"A sequin?"
Reith nodded shortly.
"Sometimes the other portals are ajar. In the center they construct sections of spaceships, which are then rolled out and carried away for assembly elsewhere.
In the left they build smaller spaceships, when such are needed. Recently there has been little work; the Blue Chasch do not like to travel space."
"Have you seen them bring spaceships or space-boats here for repair? Several months ago?"
"No. Why do you ask?"
"The information will cost you money," said Reith. Emmink showed great yellow teeth in a grin of sardonic appreciation and said no more.
They started along the front a second time. "Slow," Reith ordered, for Emmink had pushed the power-arm hard over and the old dray rattled at full speed along the avenue.
Emmink grudgingly obliged. "If we go too slow they'll think us curious, and ask us why we peer and crane our necks."
Reith looked along the road adjacent to the building, along which walked a few Blue Chasch, a somewhat larger number of Chaschmen.
Reith said to Emmink, "Pull off the road; stop the dray for a minute or two."
Emmink began his usual protest, but Reith pulled back the power-lever and the dray wheezed to a halt. Emmink stared at Reith, speechless with fury.
"Get out; fix your wheels, or look at your energy cell," said Reith. "Do something to keep occupied." He jumped to the ground, stood looking at the great factory, for such seemed to be the nature of the building. The portal on the right was tantalizingly open. So near yet so far ... If only he dared cross the seventy-five yards to the portal, and look inside!
What then? Suppose he saw the space-boat. It certainly would not be in operative condition; chances were good that Blue Chasch technicians had at least partially disassembled the mechanism. They would be a puzzled group, thought Reith. The technology, the engineering, the entire rationale of design would seem strange and unfamiliar. The presence of a human body would only puzzle them the more.
The situation was by no means encouraging. The boat was possibly within, in a dismantled and non-usable condition. Or it was not. If it should be there he had not the remotest idea of how to gain possession of it. If it was not in the building, if only Paul Waunder's transcom was there, then he must revise his thinking and make new plans ... But at the moment the first step was to look inside the factory. It seemed easy. He needed only to walk seventy-five yards and look ... but he did not dare. If only he were in some disguise to deceive the Blue Chasch-which could only mean the guise of a Chaschman. Far-fetched, thought Reith. With his well-marked features, he resembled a Chaschman not at all.
The reflections had occupied him a very short time: hardly a minute, but Emmink clearly was becoming restive. Reith decided to seek his counsel.
"Emmink," said Reith, "suppose you wanted to learn if a certain object-for instance, a small spaceship-was inside that building, how would you go about it?"
Emmink snorted. "I would consider no such folly. I would resume my place on the dray and depart while I still had health and sanity."
"You can think of no errand to take us into the building?"
"None whatever. A fantasy!"
"Or close past that open portal?"
"No, no! Of course not!"
Reith longingly considered the building and the open portal. So near and yet so far ... He became furious with himself, at the intolerable circumstances, at the Blue Chasch, Emmink, the planet Tschai. Seventy-five yards: the work of half a minute. He said curtly to Emmink: "Wait here." And he started walking with long strides across the planted area.
Emmink gave a hoarse call. "Come here, come back! Are you insane?"
But Reith only hastened his steps. On the walk beside the building were a few Chaschmen, apparently laborers, who paid him no heed. Reith gained the walk. The open portal was ten steps ahead. Three Blue Chasch stepped forth. Reith's heart pounded; his palms were damp. The Blue Chasch must smell his sweat; would they know it for the odor of fear? It seemed as if, engrossed in their own affairs, they might not notice him. Head bowed, loose-brimmed hat in front of his face, Reith hurried past. Then, with only twenty feet to the portal, the three swung around as if activated by the same stimulus. One of the Blue Chasch spoke in a gobbling mincing voice, the words formed by organs other than vocal chords.
"Man! Where go you?"
Reith halted and responded with the explanation he had formed as he had crossed from the main avenue. "I came for scrap metal."
"What scrap metal?"
"By the portal, in a box; so they told me."
"Ah!-" a blowing gasping sound, which Reith was unable to interpret. "No scrap metal!"
One of the others muttered something quietly, and all three emitted a hiss, the Blue Chasch analogue of human laughter.
"Scrap metal, so? Not at the factory. There: notice that building yonder? Scrap metal yonder!"
"Thank you!" called Reith. "I'll but look." He went the last few steps to the open portal, looked into a great space murmurous with machinery, smelling of oil and metal and ozone. Nearby were platform components in the process of fabrication. Blue Chasch and Chaschmen alike worked, without obvious caste distinction. Around the walls, as in any Earthly factory or machine shop, were benches, racks and bins. In the center were a cylindrical section of what apparently would be a medium sized spaceship. Beyond, barely visible, was a familiar shape: the space-boat on which Reith had come down to Tschai.
He could detect no damage to the hull. If the machinery had been dismantled, no evidence was apparent. But a good deal of distance intervened between himself and the boat, and he had time only for a single glimpse. Behind him the three Blue Chasch stood staring at him, massive blue-scaled heads half-inclined as if listening. They were, so Reith realized, smelling him. They seemed suddenly intent, suddenly interested and began to walk slowly back toward him.
One spoke, in his thick queer voice: "Man! Attention! Return here. There is no scrap metal."
"You smell of man-fear," said another. "You smell of odd substances."
"A disease," replied Reith.
Another spoke. "You smell like a strangely dressed man we found in a strange spaceship; there is about you a factitious quality.„
"Why are you here?" demanded the third of the group. "For whom do you spy?"
"No one; I am a drayer, and I must return to Pera."
"Pera is a hive of spies; time perhaps that we sifted the population."
"Where is your dray? You did not arrive on foot?"
Reith started to move away. "My dray is out on the avenue." He pointed, then stared in consternation. Emmink and the dray were no longer to be seen. He called back to the three Blue Chasch, "My dray! Stolen! Who has taken it!" And with a gesture of hasty farewell for the puzzled Chasch, he darted off into the planted area separating the two roads. Behind a hedge of white wool and gray-green plumes he paused to look back and was by no means reassured. One of the Blue Chasch had run a few steps after him and was pointing some sort of instrument here and there through the planting. A second was speaking with great urgency into a hand microphone. The third had gone to the portal and was peering toward the space-boat, as if to verify its presence.
"I've done it for sure," Reith muttered to himself. "I've pulled the whole business down around my ears." He started to turn away, but paused an instant longer to watch as a squad of Chaschmen, wearing uniforms of purple and gray, drove up the factory road on long low slung motorcycles. The Blue Chasch gave terse instructions, pointing toward the planted area. Reith waited no longer. He ran to the avenue, and as a dray loaded with empty baskets rolled smartly by, he sprang out, caught hold of the tailgate, pulled himself up on the bed and crawled behind a stack of baskets, without arousing the attention of the draymaster.