you away, but can you blame them?"
Arcot had to admit that he could not. He turned to Morey. "They werecertainly reasonable in driving us from their cities; experience hastaught them that it's the safest way. A good offense is always the bestdefense.
"But experience has taught me that, unlike Torlos, I have to eat. Iwonder if it might not be a good idea to get a little rest too--I'mbushed."
"Good idea," agreed Morey. "I'll ask Wade to stand guard while we sleep.If Torlos wants company, he can talk to Wade as well as anyone. I'm duefor some sleep myself."
Arcot, Morey, and Fuller went to their rooms for some rest. Arcot andMorey were tired, but after an hour, Fuller rose and went down to thecontrol room where Wade was communicating telepathically with Torlos.
"Hello," Wade greeted him. "I thought you were going to join theSnoring Chorus."
"I tried to, but I couldn't get in tune. What have you been doing?"
"I've been talking with Torlos--and with fair success. I'm getting thetrick of thought communication," Wade said enthusiastically. "I askedTorlos if he wanted to sleep, and it seems that they do it regularly,one day in ten. And when they sleep, they sleep soundly. It's more of acoma, something like the hibernation of a bear or a possum.
"If you want to do business with Mr. John Doe, and he happens to beasleep, your business will have to wait. It takes something reallydrastic to wake these people up.
"I remember a remark one of my classmates made while I was going tocollege. He was totally unconscious of the humor in the thing. He said:'I've got to go to more lectures. I've been losing a lot of sleep.'
"He intended them to be totally disconnected thoughts, but the rest ofus knew his habits, and we almost knocked ourselves out laughing.
"I was just wondering what would happen if a Nansalian were to drop offin class. They'd probably have to call an ambulance or something tocarry him home!"
Fuller looked at the giant. "I doubt it. One of his classmates wouldjust tuck him under his arm and take him on home--or to the nextlecture. Remember, they only weigh about four hundred pounds on Nansal,which is no more to them than fifty pounds is to us."
"True enough," Wade agreed. "But you know, I'd hate to have him wrapthose arms of his about me. He might get excited, or sneeze orsomething, and--_squish!_"
"You and your morbid imagination." Fuller sat down in one of the seats."Let's see if we can't get a three-way conversation going; this guy isinteresting."
Arcot and Morey awoke nearly three hours later, and the Earthmen atetheir breakfast, much to Torlos' surprise.
"I can understand that you need far more food than we do," he commented,"but you only ate a few hours ago. It seems like a tremendous amount offood to me. How could you possibly grow enough in your cities?"
"So _that's_ why they don't have any farms!" Fuller said.
"Our food is grown out on the plains outside the cities, where there isroom," Arcot explained. "It's difficult, but we have machines to helpus. We could never have developed the cone type of city you have,however, for we need huge huge quantities of food. If we were to sealourselves inside our cities as your people have to protect themselvesfrom enemies, we would starve to death very quickly."
"You know," Morey said, "I'll have to admit that Torlos' people are ahigher type of creation than we are. Man, and all other animals onEarth, are parasites of the plant world. We're absolutely incapable ofproducing our own foods. We can't gather energy for ourselves. We'reutterly dependent on plants.
"But these men aren't--at least not so much so. They at least generatetheir own muscular energy by extracting heat from the air they breathe.They combine all the best features of plants, reptiles, and mammals. Idon't know where they'd be classified biologically!"
After the meal, they went to the control room and strapped themselvesinto the control seats. Arcot checked the fuel gauge.
"We have plenty of lead left," he said to Morey, "and Torlos has assuredme that we will be able to get more on Nansal. I suggest we show him howthe space control works, so that he can tell the Nansalian scientistsabout it from personal experience.
"In this sun's gravitational field, we'll lose a lot of power, but aslong as it can be replaced, we're all right."
Turning to the Nansalian, Arcot pointed out towards the little spark oflight that was Torlos' home planet. "Keep your eyes on that, Torlos.Watch it grow when we use our space control drive."
Arcot pushed the little red switch to the first notch. The air aroundthem pulsed with power for an instant, then space had readjusted itself.
The point that was Nansal grew to a disc, and then it was swiftlyleaping toward them, welling up to meet them, expanding its bulk withawesome speed. Torlos watched it tensely.
There was a sudden splintering crash, and Arcot jerked open the circuitin alarm. They were almost motionless again as the stars reeled aboutthem.
Torlos had been nervous. Like any man so effected, he had unconsciouslytightened his muscles. His fingers had sunk into the hard plastic of thearm rest on his chair, and crushed it as though it had been put betweenthe jaws of a hydraulic press!
"I'm glad we weren't holding hands," said Wade, eyeing the brokenplastic.
"I am very sorry," Torlos thought humbly. "I did not intend to do that.I forgot myself when I saw that planet rushing at me so fast." Hischagrin was apparent on his face.
Arcot laughed. "It is nothing, Torlos. We are merely astonished at theterrific strength of your hand. Wade wasn't worried; he was joking!"
Torlos looked relieved, but he looked at the splintered arm rest andthen at his hand. "It is best that I keep my too-strong hands away fromyour instruments."
The ship was falling toward Nansal at a relatively slow rate, less thanfour miles a second. Arcot accelerated toward the planet for two hours,then began to decelerate. Five hundred miles above the planet's surface,their velocity cut the ship into a descending spiral orbit to allow theatmosphere to check their speed.
The outer lux hull began to heat up, and he closed the relux screens tocut down the radiation from it. When he opened them again, the ship wasspeeding over the broad plains of the planet.
