"As a matter of fact, I am."
Surprised, she would have asked him more, but the loudspeakers suddenly announced: "Ladies and Gentlemen, dinner is served."
He accompanied her down the stairs, but two or three steps into the crowd she discovered he had disappeared. She continued toward the dining room alone.
Under the arch the Baron and Baroness waited for her. As the Baroness took her arm, the chamber orchestra on the dais fell to their instruments.
"Come, we're down this way."
She kept near the puffy matron through the people milling about the serpentine table that curved and twisted back on itself.
"We're over there."
And the Basque message: Captain, on your transcriber, something's coming over back on the ship. The small explosion in her mind stopped her.
"Babel-17!"
The Baron turned to her. "Yes, Captain Wong?" She watched uncertainty score tense lines on his face.
"Is there any place in the yards with particularly important materials or research going on that might be unguarded now?"
"That's all done automatically. Why?"
"Baron, there's a sabotage attack about to take place, or taking place right now."
"But how did you—"
"I can't explain now, but you'd better make sure everything is all right."
And the tension turned.
The Baroness touched her husband's arm, and said with sudden coolness. "Felix, there's your seat."
The Baron pulled out his chair, sat down, and unceremoniously pushed aside his place setting. There was a control panel beneath his doily. As people seated themselves, Rydra saw Brass, twenty feet away, lower himself on the special hammock that had been set up for his glittering, gigantic bulk.
"You sit here, my dear. We'll simply go on with the party as if nothing was happening. I think that's best."
Rydra seated herself next to the Baron, and the Baroness lowered herself carefully to the chair on her left. The Baron was whispering into a throat microphone. Pictures, which she was at the wrong angle to see clearly, flashed on the eight inch screen. He looked up long enough to say, "Nothing yet. Captain Wong."
"Ignore what he's doing," the Baron said. "This is much more interesting over here."
Into her lap she swung out a small console from where it had hung beneath the table edge.
"Ingenious little thing," the Baroness continued, looking around. "I think we're ready. There!" Her pudgy forefinger struck at one of the buttons, and lights about the room began to lower. "I control the whole meal just by pressing the right one at the right time. Watch!" She struck at another one.
Along the center of the table now, under the gentled light, panels opened and great platters of fruit, candied apples and sugared grapes, halved melons filled with honeyed nuts, rose up before the guests.
"And wine!" said the Baroness, reaching down again.
Along the hundreds of feet of table, basins rose. Sparkling froth foamed the brim as the fountain mechanism began. Spurting liquid streamed.
"Fill your glass, dear. Drink up," prompted the Baroness, raising 'her own beneath a jet; the crystal splashed with purple.
On her right the Baron said: 'The Arsenal seems to be all right. I'm alerting all the special projects. You're sure this sabotage attack is going on right now?"
"Either right now," she told him, "or within the next two or three minutes. It might be an explosion, or some major piece of equipment may fail."
"That doesn't leave me much to go on. Though communications had picked up your Babel-17. I've been alerted to how these attempts run."
"Try one of these. Captain Wong," The Baroness handed her a quartered mango which Rydra discovered, when she tasted it, had been marinated in Kirsch.
Nearly all the guests were seated now. She watched a platoon kid, named Mike, searching for his name-card halfway across the hall. And down the table length she saw the stranger who had stopped her on the spiral stair hurrying toward them behind the seated guests.
"The wine is not grape, but plum," the Baroness said. "A little heavy to start with, but so good with fruit. I'm particularly proud of the strawberries. The legumes are a hydroponicist's nightmare, you know, but this year we were able to get such lovely ones."
Mike found his seat and reached both hands into the fruit bowl. The stranger rounded the last loop of table. Calli was holding a goblet of wine in each hand, looking from one to the other, probably trying to determine the larger.
"I could be a tease," the Baroness said, "and bring out the sherbets first. Or do you think I ought best to go to the caldo verde? The way I prepare it, it's very light. I can never decide—"
The stranger reached the Baron, leaned over his shoulder to watch the screen, and whispered something. The Baron turned to him, turned back slowly with both hands on the table—and fell forward! A trickle of blood wormed from beneath his face.
Rydra jerked back in her chair. Murder. A mosaic came together in her head, and when it was together, it said: murder. She leapt up.
The Baroness exhaled hoarse breath and rose, overturning her chair. She flapped her hands hysterically toward her husband and shook her head.
Rydra whirled to see the stranger snatch a vibra-gun from beneath his jacket. She yanked the Baroness out of the way. The shot was low and struck the console.
Once moved, the Baroness staggered to her husband and grasped him. Her breathy moan took voice and became a wail. The hulking form, like a blimp deflating, sank and pulled Felix Ver Dorco's body from the table, till she was kneeling on the floor, holding him in her arms, rocking him gently, screaming.
Guests had risen now; talk became roaring.
With the console smashed, along the table the fruit platters were pushed aside by emerging peacocks, cooked, dressed, and reassembled with sugared heads, tail feathers swaying. None of the clearing mechanisms were operating. Tureens of caldo verde crowded the wine basins till both overturned, flooding the table. Fruit rolled over the edge.
Through the voices, the vibra-gun hissed on her left, left again, then right. People ran from their chairs, blocked her view. She heard the gun once more and saw Dr. Crane double over, to be caught by a surprised neighbor as her bleached hair came undone and tumbled her face.
Spitted lambs rose to upset the peacocks. Feathers swept the floor. Wine fountains spurted the glistening amber skins which hissed and steamed. Food fell back into the opening and struck red heating coils. Rydra smelled burning.
She darted forward, caught the arm of the fat, black-bearded man. "Slug, get the kids out of here!"
"What do you think I'm doing. Captain?"
She darted away, came up against a length of table, and vaulted the steaming pit. The intricate, oriental dessert—sizzling bananas dipped first in honey then rolled to the plate over a ramp of crushed ice—was emerging as she sprang. The sparkling confections shot across the ramp and dropped to the floor, honey crystallized to glittering thorns. They rolled among the guests, cracked underfoot. People slipped and flailed and fell.
"Snazzy way to slide on a banana, huh. Captain?" commented Calli. "What's going on?"
"Get Mollya and Ron back to the ship!"
Ums rose now, struck the rotisserie arrangement, overturned, and grounds and boiling coffee splattered. A woman shrieked, clutching her scalded arm.
"This ain't no fun anymore," Calli said. "I'll round them up."
He started away as Slug hurried back the other way. “Slug, what's a bandicoot?" She caught his arm again.
"Vicious little animal. Marsupial, I think. Why?"
“That’s right. I remember now. And thalassanemia?"
"Funny time to ask. Some sort of anemia."
"I know that. What sort? You're the medic on the ship."