grass. All except the three Earthmen, who were not sure what to do until Jerry broke the ice and picked up some of it and put it in his mouth and chewed and swallowed quickly, then drained his water bowl.
'Jumping horseflies,' he whispered, 'That grass is grass.'
'I see you are not eating,' Steigen-Sterben said. 'I must apologize for our simple fare, but we Ormoloo are strict vegetarians, for religious principles of course, and never vary our diet.'
'Well, some of my best friends are vegetarians,' Jerry rushed to explain so no insult would be felt. 'But we guys here we're, well, omnivores for the most part. But go ahead and eat, don't let us stop you.'
'No insult felt,' Steigen-Sterben mumbled through a luscious mouthful. 'We'll be through pretty soon.' The three companions looked around at the blank walls and sipped their water, and sure enough, inside of a minute the Ormoloo had finished their banquet, the last blade lapped up and the table licked clean.
'Let me tell you about this war,' Steigen-Sterben lowed, licking a last green fragment from his lips. 'For over ten thousand of your Earth years we have been locked in this struggle, for the Garnishee are ruthless demons and would kill us all, horribly, if they had their way. So back and forth the war rages, for we are evenly matched, and it appears it will go on for ten thousand years more.'
'Would you mind my asking why you are fighting?' Chuck asked.
'No, I wouldn't.'
'Why are you fighting?'
'We fight to maintain our free way of life, to worship the Great Spirit in our own manner and to wipe out to the last evil individual of the hideous Garnishee.'
'Would you mind my asking why you dislike them?' Jerry said. 'I mean other than the fact they are pretty nasty-looking and all that.'
'I hesitate to tell you, to profane your ears with the horrors of their way of life.'
'We can take it, 'John said, speaking for them all.
'Rather than tell you, for it is hard to speak the unspeakable, let me show you.'
At a signal the lights dimmed, and a hidden movie projector sprang to life, using one white wall as a screen. Strange music sobbed and wailed, and credits and titles in an unknown script appeared. The film was in color and seemed to be well made, except that the voice over was in a totally incomprehensible language. When the credits ended, the three friends gasped because the speaker was a disgusting Ormoloo, with all his repulsive details in living color. His black tentacles waved, and it could be seen that one of the openings in the central trunk was a mouth that opened and closed. A ring of eyes ran around what would have been the creature's waist, had it had a waist.
'Ugly beggar,' Jerry said, and the others nodded agreement.
'Not only that,' Steigen-Sterben said, 'but they smell very badly as well.'
Now the creature on the screen rose, and picking up a stick, it stumped over on its four postlike legs to a diagram, which it began to point at with the stick. The diagram was a simple drawing of an Ormoloo with dotted lines across many different parts of his body.
'What does it mean?' John asked.
'Unhappily' – Steigen-Sterben sighed – 'you will find out quickly enough.'
They did, indeed, find out quickly enough. The scene changed, and a dead Ormoloo was stretched out on a wooden block while the speaker sawed him apart with a powerful bandsaw.
'Enough!' Jerry shouted, springing to his feet and knocking over his chair. The film vanished, and the lights came back on. Steigen-Sterben sat with head lowered and, finally, explained in a hushed voice.
'This was what I dared not speak of. The Garnishee seek only to capture us and eat us, for they are monsters.'
'Monsters indeed!' Chuck roared, jumping up and knocking over his chair. 'I know I speak for us all when I say that we will give you every aid within our power to wipe these fiends from the face of your fair planet!'
All the Earthmen nodded solemn agreement, and as one, the Ormoloo jumped to their feet and saluted and cheered themselves hoarse, shouting, 'Hip, hip, HOORAY!' over and over again.
'And I think I know a way to do that,' Jerry said thoughtfully. 'I am considering a weapon far stronger than anything you have here, a weapon I could build that would wipe out your enemies to the last fiend.'
'You wouldn't,' Steigen-Sterben said, smiling broadly and putting a friendly arm or two around Jerry's shoulders, 'care to tell me about it, would you, old man?'
'Not just yet. I have to work some bugs out of it before I do that. But first we have something more pressing to worry about. Before the frozen oxygen runs out, we have to do something about Sally.'
'Could I examine your hospital?' John asked.
'Of course,' Steigen-Sterben said, 'but you must not expect it to be up to the fine standards of a hospital like your Pleasantville General Hospital and Rest Home. . . .'
'You've heard about that here?' Chuck gasped.
'Of course. I listened to the radio program myself about its unique modern wonders and remember it clearly. That is why I say ours are crude by comparison. You see we Ormoloo have no pain nerves or bloodstream as you do.' To prove the point he drew his sword and plunged it through the body of the Ormoloo next to him who never batted an eyelid but went on licking a grass blade from his hand. When the sword came out, only a tiny hole could be seen that instantly sealed up. 'Our blood goes from cell to cell by osmosis so we need neither heart nor blood vessels. Also, our bodies are very resistant to infections. Our hospitals are, well, just a sort of wooden table, a couple of knives and saws and a lot of needles and thread. If parts are too damaged to save, we hack them off, that's about all.'
'Yes, I understand,' John mused. 'But I had something a little more complex in mind for Sally. Look – you must have machine shops and tools, things like that?'
'Of course. There is a complete machine shop here for servicing our weapons and machines.'
'Then that's the answer. I can make the instruments I will need; it won't take long. I'll fix things up while you guys get Sally in here.'
He was as good as his word, for no sooner had the two others put on their insulated gloves and carried Sally in from the refrigerated john than they found him in the middle of a well-equipped hospital room.
'I'll need some help. Are either of you up to assisting?'
'I have a graduate degree in open-heart surgery,' Chuck said. 'Will that help?'
'Good. You can pass me the instruments. What about you, Jerry?'
'My only graduate medical degree is in proctology, so maybe I better just watch.'
The newly built revasculator pumped, throbbed and gurgled, the hysterisis-anniliilator hissed, the corpuscular reconstitutor clicked passionately – and all these machines under the deft control of John, who indeed was a master surgeon. Beneath his tender ministrations Sally's tender body, still clad in the remnants of her gay summer frock, relaxed and lost the glassy frozen look. Within minutes she had softened a good deal, though, of course, her heart was not beating, nor was she breathing.
'The intravascular oxygenator is supplying oxygen directly to her brain cells,' John said calmly, while his hands flashed busily about their tasks. 'As you know if the blood supply to the brain is cut off for more than two minutes, the brain begins to deteriorate, and even if the patient lives, it will be only as a mindless husk. We can only hope that Sally froze quickly back there on Titan, or she will be a beautiful but mindless husk. Now, stand back if you please, for I shall apply two hundred and thirty volts of direct current with these paddles directly to her heart which will surprise it into beating again, and she will, I hope, be restored to young and vital life.'
The paddles were applied, the switch thrown, Sally's body contracted with the shock, and she leaped a yard into the air. When she came down, her eyes were wide open, and she put her knuckles to her mouth and screamed loudly over and over again.
'Husk. . . .' Both the young men who loved her sighed.
'Perhaps not,' said John, injecting a note of hope into what appeared to be an inevitable and tragic occasion.
'Perhaps she was frozen so fast her memory was frozen as well, and she thinks she is still a prisoner of the loathsome Titanians.'
'It's us, Sally,' Jerry said hopefully. 'You're safe, do you hear that, safe!'
She looked around her, dazedly, her eyes still empty of anything resembling intelligence.
