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they're certainly not going to take the chance of any more human intrusions on
their home world, or one of their home worlds, whichever the one we were on
is. Once they lock onto us, they're going to take us out into interstellar
space, well inside their territory, but far, far away from any of their
worlds, and effectively nail us down out there. They'll post guards on us to
see we stay where we've been put, and kept that way until they've figured out
the answer to how we did what we did, which may take them a few thousand years
or more. Meanwhile, what you've learned so far isn't going to be getting back
to do any good on Earth."
"It might be like that," said Mary thoughtfully. "All right, we'll just see.
We'll let them come and take us away; and if they put us out in space
somewhere the way you think they will, I'll set you free, and you can take us
home."
"Then'll be too late," said Jim.
He imagined her staring at him, the brown eyes wide now.
"Are you talking absolute nonsense?" she demanded. "Even if they've got
guards watching, once you're free you can phase-shift AndFriend up to ten or
fifteen light-years at least, in any direction, can't you?"
"I suppose," said Jim, "it's not your fault you don't think in terms of a
military action in space. You didn't think I meant they'd just put a couple of
ships beside us wherever they left us, and then the rest of them would all go
home? We wouldn't do anything as stupid as that if the situation was reversed;
and nothing on the Frontier's indicated the Laagi are any more stupid than we
are. There'd not only be guard ships beside us, but we'd be boxed in for as
far as we could jump in any direction by sentinel ships with instruments tuned
to track us if we suddenly went off by phase-shift. And there'd be other
spaceforces on call near enough to keep us tracked, and close in on us within
a day at the outside, no matter which way we went or dodged about." He
snorted. "For that matter, they might just come on board and remove our
phase-shift engines."
"Of course," said Mary slowly, "this is all just a theory of yours."
A two-person Laagi warship phased in not a hundred meters from AndFriend's
right side.
"Woops," said Jim. "That was close. A fortieth of a decimal point farther,
and he'd have been in AndFriend's space when he came out of phase-and that'd
be all there was! Bet you a snap of the fingers that whoever commands his
flight is jumping down his throat, right now."
"These are aliens. We can't be sure of how they think," said Mary.
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The Laagi ship which had just appeared rolled over on its side, revealing
what appeared to be two long bars, like skis, attached to its hull by struts
several meters in length. Both struts and runners were thick and heavy, firmly
bonded to the body of the craft. As they watched, the bottom surface of the
runners that was facing toward AndFriend began to turn pink, and the pink
color darkened until it became obvious that the surfaces were warming up
toward a white-hot heat, at which temperature they would weld themselves
firmly to AndFriend's hull at a touch.
Another ship appeared on the other side of AndFriend, but in this case it
popped into existence a much safer four or five kilometers off. But it, too,
had attachment runners and the face of these, also, began to heat up as they
watched.
"Maybe two more ships yet to come, to cover us completely," said Jim.
"Time's getting short, honey."
"Clear all, Jim Wander! Clear all-go! Go!"
As the words erupted from Mary's mind, Jim felt control of AndFriend return
to him. Two other Laagi vessels with runners had appeared and the first two
were drifting in close. He had programmed the shift down-galaxy in his mind
long before. It was an automatic thing to feed it to the phase-shift
mechanism.
They shifted.
All at once they were alone in empty space with strange stars burning all
about them.
"How far did we come?" Mary asked.
"At least three light-years," said Jim grimly. "I think we've taken them by
surprise, and maybe we'll be able to make it to fly-swatter territory."
He calculated and shifted; shifted again...
He was scanning space in all directions around them, gratefully once again
using the powerful distance vision of the ship's equipment. "Look at that, I
think we're beyond the fly-swatter range-there are those GO-type stars we saw
before. Maybe that's what Raoul meant by Paradise-"
He broke off. The interior of the ship was suddenly a swarm with invisible
life.
Chapter 23.
It was unbelievable. Not only that, thought Jim, it was just about
indescribable.
He and Mary and Squonk were surrounded by what could only be described as a
host of innumerable invisible fireflies. To call them fireflies and at the
same time to say they were invisible was a contradiction in terms, but it was
the only way of describing them. They were invisible to any physical sight,
even AndFriend's instruments did not register their presence. But his mind saw
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them very clearly indeed as multitudinous living points of colored lights,
lights whose colors changed constantly, so that it was like standing in the
midst of a rainbow in the process of sorting itself out from an endless number
of tiny component parts.
And they were constantly in motion.
Not only that, but they were not only in the ship but all around it. They
were in the interior space of the ship, they were partway through the hull of
the ship, they were outside the ship, swarming in space and stretching off
into the interstellar distance like the tail of a comet.
"They see us! Like the other one!"
"That one doesn't."
"But these two do. It's lovely to see and be seen by you."
Their voices rang in Jim's mind, each one different and memorable. Each one
audible separately for a moment before they were drowned by a perfect roar of
greetings from what sounded at the very least like hundreds of thousands of
such voices, all entirely individual.
"Who're you?" asked Jim.
"I'm me," said the chorusing host of different voices.
Jim shook his head, stunned.
"If you'd speak just one at a time," said Mary, "we could hear you better."
"Of course, if you wish. But what kind of hearing is that?" said one voice.
"We loved your friend. We'll love you, I think. Why aren't more of you
lovable?"
"I don't know what you mean by what kind of hearing," said Mary. "In what
way are we lovable?"
"Are there different ways of being lovable?" asked a different voice.
"I asked you a question first," said Mary.
"No, you didn't," said the voice that had agreed to talk one at a time. "I
asked you a question first."
"Got you," murmured Jim to Mary.
"What is 'got'?"
"Look here," said Mary determinedly. "What do you mean, 'that kind of
hearing?' and in what way are Jim and I lovable?"
"There really is only one way to hear," said the most recent voice to speak
to them. "Just like there's only one way to see. The small hole that's your
other friend doesn't see or hear us."
"You mean Squonk?"
"There it is again," said the voice resignedly. "You're just like your
friend who could see and hear us. It's very painful for us when a person
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won't, of course. That's why we told your other friends not to come any
nearer. We only let this one come with you because you two can see and hear
us, and we wanted to talk to you. But you're just like your other friend we
loved dearly, who was here before. He'd start to tell us something and then he
wouldn't say it. You just did that. You said 'you mean... ' and then you
stopped."
"I didn't stop," said Mary. "I said his name was Squonk."
"You're doing it again. You say 'I said his... was...'"
"I think," said Jim, "that we've got a communications problem. When we say
'talk,' we're referring to what we usually make as physical sounds in the
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