"Yes," his wife nodded.
"Did it seem to come clear in your head suddenly?" asked Ionic Intersection.
"Right—that's how it was with our friends." "Oh," said Jocelyn sarcastically, "so they're our friends, now, huh?"
"Yep. I talked them out of some silly notion they had of popping us into iodoform bottles. They're really not bad guys at all. As they explained it, they're rather hard pressed. It's the usual set-up, that you come on in history after history."
"Crisis?" asked Jocelyn, her eyes brightening. "Wow!"
"Exactly. Democracy against—the other thing. And exceptionally fierce in this case because our friends, the democrats, are far less in number than their enemies. Culturally and technologically they're well balanced. Just a matter of population that keeps them from winning. Our friends thought we were spies from the other side—who happen to be giants, too. They took the poor little Prototype for a deadly bomb—how do you like that?"
"I like it fine," said Jocelyn.
"Did you find out anything about Arthur?" asked Io quietly.
Gaynor hesitated. "I don't want to raise any false hopes," he said slowly, "but they have rumors—only the vaguest kind of rumors—of someone showing up in the enemy ship. From all accounts of the enemy camp, that someone's chances of long survival are none to good. That's all they could tell me."
"Too bad," mused Jocelyn. "Too, too bad. Paul, can you get in touch with them again—can you stand it?"
"No mistaken consideration, jos," he replied. "What do you want me to ask the blighters?"
"I'd like to find out if there's any chance of our getting to see what might be the mutilated corpse of the late and lamented Mr. Clair."
"Let's join forces with them" spoke up Io. "Being small as we are, we can easily look for Arthur and assist them at the same time."
"I say yes—loudly and emphatically," agreed Gaynor. "Now if I can get a little silence around here, I'll go into my trance." He squatted on the floor and shut his eyes, droning: "Calling Joe ... calling Joe ... Gaynor calling Joe ... Come in, Joe ... what kept you?"
V.
Back in the relatively comfortable living quarters of the Prototype, which had been repaired during their absence, the voyagers were trying on their new thought-helmets. "As I understand it," said Gaynor, "one big difference between the good guys and the versa is this helmet business. I doubt very much whether the good guys realize just how much difference that makes. Thus:
"The common, everyday helmets, used by both good guys and bad are two-way, like a telephone circuit. Incoming and outgoing, both. Whereas these things we have, and which Joe and his friend have—albeit on a somewhat larger scale are monodirectional. While wearing these helmets we can receive, but we can't send unless we want to very much. Get it?"
"Then," said Io thoughtfully, "they must have a two-way thought shield, not letting anything either in or out."
"Precisely. Both sides have that of course. And precious little good it is to anybody, either. How's yours, Jos?"
Jocelyn fitted the snug, gleaming little cap on her head with an uneasy smile. "Wow!" she exclaimed, reddening. "It seems to drag things up out of the subconscious—my own subconscious."
"Ah," said Gaynor. "Yes, that's because the things are so small. The theory that Joe's boys have is that the conscious thoughts are sort of long-wave—though millimicrons smaller than anything measurable—and that subconscious thoughts are super short-wavelength. I asked them about the center band, but they didn't have any opinions. Psychoanalysts and installation-engineers dance cheek to cheek, as it were, in this world. You can keep your ucs in line by voluntary means. That'll come to you after a while. Now how is it?"
"Okay. What now?"
"I'll send a test signal—without speaking, of course. You're supposed to catch it and tell me what it is. Ready?" Gaynor, at his wife's nod, frowned and shut his eyes. "That was it," he said at length. "What did you get, if anything?"
"Nothing at all."
"Did you catch anything, Io?" he asked worriedly.
The brunette nodded, and recited:
There was a young fellow named Hannes
Who had the most horrible manners;
He would laugh and he'd laugh
Making gaffe after gaffe,
Spreading tuna-fish on his bananas.
"Exactly," said Gaynor. "But we'll have to try again. I'll send another one, Jos. See if you can get it this time."
She closed her eyes in concentration, then an instant later, recited:
Willis, with a fiendish leer,
Poured hot lead in pappa's ear;
Sister raised a terrible fuss:
"Now you've made him miss his bus!"
"Right," said Gaynor with a sigh of relief. "Io, you seem to be doing all right, but let's see, Jos, if you can send one to me."
His wife leered and shut her eyes. A pause followed. "Well," she said relaxing, "what was it?"
Without comment, he recited:
In the cabin of Gottesman's Proto
Sherlock Holmes met the suave Mr. Moto;
You could tell by their air
They were looking for Clair,
Who had vanished, not leaving a photo.
"You got it," she approved.
"Yeah, but who's this guy Gottesman? Never heard of him."
"Just a guy I know," she replied with an absent smile. "You wouldn't be interested, Paul."
"No doubt. But you'd better not emit any more loose talk about Reno when I happen to glance in Io's direction, my sweet.
"Be that as it may—we have a job to do, sort of. As I told you, the bad guys are under the thumb of some sort of War Council which was established as a special emergency three centuries ago, and hasn't been disbanded since. Because, the theory goes, the emergency still exists. Our job is to spy on these people—hence the helmets. Now, if you'll honor me—?" He crooked a courtly elbow at her; she accepted with a gracious smile, and they stepped from the ship, followed by Ionic Intersection, who had a secretive sort of smile on her face.
"Okay, Joe," Gaynor announced to the colossus towering above them. "We're off!" A tremendous hand gently closed about them, lifting the three of them high into the air. "Paul," said Io tremulously looking down, "you never said a truer word."
The trip had been a dizzy panorama of a colossal countryside glimpsed from the windows of a car of some kind, and views from the pocket of Joe as he wormed through the ever-so-carefully prepared breech-hole in the walls of the bad guys' city. And he had kept up a running commentary of information for their benefit:
"This car operates by a new kind of internal combustion. We reburn water. Something that can't be done on your world, I believe.... That ruin was once a sky-scraping building. This whole area was once one of our cities. We had to retreat in one grand movement on all fronts—they'd developed something new in electrostatic weapons, and manufacture of shields would have taken too long, longer than we had of time, at any rate....
"The crisis, I suppose, is nothing new to travelers such as you. Once—before the war—we had the energy and initiative to spare so that we sent out a few ships such as yours—not protomagnetic, much cruder. Percentage of failure was rather high. And reports of .the returned voyagers were not very en couraging. You see, control was mostly psychological, so the ships were drawn to planets and dimensions whose make-up was most like our own. Highly antithetic, invariably. We should have taken warning—it was too late. Everything seemed to slap down on us all at once. The culminative nastiness of all time seemed to pour out on our heads. Our nation—country—whatever you call it—isn't a natural one. No common language, no common cultural stream, as the dear archaeologists like to say. We're exiles, most of us. And though we can't get together long enough to agree on most things, we're united on the grounds of mutual defense—very nice in one way, but if we happen to win, by some weird fluke, there's going to be one hell of a squabble afterwards about the technique of our government."