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  “I guess we muffed it, captain. The Arthoids seem to be getting even for that eggbeater deal.”

  Captain Wilkins went white under his space tan. So did every other member of the crew present.

  “You mean they’ve made a weapon out of those pens?”

  McCord nodded.

  I looked at him suspiciously. The whole business smelled as high as McCord used to, but there was nothing I could put a finger on. Who could have suspected that the Arthoids could do anything with a harmless object like a pen?

  Nobody but me, and it was only a hunch.

  “What have they done?” Captain Wilkins asked.

  “It seems that the Diomedes have a system of communication that we have never suspected. They are like bats. They generate supersonic waves, and by means of very delicate organs they can detect those waves. The Arthoids knew that and that’s why they were so glad to have the supersonic pens. They’ve hooked them all in phase and turned them on full power. They are slowly torturing the Diomedes to death through their sensitive hearing organs. They’ll all be dead by morning unless we help them.”

  Captain Wilkins let out a groan that was echoed by all the rest of us. We visioned our trading careers blighted for the rest of our lives. The Council wouldn’t allow any company to hire us after this boner.

  “There’s something else, too,” said McCord.

  “You couldn’t possibly make it worse,” said Captain Wilkins.

  “I’m afraid so. I learned something else. The Jewelworlds have a property we didn’t know anything about. Ordinarily, the Diomedes live several hundreds of our years, but when one of them dies all the Jewelworlds it has made cease functioning no matter where they are. That means that all the Jewelworlds we have ever brought back will be practically worthless.”

  Captain Wilkins was too stupefied by this news to groan any more. He merely sat down and buried his face in his hands.

  Dunc Edwards looked out the port towards the far stars. “We could head out away from the Solar System as far as our fuel would take us,” he suggested.

  Captain Wilkins glared at him, but he was deadly serious.

  And then McCord spoke again. “I have a suggestion.”

  Captain Wilkins’ glare turned on him was permission to speak.

  “The only solution is for us to exterminate the Arthoids,” said McCord.

  “How would you do that, even if it weren’t stupid to even think of such a thing ?”

  “I have a method,” said McCord quietly.

  Every eye turned upon him. A cold wave swept over us and we all seemed to get the same idea at the same time. That gadget McCord had been working on during the trip —his insistence on trading with the Arthoids first.

  “Why, you—” I spluttered.

  “You planned this!” Captain Wilkins thundered.

  “Captain!” McCord’s voice was full of hurt and he averted his eyes.

  I don’t quite know yet what saved McCord from being slaughtered right there in the ship in the next fifteen minutes. Captain Wilkins swore, the men of the crew tried to grab McCord but he beat them off with a heavy metal chair and when our rage had exhausted us, he said quietly, "I suggest you call Timothy Thorgersen and get permission to exterminate the Arthoids. It can be done in such a way that it will appear that the Diomedes have done it without any help from us.”

  All this time the clamor outside had been going on again. The Diomedes peppered the ship with rocks and kept up their high-pitched squealing that we didn’t even know they could make before, pleading for our help.

  “It’s the only way,” said McCord.

  Slowly, Captain Wilkins turned around to the communication panel and put in a call for Timothy Thorgersen. Every man in the room knew that it was the end of his trading career and there was murder in their eyes as they glowered at McCord.

  It took a while to get Thorgersen on the beam. He was out partying somewhere as usual and his face was flushed and angry as he came in view. “What is the meaning of this interruption, captain ?” he snapped.

  Briefly, Captain Wilkins explained the situation and the solution as given by McCord.

  On the color screen we could see the blood rush to Thorgersen’s head and the little veins in his forehead swelled and pulsed. “McCord 1” he spat. “Put him on!”

  Captain Wilkins beckoned to McCord who seemed as calm as a spring morning as he walked between the threatening crew members towards the thunderous image of Thorgersen.

  “Yes?” said McCord.

  “McCord, what’s the meaning of this ? Isn’t there some way out besides what Wilkins says you suggest ?”

  “None at all, Mr. Thorgersen. There is something else you should know', too: I took a bath.”

  Thorgersen seemed to go pale on the screen, but he blustered, “Your personal pathologies are nothing to me.”

  “You know what I mean,” said McCord evenly and there was a tone in his voice that we had never heard before. “I took a bath.”

  “I want to know what this is all about!”

  “I’ll take care of this situation on Merans so that you will never have to worry about your supply of Jewelworlds again. You will be able to get all you want.”

