eagle. He wore no clothes, nor did he need any, for his magnificent plumage was clothing enough. His large wings were folded on his back, and the claws on his three immense toes tore gaping rents in the carpet as he walked. Unlike most birds, however, he had two well-built arms, as well as wings, and he hooked his well-built thumbs into his wide gunbelt as he strode into their midst and stopped.
'Who is master here?' he asked with the air of one who commands.
'I am Galaxy Ranger Number One,' John said, striding over fearlessly to stand before the giant figure. 'Men call me John.'
'Greetings, John. I am Troceps of the Fligigleh and am called that only by my friends. You have saved my life, therefore, I owe you a life. Whom shall I kill?' His fingers twitched at his gun butt.
'Hold on, Troceps, old chicken, we don't hold with that sort of thing. Thanks will do, and the slate is wiped clean.'
'I say thanks and your slate is wiped clean, John old ape, but mine is not. If I can kill no one for you, why, then I must kill myself.'
His gun leaped from the holster, and he poked it against one staring eye while John leaned forward to restrain him.
'No need for that sort of thing here. Get feathers and blood all over the place. Wait a bit and we'll get you a prisoner or a spy to knock off. . . .'
'Spy, now that is a good idea.' He glared around the room with hawklike stare, and all there swayed away from that merciless glance. 'Ah, yes, there is always one, count on that. A weak creature, ex-slave, who has sold out to his decadent master on his miserable home planet who reports directly to the loathsome Lortonoi. He is filled with fear now, but he is not sure it is he I am talking about. I laugh in his beak, I mean teeth! He knows not the penetrating power of my thoughts, thought power that is even stronger than the Lortonoi. Therefore, I give him a clue so he will know I know he knows I know. The clue is this – your mother's maiden name is Ixstaiclj!'
The krung-field operator jumped up from his station and whipped out his gun, but fast as he was, Troceps was the faster. A single bolt of energy sped from his blaster, and the hapless spy was instant charcoal.
'The debt is paid, and we are even,' Troceps proclaimed, blowing into the muzzle of his blaster, then coughing at the smoke that eddied out around his head.
'Well done,' John said. 'Now, with ceremonies out of the way, could you tell us who you are, what your outfit is, what is going on out there in that space battle, where you come from, that sort of thing? Just so we can get to know you better. And what was that name you mentioned, sounded like Lortonoi? Who are they – friends of yours?'
He smiled cheerfully as he talked and casually loosened his gun in his holster while a whispering sound slithered through the cabin as everyone else loosened their guns in their holsters. There was tension in the air, while all eyes were on the newcomer. Troceps shook his great wings, and a feather came loose. He caught it before it touched the floor and used it to pick his beak with. The silence and tension stretched – and broke suddenly as Troceps put his head back and roared with laughter.
'I should not laugh,' he said, laughing and wiping the tears from his eyes with a touch of the feather. 'But you are all so transparent. After my demonstration you must realize that I can penetrate the simple mind shield you wear and know your every thought. So you will know mine too, I invite you, the hot one over there with his head sticking out of the floor, to enter my brain and read my innermost thoughts. I see you have great powers of mental strength. Enter – my mind is an open book!'
'Happy to oblige,' Lord Prrsi said and clacked his claws in concentration. It took only a matter of moments for him to get in and get out, and his claws clacked the louder. 'I say, chaps,' he enthused. 'This blighter is one of us. His people have been fighting the Lortonoi for simply ages!'
19
LOATHSOME LORTONOI UNVEILED!
Enthusiastic shouts of joy echoed from the cabin walls at the realization that there were new recruits to the banner of the anti-Lortonoi forces. And what recruits! Fighting men like Troceps here, as well as incredible space battleships such as the ones they had seen locked in combat.
'Locked in combat,' John thought. 'Just a second, Troceps, old parrot. Glad to have you on our side and all that, but who were the guys you were fighting out there? Not to run down your space armada or anything, but you seemed to be pretty well matched with the nasties. Would you care to fill us in?'
'Happy to. But first – do you have a bowl of water?'
'We have a bowl of anything you want, including hundred-year-old brandy.'
'The water will do fine. It is not for me; we Fligigleh have rugged constitutions and can fight for weeks on a handful of birdseed. The water is for my little pet, Pishky.'
As he said this, he held up his blaster and unscrewed the base of the butt which proved to be hollow, and from its interior there dropped a little green turtle that scrabbled about in the palm of his hand.
'Looks just like a little green turtle from Earth,' Jerry said, speaking for all of them.
'Very possibly. But as I see in your minds, you Earthlings keep birds for pets, and that is just the way we Fligigleh keep turtles. They are considered good luck charms, and whenever I go into battle, little Pishky rides along happy in my gun butt-'
'Look, not to interrupt,' John interrupted, 'but can't we do the turtle thing later? We would rather hear about that other fleet and stuff.'
'But of course, I will explain.' But he didn't until the water appeared, and little Pishky was paddling about with turtle eyes staring up stupidly at the happy face of its aquiline master. Troceps stroked its shell with his forefinger before turning his attention back to his hosts. 'It is a story that goes back a long way, but the entire story must be told for you to grasp any single part of it. My race is an ancient one, so ancient that by any of your standards of measurement you cannot measure the amount of time we have been around. Since earliest time we were bothered with production problems and population problems. There are two things we really like to do, and they are build bigger and better machines and lay plenty of eggs. Ahh, the sight of those eggs! But I digress. Any male Fligigleh considers himself a failure and blows his brains out if he doesn't have at least twenty chicks and a personal car at least thirty meters long. Well, I see that you begin to get the problem. We invented a space drive, moved on and occupied all the nearest worlds and so forth, but we aren't really the space-conquering types. All we want to do is stay home and lay eggs and drive around in our fortymeter-long cars. So some unsung genius cooked up this idea of mashing together all the planets in a star system until they melted, then stretching them out into a belt and sending the whole thing spinning around. This was done, and we left all our occupied worlds and settled on this new world, which is named Cotorra after the inventor of the technique, so maybe he is not so unsung either. Ahh, look at little Pishky scratch his weensie claws against the glass, scrabbling with wide-eyed stupidity!'
'Nice turtle, sure,' Chuck said, smiling falsely. 'But could you sort of tell us what happened next after you all settled down on Cotorra?'
'Be patient, I said it would be long in the telling. We settled down and enjoyed our way of life. Uncontrolled breeding and car building, and there was no end in sight for millions of years. More space was available for nests and roads as we expanded out from the original site of settlement. And this did go on for millions of years, pure bliss I assure you, a period in our history we always refer to as the Golden Egg Years, but it was to come to an end. The Lortonoi arrived!'
Troceps squawked the name out with great irritation, lashing out his foot unconsciously at the same time so that his great claws ripped a seat to pieces and tore gaping rents in the carpet and the dural floor beneath.
'Oh, those evil Lortonoi! Although we have excellent powers of the mind, some genealogical change had occurred in our race as it spread in both directions out from the original site. By this time we had occupied almost three-quarters of the hoop that is our world, and in a few million more years the expanding frontiers would have met and we would have to think about maybe making another world like this or perhaps patching in an extra piece or something. But this was fated never to occur. The Lortonoi discovered that a crunched gene or something had so weakened the mental strength of the Fligigleh at the left end of the expansion that their minds could be entered and controlled by the Lortonoi. We on the right still maintained our traditional mental health and expelled their slimy
