by John Rickham
I let her have a good look, and she was still sure. “That’s it, then!” I declared, and put it down on the table. As I’ve said before, there’s nothing to gain by waiting at such a time, so I grabbed it quickly with one hand—and breathed easier as nothing happened to me except a faint tingle. Then I said a silent prayer and stretched out my other hand to touch Carson. And there came again that incredible sensation of multiplied power, of genius bursting into my brain, of energy flooding into me and out of me through my hand. I knew, and this time the knowledge made sense. But then that glorious inner flame grew faint, fainter still, and then dark. Everything was dark. Everything!
XII
THAT AWAKENING WAS weird, as if I had slowly materialized out of cosmic dust. Lowloo, sitting by my bunk, ran out at once to cry, ”Neil! Fiona! He is well again.”
Carson showed his grinning face long enough to say, “You’re hungry,” and went away. Fiona came to grip my band tight and glare, and say, “You took your time coming back, didn’t you?” but she didn’t mean it unkindly.
“Why am I so hungry?” I demanded, grabbing at the bowl of soup Carson banded me. “And how did you know I was?”
“You’ve been out a whole day,” he said. “You took a hellova chance, back there, and I owe you my life for it, but you really ran your batteries down. That’s why you passed out. You’ll be all right when you get that down.”
“I thought we were out of food,” I said, suddenly remembering.
“We are. That’s all there is. And there’s a decision to make that includes you, so eat up. Go on!”
“I can listen while I eat. You talk!”
‘All right.” He settled on a bunk. “We’ve no food. No auxiliaries. We have about enough fuel to get close to Outpost One. No clothes. Nothing. No lights. No water. So, while you were asleep, we turned back. We are now just around the corner from Zeb’s yacht, which has everything we need.”
“We what?” In my agitation I almost spilled what was left in my bowl. I realized, now, that there was no engine noise. “Are you out of your mind?”
“I think not. But Zeb is, almost. I’ve been spying on him. He is all on his own now, remember. And I think he is actually contemplating going after the loot himself. He doesn't know that it has been lifted already.”
“And so?”
“So we wait until he has left that luxury yacht of his, and we steal it, take it away—” and that is exactly what we did. We towed it far enough to be sure that Zeb couldn’t swim out and interfere, then we gutted it of everything we needed. That was no problem, as we had done the same thing in reverse when we shifted our gear into the underground room, but I think we won considerably more than we lost, particularly in luxury materials for the girls to dress up in. As Fiona explained, we couldn’t very well return to the savants of Outpost One in nothing more than a fine suntan! Our last act was to plant an explosive charge and get rid of that yacht, forever.
“Leaving Zeb stranded on a barren rock,” Carson stated, may just cause me to lie awake nights and worry, but not right now!”
And that’s all there is. We bad some hairy moments getting those gems safely past various port authorities, and some even hairier ones when it came to disposing of them—out of which we made about a million each—but I have no intention of detailing that here. As Carson said, “There are some tricks better left unexplained,” and I wouldn’t want to embarrass anyone. There’s a substantial share set aside for Lowloo, for whenever she wants it. At the moment, she is having a wonderful time acting as official representative of her people, now that the scientists—and others—have to recognize the Verlan as intelligent humanoids. She is very attractive. It’s no surprise to me that one of the current garment fads is an off-the-bosom bolero-type thing in fur. I hope she will be able to visit us soon. We have a lot to talk over.
Would I do it all over again? I don’t know. Given companions like Neil Carson and Fiona—I might, at that.