  “Go ahead,” said Thorgersen. “Slaughter the whole bunch of Arthoids if necessary as long as Barter, Inc. is not connected with it.”

  “There are certain concessions that I want,” said McCord, “before I save your precious Diomedes. I want my share of the profits from the Jewelworlds which you have robbed me of during the last eight years. I want a return of my share in the trading company we formed. In exchange for this I’ll save your main asset of Barter, Inc. and forget that you tried to murder me.”

  Thorgersen sputtered with incipient apoplexy, but before he could speak, McCord went on again. “All the agreements I want you to sign are in the hands of my lawyers along with the murder charge that will be released if you fail to comply. There are about five hundred witnesses to your attempted murder and they are all living.”

  “You’re crazy! You can’t threaten—”

  “I can and am. The Diomedes are intelligent creatures, and now that I can speak vocally with them their testimony will be admitted in any court. I’ll keep the Arthoids from killing the five hundred I need until they can testify against you. Better call my lawyers and make up your mind fast. I’ll give you a half hour.”

  McCord gave the name of his law firm and clicked off.

  The rest of us stared openmouthed at McCord, the changed McCord. He had browbeat the one man we all feared because of the arbitrary control he exercised over us.

  But now McCord seemed to sag as if some great energy had gone out of him and he sank down on a chair.

  "What are you trying to do?” asked Captain Wilkins. “You can’t blackmail Thorgersen. That’s suicide to try to pull a stunt like that on him.”

  "It’s not blackmail,” said McCord in a tired voice. “It’s merely an attempt at justice. When Thorgersen and I landed on this planet eight years ago we had a joint interest in the trading company that we had formed.

  “Sure, I had a reputation then of being a drunken bum and not caring about anything. I admit it. I was young and didn’t have a brain in my head, I guess. Thorgersen was older and more settled. He took this trading business seriously and I was in for the fun of it. He was determined to roll the thing into a big corporation with great fleets of trading ships like he finally got. But that seemed too much like business red tape to me. I would have been content with a half dozen ships and a bottle of good whiskey on Saturday nights. Thorgersen saw me as just an anchor to him.

  “Then I found the Jewelworlds here on Merans and saw their possibilities. I knew they’d be worth a fortune if we exploited them right. Thorgersen admitted I had a good idea, so good that he tried to murder me in order that he wouldn’t have to share the profits with me.

  “I celebrated the discovery of the Jewelworlds with an extra quart and while I was half cockeyed Thorgersen
tapped me on the head and threw me in the pool out there where the Diomedes swim. That’s what gave me my psychosis.”

  Dunc Edwards snorted. "You aren’t going to try to tell us that you actually had a hydrophobia that kept you away from water!”

  “I’m telling you,” said McCord evenly. “The Diomedes fished me out and brought me around. That was when I worked out a sign language with them and they became so friendly because I showed them how my pocket visor worked. The little devils took it apart and made a death ray out of it that they turned on the Arthoids until the power ran out. I later gave one to the Arthoids to get in solid with them.

  “Thorgersen kept trying to hang around and get a load of Jewelworlds, but I told the Diomedes not to give him any. When I finally confronted him, he thought he was seeing a ghost, but when he found out about my psychosis he thought I was crazy and that it would be safe enough to take me back, which I bargained for by getting some of the Jewelworlds for him.

  “For eight years I’ve been trying to get up courage to go back into that pool where he tried to drown me. I knew it was the only thing that would cure me, and that if I didn’t make it this trip I never would. So I made arrangements before we left to bargain with Thorgersen for what he stole from met”

  Captain Wilkins was about to . break in when the gong sounded and Thorgersen was back. His apoplectic face was pale now and his jowls sagged. “I’ve signed,” he said. “You see that you take care of your end. Come in and see me when you get back.”

  He cut off without giving McCord a chance to speak. McCord checked with his lawyers and found that Thorgersen had kicked through. He had complied in every detail.

  McCord rose then and gathered into himself some of the new energy he seemed to possess.

  "Damned clever,” Captain Wilkins muttered. “I’ve never seen a deal put over like that before.”

  “You think I’m lying?” McCord said.

  “Sure. I don’t care how drunk you were or how hard you were hit. Merely being thrown in a pool wouldn’t give you a psychosis for the rest of your life that would make you afraid to drink a glass of water.”

