"Now, Jos," said Gaynor placatingly, "the poor child— "
"Child, huh? I've a notion that you weren't as unconscious as you pretended when she landed in your lap. And if she's a child, I'm the gibbering foetus of a monkey's uncle!"
"Look!" said Gaynor hastily. "There comes another one." A colossal eye stared blankly at them, its jelly-like corona quivering horribly, the iris contracting like a paramecium's vacuole under a microscope.
"Nyaa!" taunted Jocelyn, thumbing her nose at the monstrous thing. "Bet you wish you were my size for an hour or two—I'd teach you manners, you colossal slob! Come on in here and fight like a man!" There was an elephantine grunt from the creature's mouth somewhere.
"No," said Jocelyn scornfully. "Not like him—" jerking a thumb at her husband—"I said a man." "Now, Jos, really," began Gaynor.
Ionic Intersection looked up from her corner. "I'm hungry," she wailed.
"Hungry, hah?" asked Mrs. Gaynor. "Room Service!" she bawled. The eye reappeared. "Ah, they're learning. Now for the customary pantomime of starvation." She patted her stomach, pointed to her mouth, slumped to the floor, gestured as if milking a cow and chewed vigorously on nothing. "Think Joe up there will get it?"
"I hope so," worried Gaynor. "I could go for an outside amoeba myself. Which reminds me—do you think these ginks' cellular structure is scaled up like their bodies, or do you suppose their cells are normal size like ours—but much more plentiful?"
"Bah!" spat his wife. "Scientist! Why didn't I marry an international spy? I knew the nicest little anarchist once—full of consonants. I called him Grischa and he called me Alice. Always meant to ask him why, but they shot him before I had the chance. I wish they'd shot you instead. And your half-baked partner! And his blubbering wife!"
A tiny—about twenty feet—section of the netting avove their heads lifted off and an assortment of stuff fell at their fee. "Reaction?" suggested Gaynor.
"Food!" said his wife hungrily. She looked closer. "But what food! Note this object d'excrete—I'll swear its the leg of a ten-foot cockroach." As she spoke, the thing flopped convulsively. "Pavlik," she said coaxingly, averting her eyes, "put the thing away somewhere where I won't be able to see it, huh?"
Gaynor lugged the sticky horror to the netting that enfenced them and poked it through one of the holes. "All gone," he announced. "And the rest of the stuff looks almost appetizing. That is, if you've eaten as many things as I have in my academic career. Snails at the Sorbonne, blutwurst at Heidelberg, Evzones—I think it was Evzones—at the University of Athens— "
"Well, let's try it. What first? The—er—pickled—er things or the fried—they look fried—stuff?"
"Let's try it out first," suggested Gaynor, covertly indicating Ionic Intersection, whose eyes were buried in her handkerchief.
"Of course," murmured Jocelyn, sweetly. With a shudder she picked up something green and lumpy and brought it to the brunette. "Now, dear," she urged, "do try some of this delicious ragout de pferdfleisch avec oeufs des formis."
"Is it nice?" asked Io trustingly.
"Of course," said Jocelyn, watching like an eagle as Io bit into the thing. "How do you feel? I mean, how do you like it, sweet?"
"Delicious," said Io, tightening her clutch on the thing.
"That's all I wanted to know," snapped Jocelyn. "Give it back!" She wrenched it from the brunette, who broke out into a new freshet of tears, and sunk her teeth into the most promising of the green lumps.
"Tsk, tsk, such manners," chided Gaynor, "when there's ample for all. Here, Io," he said gently, bringing the little brunette an assortment of the green stuff.
"Quite full, you goat?" asked Jocelyn of her husband.
"Nearly." He reached for a brownish object; his arm fell halfway. "Can't make it," he observed. "Must be full. What happens now, wife of my heart?"
"Can't imagine," she assured him, studying her lips in the mirror of a compact.
"To hazard a guess," he said, looking up, "that forceps is intimately connected with our immediate futures. Here we go," he called down gaily as it lifted him high into the air.
A moment later, Jocelyn and Io joined him, via forceps. "Where are we?" wailed the brunette, looking around wildly.
"Keep off those coils," warned Gaynor. "Better just stand still. It looks like a twenty foot bowl lined with all kinds of electric junk in it."
He turned on the woman suddenly. "What's that you called me?" he mouthed furiously, working his hands.
"I didn't say anything," protested his wife.
"I didn't either," chimed in Io. "Has he gone crazy?" she asked Jocelyn.
"Hah!" she laughed loudly and vulgarly. "I won't even take that lead." She turned and surveyed her brooding husband. "What!" she squawked suddenly, turning on Io. "If you want my opinion that goes for you, too—double!" The brunette looked bewildered.
"Hold it, girls," said Gaynor. "Io didn't say a thing—I was watching her by—er—coincidence."
"Yeah," said Jocelyn. "You look out for those coincidences. Reno's still doing a roaring trade, I hear. But if Io didn't say it, who did?"
Gaynor pointed upward solemnly.
"Oh Paul, don't be a bore!" his wife exploded. "I didn't know I was married to a religious fanatic!"
"No," said Gaynor hastily, "don't get me wrong. I mean Joe or his friends. This thing, now that I consider it, looks like the well known thought transference-helmet we meet so often. Not being able to make one small enough for us, they put us into one of theirs. Now try opening your minds so maybe something more than subconscious insults from our captors may get through. Ready? Concentrate!"
They wrinkled their brows for a moment; Io giggled and cast a sidewise glance at Gaynor, who uneasily eyed Jocelyn, who gave Io a murderous look. "Heaven help you if I intercept another one like that, husband mine," Mrs. Gaynor warned.
"Must have been wholly subconscious," he replied. "Even I don't know what it was."
"I'd rather not tell you," said Jocelyn, "but your subconscious has a mighty lively imagination."
"Hush," said Gaynor abruptly. "Here it comes!" He squatted on the base of the helmet and shut his eyes tightly, his jaws clenched in an attempt to get over and receive.
"Paul!" said Jocelyn, alarmed.
"Quiet!" he snapped; "this isn't easy."
Thus, to outward appearances, practically in a trance, he remained.
"It must be wonderful to think like that," breathed Io.
"Yeah," agreed Jocelyn. "But all he's doing is getting us out of a jam, your husband's a real thinker—by just hopping off with suicide in his mind, he can get us into the jam. You ought," she continued witheringly, "to be mighty proud of your Art Clair. I just hope he turns up scattered from here to Procyon!"
The brunette did not, as Jocelyn expected, burst into tears again. There was a sort of quiet contempt in her voice when she spoke. "If you had any honesty or decency in your makeup you would remember that Arthur took this trip to force your husband out of his blind stupidity. Arthur's invention was a perfect success—it's you and your husband's fault we're stuck now, not his."
Jocelyn stared at her for a moment. "Blah!" she said. Then, with concern in her eyes, she watched the motionless form of Gaynor.
"God, that was awful!" groaned Gaynor. He relaxed and stretched his limbs. "I wish Art had been here—he was the psychologist of the team, ideally suited for a heavy load like I've been taking on for the last hour or so."
"What happened, Paul?" asked Jocelyn. "You didn't move—I was worried."
"Well," said Gaynor slowly, "it wasn't as awful as it probably looked to Outsiders. The hardest part was getting their thought patterns down clear. You know how hard it is to understand someone from a radically different speech area, even though he speaks what is technically the same language?"