The Science Fiction anthology. Andre Norton
Nodalictha, because the male now knows how to supply them all with food and energy! Isn’t that strange? I wish the Rhinthak screen did not block off scanning.... But it will fade, presently.”
“You will keep the others from harming my pets,” said Nodalictha confidently. “Do you know, darling, I think I must be quite the luckiest person in the Galaxy, to be married to you.”
The space yacht landed at the field outside Cetopolis. Inhabitants of the tiny town flocked to the field to see new faces. They were disappointed. One man came out and the airlock closed. No visitors.
The skipper went into Carson’s office. He closed the door firmly behind him. He had very beady eyes and a very hard-boiled expression. He looked at Carson with open contempt, and Carson felt that it was because Carson did the Company’s dirty work with figures and due regard for law and order, instead of frankly and violently and without shilly-shallying.
“This Lon Simpson’s got those gadgets, eh?” asked the skipper.
“Why—yes,” said Carson unhappily. “He’s very popular at the moment. He made something on his barn roof that kept the sun from burning us all to death, you know—that still keeps us from burning to death, for that matter.”
“So if we take it away or smash it,” observed the skipper, “we don’t have to worry about anybody saying nasty things about us afterward. Yeah?”
Carson swallowed.
“Everybody’d die if you smashed the gadget,” he admitted, “but all the thanar plants in existence would be burned up, too. There’d be no more thanar. The Company wouldn’t like that.”
The skipper waved his hand. “How do I get this Simpson on my ship? Take a bunch of my men and go grab him?”
“Wh-what are you going to do with him?”
“Don’t you worry,” said the skipper comfortingly. “We know how to handle it. He knows how to make some things the bosses want to know how to make. Once I get him on the ship, he’ll tell. We got ways. Do I take some men and grab him, or will you get him on board peaceable?”
“There—ah—” Carson licked his lips. “He wants to get married. There’s no provision in the legal code for it, as yet. It was overlooked. But I can tell him that as a ship captain, you—”
The skipper nodded matter of factly.
“Right. You get him and the girl on board. And I’ve got some orders for you. Gather up plenty of thanar seed. Get some starting trays with young plants in them. I’ll come back in a couple of days and take you and them on board. The stuff this guy has got is too good, understand?”
“N-no. I’m afraid I don’t.”
“I get this guy to tell us how to make his gadgets,” the skipper explained contemptuously. “We make sure he tells us right. To be extra sure, we leave the gadgets he’s got made and working back here, where he can’t get to ‘em and spoil ‘em. But when we know all he knows—and what he only guesses, too, and my tame scientists have made the same kinda gadgets, an’ they work—why, we come back and pick you up, and the thanar seed and the young growing plants. Then we get the gadgets this guy made here, and we head back for Earth.”
“But if you take the gadget that keeps us all from being burned up—” Carson said agitatedly, “if you do, everybody here—”
“Won’t that be too bad!” the skipper said ironically. “But you won’t be here. You’ll be on the yacht. Don’t worry. Now go fix it for the girl and him to walk into our parlor.”
Carson’s hand shook as he reached for the beamphone. His voice was not quite normal as he explained to Cathy in the exchange that the skipper of the space yacht had the legal power to perform marriage ceremonies in space. And Carson, as a gesture of friendship to one of the most prominent colonists, had asked if the captain would oblige Cathy and Lon. The captain had agreed. If they made haste, he would take them out in space and marry them.
The skipper of the space yacht regarded him with undisguised scorn when he hung up the phone and mopped his face.
“Pretty girl, eh?” he asked contemptuously, “and you didn’t have the nerve to grab her for yourself?” He did not wait for an answer. “I’ll look her over. You get your stuff ready for when I come back in a couple of days.”
“But—when you release them,” Carson said shakily, “They’ll report—”
The skipper looked at Carson without any expression at all. Then he went out.
Carson felt sick. But he was a very loyal employee of the Cetis Gamma Trading Company. From the windows of his air-conditioned office, he watched Lon Simpson greet Cathy on his arrival in Cetopolis. He saw Cathy put a sprig of chanel blossoms on the lapel of her very best suit, in lieu of a bridal bouquet. And he watched them go with shining faces toward the airport. He didn’t try to stop them.
Later he heard the space yacht take off.
Nodalictha prepared to share the thoughts and the happiness of the female biped whose emotions were familiar, since Nodalictha was so recently a bride herself. Rhadampsicus was making notes, but he gallantly ceased when Nodalictha called to him. They sat, then, before their crude but comfortable bower on the ninth planet, all set to share the quaint rejoicing of the creatures of which Nodalictha had grown fond.
Nodalictha penetrated the thoughts of the female, in pleased anticipation. Rhadampsicus scanned the mind of the male, and his expression changed. He shifted his thought to another and another of the bipeds in the ship’s company. He spoke with some distaste.
“The ones you consider your pets, Nodalictha, are amiable enough. But the others—” He frowned. “Really, darling, if you went into their minds, you’d be most displeased. They are quite repulsive. Let’s forget about them and start for home. If you really care for pets, we’ve much more suitable creatures there.”
Nodalictha pouted.
“Rhadampsicus, let’s just watch their marriage ceremony. It is so cute to think of little creatures like that loving each other—and marrying—”
Rhadampsicus withdrew his thought from the space yacht and looked about the charming rural retreat he and Nodalictha had occupied. Its nitrogen-snow walls glittered in the starlight. The garden of cyanogen flowers and the border of ammonia crystals and the walkway of monoclinic sulphur, and the reflection pool of liquid hydrogen he’d installed in an odd half hour. These were simple, but they were delightful. The crudity of the space yacht with its metal walls so curiously covered over with a coating of lead oxide in hardened oil, and the vegetable gum flooring.... Rhadampsicus did not like the surroundings men made for themselves in space.
“Very well, darling,” he said resignedly. “We will watch, and then we’ll take off for home. I’m anxious to see what the modernists have to say when I show them my notes on this flare-up.—And of course,” he added with grave humor, “you want to show your family that I haven’t ill-treated you.”
He was the barest trace impatient, but Nodalictha’s thoughts were with the female biped in the spaceship. Her expression was distressed.
“Rhadampsicus!” she said angrily. “The other bipeds are being unkind to my pets! Do something! I don’t like them!”
A sailor in a soiled uniform led them into the space yacht’s saloon. The airlock clanked shut, and the yacht soared for the skies. The sailor vanished. Nobody else came near. Then Lon stiffened. He got the flavor of his surroundings. He had Cathy with him. On her account, his flesh crawled suddenly.
This was a space yacht, but of a very special kind. It was a pleasure ship. The decorations were subtly disgusting. There were pictures on the walls, and at first glance they were pretty enough, but on second glance they were disquieting, and when carefully examined they were elaborately and allusively monstrous. This was the yacht of someone denying