  “There were five hundred Diomedes swimming in the pool at the time,” said McCord patiently. “They were responsible for it indirectly.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Have you ever seen the demonstration where supersonic waves are set up in an oil bath by a crystal vibrating at such frequencies being immersed in the bath?”

  “I’ve heard of such.”

  “You stick your finger in the oil and it will nearly burn it off. Remember?”

  “Sure, but—”

  “There were five hundred Diomedes in that pool, some under the surface, some swimming on top. They were chattering and gossiping their heads off—at supersonic frequencies. It was like being thrown in a vat of boiling oil. The hundreds of frequencies beat together and produced waves that hammered and tore at me and others that burned. It didn’t bother the Diomedes, of course. They’re built for it. But I thought I was being boiled alive.

  “The Diomedes fished me out of there, but from then on every time I saw so much as a glass of water I felt that burning and tearing energy again. I couldn’t help it. It would drive me crazy to hear water dripping from a tap even. I could only drink something I knew was not water, and whiskey nearly finished the job it had begun.

  “I knew I had to get back into that pool without the Diomedes in it. Nothing else would cure me, but it took eight years to get courage enough to do it.”

  No one spoke when McCord was through. No one had a moment’s doubt now of the truth of his story. He spoke simply and with the ingratiating honesty that he had always tried to project through his drunkenness though the knowledge of what others thought of him must have been torture.

  He went out of the room and after a moment we followed silently behind him.

  He stepped out of the hatch and we all caught the overpowering smell of the ologenerator going full blast again. We wondered why in the world he had that thing on again.

  But there was an obvious change in the Diomedes now. They rose from their cowering attitude and flocked around him worshipfully.

  We saw the little gadget in his hand which he had built during the trip out. It was connected with a little microphone at his lips. We knew now what it was: A device for speaking and listening to the supersonic voice frequencies of the Diomedes. The creatures were quiet, listening to him and when he finished they trooped past him in single file and he handed out several dozen ologenerators which we didn’t even know he had. When they were all gone he left us and crossed the dark plain to the holes of the Arthoids in the cliffs opposite. An hour later he was back.

  “What’s the score?” asked Captain Wilkins finally.

  “There’s a truce,” said McCord. “It’s an armed truce, but I don’t think it will ever be broken. The Arthoids have got the supersonic pens to annoy the Diomedes’ hearing organs, and the Diomedes have got the ologenerators.”

  “What good are they?” asked Dunc.

  “Haven’t you ever noticed the smell around the Arthoids’ caves? Like roses and orchids? The Arthoids communicate too—by means of a sense of smell, using their olfactory organs. The ologenerators will raise the merry devil with them if the .Diomedes turn them on. But each side knows better now than to turn on its weapons. If it does, retaliation will be quick. I had to go over and make the Arthoids understand that. They’re sore, but very agreeable.”

  “Won’t these things kill the creatures?” I asked.

  “Of course not! The Diomedes and Arthoids are my friends!” McCord turned his wide, blue eyes on me in that hurt expression again. “The pens and the ologenerators are annoying as the devil to them, but they won’t harm them.”

  “How could you talk to the Diomedes even if you could use supersonics? You hadn’t learned their vocal language,” I said.

  McCord shook his head. “I wasn’t sure I could, and don’t ask me how. Their heads are like Jewelworlds. Any language creates the pictures it was meant to convey and their words do the same to me. No abstractions, of course, but we managed.”

  We felt better now. All but Captain Wilkins. He sat in his chair as morose as ever. I asked what the trouble was.

  He looked up. “Do you think Thorgersen is going to take this lying down? He may be a crook and a murderer and McCord may be safe enough from him, but look what he’ll do to us! He’ll take it all out on us as soon as we get back. I think we might as well resign and find a new trade right now.”

  McCord brightened. “Oh, you don’t need to worry about that, Captain. Didn’t I tell you? The transfer of the ownership of the Cassiopeia was one item of my conditions that Thorgersen signed. You fellows all work for me now.” He looked around hopefully at the ring of men. “I hope you don’t mind, fellows,” he said.

  Wide grins gave him his answer. Anybody that could come out on top of a deal with Thorgersen was a good man.

  “I think we should celebrate now,” McCord said. He leaned towards an audio panel on the wall and called the galley. “Send up a couple of dozen quarts right away!” There was a moment’s pause as he listened, then he exploded in indignation.

  “No!” he roared. “Water!”

  THE END.

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