Rastus backed off, eyes wide in terror.
«Pick her up,» commanded Craig sharply. «Hang onto her.»
«But, boss, she—»
«Pick her up, I say!»
Creepy was shuffling down the ramp to the lock. Slowly Rastus moved forward, clumsily reached down and scooped up Mathilde. Mathilde purred loudly, dabbing at his suit-clad fingers with dainty paws.
Page stepped out of the jumper and strode across the garage toward Craig, his boot heels ringing on the floor.
From behind the space suit visor, Craig regarded him angrily. «You disobeyed my orders,» he snapped. «You went out and caught some Candles.»
«Nothing to it, Captain Craig,» said Page. «Docile as so many kittens. Make splendid pets.»
He whistled sharply, and from the open door of the jumper rolled three Candles, a red one, a green one, a yellow one. Ranged in a row, they lay just outside the jumper, rolling back and forth.
Craig regarded them appraisingly.
«Cute little devils,» said Page good-naturedly.
«And just the right number,» said Craig.
Page started, but quickly regained his composure. «Yes, I think so, too. I’ll teach them a routine, of course, but I suppose the audience reactions will bust that all to hell once they get on the stage.»
Craig moved to the rack of oxygen tanks and snapped up the lid. «There’s just one thing I can’t understand,» he said. «I warned you you couldn’t get into this rack. And I warned you that without oxygen you’d die. And yet here you are.»
Page laughed. «I had some oxygen hid out, Captain. I anticipated something just like that.»
Craig lifted one of the tanks from the rack, held it in his arms. «You’re a liar, Page,» he said calmly. «You didn’t have any other oxygen. You didn’t need any. A man would die if he went out there without oxygen—die horribly. But you wouldn’t— because you aren’t a man!»
Page stepped swiftly back, but Craig cried out warningly. Page stopped, as if frozen to the floor, his eyes on the oxygen tank. Craig’s finger grasped the valve control.
«One move out of you,» he warned grimly, «and I’ll let you have it. You know what it is, of course. Liquid oxygen, pressure of two hundred atmospheres. Colder than the hinges of space.»
Craig grinned ferociously. «A dose of that would play hell with your metabolism, wouldn’t it? Tough enough to keep going here in the dome. You Candles have lived out there on the surface too long. You need a lot of energy, and there isn’t much energy here. We have to screen it out or we would die ourselves. And there’s a damn sight less energy in liquid oxygen. You met your own environment, all right; you even spread that environment pretty wide, but there’s a limit to it.»
«You’d be talking a different tune,» Page declared bitterly, «if it weren’t for those space suits.»
«Sort of crossed you up, didn’t they,» said Craig. «We’re wearing them because we were tracking down a pal of yours. I think he’s in the refrigerator.»
«A pal of mine—in a refrigerator?»
«He’s the one that came back as Knut,» said Craig, «and he turned into Mathilde when he knew we were hunting for him. But he did the job too well. He was almost more Mathilde than he was Candle. So he sneaked into the refrigerator. And he doesn’t like it.»
Page’s shoulders sagged. For a moment his features seemed to blur, then snapped back into rigid lines again.
«The answer is that you do the job too well,» said Craig. «Right now you yourself are more Page than Candle, more man than thing of energy.»
«We shouldn’t have tried it,» said Page. «We should have waited until there was someone in your place. You were too frank in your opinion of us. You held none of the amused contempt so many of the others held. I told them they should wait, but a man named Page got caught in a space warp—»
Craig nodded. «I understand. An opportunity you simply couldn’t miss. Ordinarily we’re pretty hard to get at. You can’t fight photocells. But you should strive for more convincing stories. That yarn of yours about capturing Candles—»
«But Page came out for that purpose,» insisted the pseudo-Page. «Of course, he would have failed. But, after all, it was poetic justice.»
«It was clever of you,» Craig said softly. «More clever than you thought. Bringing your sidekicks in here, pretending you had captured them, waiting until we were off our guard.»
«Look,» said Page, «we know when we are licked. What are you going to do?»
«We’ll turn loose the one in the refrigerator,» Craig told him. «Then we’ll open up the locks and you can go.»
«And if we don’t want to go?»
«We’d turn loose the liquid oxygen,» said Craig. «We have vats of the stuff upstairs. We can close off this room, you know, turn it into a howling hell. You couldn’t live through it. You’d starve for energy.»
From the kitchen came a hideous uproar, a sound that suggested a roll of barbed wire galloping around a tin roof. The bedlam was punctuated by yelps and howls from Rastus.
Creepy, who had been standing by the lock, started forward, but Craig, never lifting an eye from Page, waved him back.
Down the ramp from the kitchen came a swirling ball of fur, and after it came Rastus, whaling lustily with his broom, the ball of fur separated, became two identical cats, tails five times normal size, backs bristling, eyes glowing with green fury.
«Boss, I jus’ got tired of holding Mathilde—» Rastus panted.
«I know,» said Craig. «So you chucked her into the refrigerator with the other cat.»
«I sho’ did,» confessed Rastus, «and hell busted loose right underneath my nose.»
«All right,» snapped Craig. «Now, Page, if you’ll tell us which one of those is yours—»
Page spoke sharply and one of the cats melted and flowed. Its outlines blurred and it became a Candle, a tiny, pale-pink Candle.
Mathilde let out one soul-wrenching shriek and fled.
«Page,» said Craig, «we’ve never wanted trouble. If you are willing we’d like to be your friends. Isn’t there some way?»
Page shook his head. «No, captain. We’re poles apart. I and you have talked here, but we’ve talked as man to man rather than as a man and a person of my race. Our differences are too great, our minds too far apart.»
He hesitated, almost stammering. «You’re a good egg, Craig. You should have been a Candle.»
«Creepy,» said Craig, «open up the lock.»
Page turned to go, but Craig called him back. «Just one thing more. A personal favor. Could you tell me what’s at the bottom of this?»
«It’s hard to explain,» said Page. «You see, my friend, it’s a matter of culture. That isn’t exactly the word, but it’s the nearest I can express it in your language.
«Before you came we had a culture, a way of life, a way of thought, that was distinctly our own. We didn’t develop the way you developed, we missed this crude, preliminary civilization you are passing through. We started at a point you won’t reach for another million years.
«We had a goal, an ideal, a place we were heading for. And we were making progress. I can’t explain it, for—well, there just are no words for it. And then you came along—»
«I think I know,» said Craig. «We are a disturbing influence. We have upset your culture, your way of thought. Our thoughts intrude upon you and you see your civilization turning into a troupe of mimics, absorbing alien ideas, alien ways.»
He stared at Page. «But isn’t there a way? Damn it, do we have to fight about this?»
But even as he spoke, he knew there was no way. The long roll of terrestrial history recorded hundreds of such wars as this—wars fought over forms of faith, over terminology of religion, over ideologies, over cultures.