'Be quiet!' snapped the girl.
'Take me down! Let me out!'
Duare would have gladly done so had she had possession of the vial of antidote and her pistol. She did not reply, but elevated the nose of the anotar and rose higher. Vik-yor was cowering beside her, covering its eyes with its hands.
'Are you coming down?' it asked.
'Just a moment,' said Duare; 'don't look now.' She climbed to five thousand feet. Wisps of cloud from the inner envelope whipped against the windshield; in the weird light of the Amtorian night, the ground was barely visible—it appeared much farther away than it really was.
Duare cut the engine and glided. 'You may get out now,' she said.
Vik-yor uncovered its eyes and looked over the side of the cockpit; and then, with a scream, it shrank back. It was trembling so that it could scarcely speak. It glanced up and saw the clouds close above, and it screamed again. 'Quit screaming!' ordered Duare.
'You would have killed me,' Vik-yor managed to say at last; 'you would have let me get out way up here.'
'Give me the antidote and my pistol, and I'll take you down and let you get out,' offered Duare.
The creature looked over the side again; this time for much longer. 'We do not fall,' it said. Finding that the anotar remained aloft, it slowly regained a little composure, if not courage.
'Well,' said Duare, 'if you want to go down and get out, give me the vial and the pistol,'
'You'll take me down, and I'll keep them both,' said Vikyor.
'What makes you think so?' demanded Duare.
'This,' said Vik-yor, shoving the pistol against the girl's side; 'take me down, or I'll kill you!'
Duare laughed at him. 'And then what would happen to you?' she demanded. 'Do you think this anotar flies itself? If I left these controls for a minute, the ship would dive nose first to the ground so fast that it would bury itself and you.'
'You are lying,' said Vik-yor. 'It would come down by itself.'
'That's just what I told you—it would come down by itself all right, but there would be nothing left of the anotar or us. Don't you believe me?'
'No; you are lying.'
'All right; I'll show you;' and with that, Duare put the ship into a spin.
Above the roar of the wind, rose the shrieks of Vik-yor. Duare levelled off at five hundred feet. 'Now, do you think I was lying?' she asked. Her voice was firm and level, betraying no slightest indication of the terror that had gripped her for the last two thousand feet of that long dive. Only twice before had she brought the anotar out of a spin, and then Carson had been beside her at the other controls. This time, up to the last moment, she had thought that she was not going to bring it out.
'Don't ever do that again!' wailed Vik-yor. 'We might have been killed.'
'Will you give me the vial and the pistol now?' asked Duare.
'No,' replied Vik-yor.
Chapter XXXVIII
BY THE TIME morning came, and Vik-yor could look down and see the world passing slowly beneath them, it had lost much of its fear of the strange situation in which it found itself. It now had almost complete confidence in Duare's ability to keep the thing up in the air, and with returning confidence it commenced to think of other things than the hazards of flying.
'You kept pressing your lips to his hands,' it said. 'Why did you do that?'
Duare's thoughts were far away. 'Eh?' she said. 'Oh, because I love him.'
'What is love?' asked Vik-yor.
'You would not understand; it cannot be explained to one who cannot know love. It is what one feels for one's mate.'
'Did he like to have you press your lips to his hand?'
'I am sure he did; I certainly hope so.'
Vik-yor held out a hand. 'Do it to me,' it directed.
Duare struck the hand away, and shuddered. 'You disgust me,' she said.
'You belong to me,' said Vik-yor. 'You are going to teach me what love is.'
'Don't talk about love to me,' snapped Duare; 'you defile the very name.'
'Why don't you like me?' asked Vik-yor.
'It is not alone because you are not a human being,' replied the girl; 'I have liked many of the lower animals. It is because you are cruel and cowardly; because you made me come away and leave my mate in that horrible place; because you haven't one of the finer characteristics of a man; because you are not a man. Have I answered your question?'
Vik-yor shrugged. 'Well,' it said, 'it doesn't make much difference whether you like me or not. The thing is that I like you; what you like or don't like affects you, not me. Of course, if you liked me, it might be much more pleasant. Anyway, you belong to me. I can look at you; I can touch you. As long as I live you will be always with me. I never liked anyone before. I didn't know that there was such a thing as liking another creature. We Vooyorgans don't like anyone; nor do we dislike anyone. A person is with us today and gone tomorrow—it makes no difference to us. Before I commenced to change, I used to divide like the others. Even after being with one of my halves for years, I never missed it after we divided; nor did I ever have any feeling whatever for the new half that grew. Once I was half of Vik-vik-vik, the jong; I was the left half. It is the right half that retains the name and identity. I have always been a left half until now; now I am a whole; I am like you and Carson and Ero Shan—I am a man! After studying the ways of other forms of life, some of the wise ones among us think that our right halves are analogous to the females of the other species, and the left halves to the males; so, you see, I have always been a male.'
'I am not interested,' said Duare.
'But I am,' said Vik-yor. 'It makes no difference whether you are interested or not, if I am. I like to talk about myself.'
'I can almost believe that you are a man,' said Duare.
Vik-yor was silent for some time. It was occupied by gazing at this new world over which it was flying like a bird. Duare was trying to plan some way of getting hold of the vial and the pistol; her whole life, now, revolved about that one desire.
'I am hungry,' said Vik-yor.
'So am I,' agreed Duare, 'but I don't dare land unless I have my pistol; we might be attacked.'
'I can kill things with it,' said Vik-yor. 'Didn't you see me last night? I must have killed fifty.'
'Firing into a crowd of hundreds is not the same as firing at a charging basto,' said Duare; 'where there were so many, you couldn't miss them all.'
'Perhaps not,' said Vik-yor, 'but I shall keep the pistol. If you had it, you would kill me. What are you doing?' Duare was spiralling down above a large lake. 'Look out!' cried Vik-yor. 'We shall be drowned, if you go into the water.'
'All right,' said Duare; 'it is better to drown than starve to death. Will you give me the pistol?'
'No,' said Vik-yor; 'I would rather drown.' As a matter of fact, it had suddenly concluded that this was just another attempt of the woman to frighten it into giving up the pistol. Vik-yor was far from being a fool. However, it was thoroughly shaken when Duare failed to bring the anotar up and it settled upon the surface of the lake; for Vik-yor could not swim.
Duare took a drinking vessel from one of the compartments; and, going out upon the wing, dipped up some water. She took a long, satisfying drink; then she lay down on the wing and washed her hands and face. 'Give me some water,' said Vik-yor, when she arose.
Duare dumped the remaining water from the vessel, and came back into the cockpit.