Torlos told Arcot that by far the greater percentage of the surface ofNansal was land. There was still plenty of water, for their seas weremuch deeper than those of Earth. Some of the seas were thirty miles deepover broad areas--hundreds of square miles. As if to compensate, theland surfaces were covered with titanic mountain ranges, some of themover ten miles above sea level.
Torlos, his eyes shining, directed the Earthmen to his home city, thecapital of the world-nation.
"Is there no traffic between the cities here, Torlos?" Morey asked. "Wehaven't seen any ships."
"There's continuous traffic," Torlos replied, "but you have come in farto the north, well away from the regularly scheduled routes. Thecommerce must be densely populated with warships as well, and bothwarships and commercial craft are made to look as much alike as possibleso that the enemy can not know when ships of war are present and whenthey are not, and their attacks are more easily beaten off. They areforced to live off our commerce while they are here. Before we inventedthe magnetic storage device, they were forced to get fuel from our shipsin order to make the return journey; they could not carry enough for theround trip."
Suddenly his smile broadened, and he pointed out the forward window."Our city is behind that next range of mountains!"
They were flying at a height of twenty miles, and the range Torlosindicated was far off in the blue distance, almos
t below the horizon. Asthey approached them, the mountains seemed to change slowly as theirperspective shifted. They seemed to crawl about on one another likeliving things, growing larger and changing from blue to blue-green, andthen to a rich, verdant emerald.
Soon the ship was rocketing smoothly over them. Ahead and below, in therocky gorge of the mountains, lay a great cone city, the largest theEarthmen had yet seen. As they approached, they could see another conebehind it--the city was a double cone! They resembled the circus tentsof two centuries earlier, connected by a ridge.
"Ah--home!" smiled Torlos. "See--that twin cone idea is new. It was notthus when I left it, years ago. It is growing, growing--and in that newsection! See? They have bright colors on all the buildings! And alreadythey are digging foundations out to the left for a third cone!" He wasso excited that it was difficult for Arcot to read his thoughtscoherently.
"But we won't have to build more fortifications," Torlos continued, "ifyou will give us the secret of the rays you use!
"But, Arcot, you must hide in the hills now; drop down and deposit me inthe hills. I will walk to the city on foot.
"I will be able to identify myself, and I will soon be inside the city,telling the Supreme Three that I have salvation and peace for them!"
"I have a better idea," Arcot told him. "It will save you a long walk.We'll make the ship invisible, and take you close to the city. You candrop, say ten feet from the ship to the ground, and continue from there.Will that be all right?"
Torlos agreed that it would.
Invisible, the _Ancient Mariner_ dove down toward the city, stoppingonly a few hundred feet from the base of the magnetic wall, near one ofthe gigantic beam stations.
"I will come out in a one-man flier, slowly, and at low altitude, towardthat mountain there," Torlos told Arcot, pointing. "Then you may becomevisible and follow me into the city.
"You need fear no treachery from my people," he assured them. Then,smiling: "As if you need fear treachery from the hands of any people!You have certainly proven your ability to defend yourselves!
"Even if my people were treacherously inclined, they would certainlyhave been convinced by your escape from the Satorians. And they haveundoubtedly heard all about it by now through the secret radios of ourspies. After all, I was not the only Nansalian spy there, and some ofthe others must surely have escaped in the ships that ran away after Idestroyed the city." Arcot could feel the sadness in his mind as hethought of the fact that his inadvertent destruction of the city hadundoubtedly killed some of his own people.
Torlos paused a moment, then asked: "Is there any message you wish me togive the Supreme Council of Three?"
"Yes," replied Arcot. "Repeat to them the offer we so foolishly made tothe Commanding One of Sator. We will give them the molecular ray whichtore the city out of the ground, and, as your people have seen, alsotore a mountain down. We will give them our heat beam, which will meltanything except the material of which this ship is made. And we willgive them the knowledge to make this material, too.
"Best of all, we will give them the secret of the most terrific energysource known to mankind; the energy of matter itself. With these in yourhands, Sator will soon be peaceful.
"In return, we ask only two things. They will cost you almost nothing,but they are invaluable to us. We have lost our way. In the vastness ofspace, we can no longer locate our own galaxy. But our own IslandUniverse has features which could be distinguished on an astronomicalplate, and we have taken photographs of it which your astronomers cancompare with their own to help us find our way back.
"In addition, we need more fuel--lead wire. Our space control drive doesnot use up energy except in the presence of a strong gravitationalfield; most of it is drained back into our storage coils, with verylittle loss. But we have used it several times near a large sun, and thepower drainage goes up exponentially. We would not have enough to getback home if we happened to run into any more trouble on the way."
Arcot paused a moment, considering. "Those two things are all we reallyneed, but we would like to take back more, if your Council is willing.We would like samples of your books and photographs and other artifactsof your civilization to take back home to our own people.
"That, and peace, are all we ask."
Torlos nodded. "The things you ask, I am sure the Council will readilyagree to. It seems little enough payment for the things you intend to dofor us."
"Very well, then. We will wait for you. Good luck!"
Torlos turned and jumped out of the airlock. The ship rose high abovehim as he suddenly became visible on the plain below. He was runningtoward the city in great leaps of twenty feet--graceful, easy leaps thatshowed his tremendous power.
Suddenly, a ship was darting down from the city toward him. As it curveddown, Torlos stopped and made certain signals with his arms, then hestood quietly with his hands in the air.
The ship hovered above him, and two men dropped thirty feet to theground and questioned him for several minutes.
Finally, they motioned to the ship, which dropped to ten feet, and thethree men leaped lightly to its door and entered. The door snapped shut,and the ship shot toward the city. The magnetic wall opened for amoment, and the ship shot through. Within seconds, if was out of sight,lost in the busy air traffic above the city.
"Well," said Arcot, "now we go back to the hills and wait."