As she listened the girl’s face cleared, “My, I’m glad to hear that,” she said when he had finished. “I couldn’t bear to think I’d been mistaken in you like that. It wasn’t reasonable.
“It’s a mess, though. Farnsworth must be in open space by now, and it’s hard to get people off a ship. Anyhow, it’s just your word against his. And the government hates the alaphronein traffic so much I wouldn’t be surprised if they hung you up by your thumbs or burned you alive in Ares Square. You have no idea the trouble I had getting in to see you.”
“I’m darned glad you came,” George said sincerely. He had forgotten all about how angry he was at her.
Blixa beamed for an instant and then grew sober again. “It’s still a mess,” she said ruefully. “They never give bail in drug cases. You’ll have to escape.”
Out of the corner of his eye George saw that the jailer, who had been hovering discreetly in the background, was coming closer to them. He gave Blixa a warning wink.
The girl raised her chin infinitesimally to show she had understood. “Do you know how much I’ve cried, thinking about you?” she went on, leaning forward intimately. Her voice was a tone or two higher than it usually was. “Why, my pillow’s been sopping wet. My shari was all wet too. I know it wasn’t reasonable to cry so much, like one of Vulcan’s weeping dolls, but I couldn’t help it. I cried and cried, until everything was all wet.”
What the devil—? George felt a tickling sensation in his wrist. He looked down and perceived that Blixa, in a series of tiny mo vements, was passing something no thicker than a hair through the grating to him. It was too small to set off the matter-detector built into the grating, being very nearly invisible. George clamped it against his hand with his thumb and began winding it around his wrist. A shade of relief passed over Blixa’s face.
“Do you ever think about me, George?” she asked, leaning forward again. She was still speaking in that rather unnatural voice.
“You bet I do.” George answered heartily. He was bewildered, but still game.
Blixa sighed. “I think about you so much at night,” she said. “One always feels so alone at night, doesn’t one? It’s not so bad during the day, but at night one feels so alone.”
The jailer came up. “Time to leave, lalania,” he said courteou sly. (“Lalania”—Old Martian for “perfumedness”—was politely used in addressing ladies.) Blixa got up to go. “I don’t know when they’ll let me see you again,” she said. “Soon, I hope.” She blew him a kiss, smiled and was gone.
George was taken back to his cell. He spent the rest of the day in concentrated thought.
By one o’clock that night he was ready to try his escape. He had constructed a reasonably realistic dummy in his bunk. It would, he thought, fool the night jailer when he made his infrequent rounds.
Much reflection had convinced George that the key words in what Blixa had said to him were “wet,” “Vulcan’s workshop,” “one” and “at night.” Also, she had said that she hoped to see him soon. One o’clock, therefore, was the time, and water the means.
He had, consequently, put the long hair she had passed him through the grating into his drinking cup to soak. Incredibly, amazingly, as it took up water it had shortened and grown thick. It turned eventually into a largish egg, glossy pink, with a knob at the larger end. The surface had a most peculiar feel, something between plastic and living flesh, and it was faintly warm to the touch. The transformation was so surprising that George saw why Blixa had prepared him for it by the reference to Vulcan’s workshop.
Vulcan’s workshop, in Martian folklore, was an artificial planetoid at the far end of our galaxy on which an immortal artificer lived. Half divinity, half scientist, he was supposed to spend his days in the creation of objects of incredible workmanship. Martians called him master of life and half-life, and they ascribed any particular subtle and cunning device to him. Once or twice before George had run across things whose construction he had been hard put to understand; but this was the first time he had seriously wondered whether the legends might be right.
His cell was windowless, with walls of translucent brick. A little nervously, for he was not quite sure what it would do, George held the broad end of the egg against the lower cour se of brick and pressed the knob. Nothing happened. He bit his lip. Then, in a burst of sheer inspiration, he twisted the knob.
The egg quivered in his left hand. He held it steady. After a moment it began to bite into the brick. Dust showered down and lay in a glittering trail on the floor. Quietly and steadily the egg continued to eat, growing a little thicker. It reminded George of some blindly hungering animal.
In less than half an hour he had cut a circle in the outer wall large enough for him to get through. He reduced the egg to quiescence by twisting its knob in the other direction. Carefully he pulled the cut-out section of translucent brick into his cell and leaned it against the wall. Then he slid into the opening.
His cell was only on the second floor, and Martian gravity was less than Earth’s. George hesitated all the same, deliberately relaxing his muscles, before he let go. It would be the height of irony to break an ankle at this stage. He landed with a thump that took the breath out of him. Blixa detached herself from the shadows and glided up while he was still checking over his anatomy.
“Pharol be praised,” she said in a low voice, “you did get the idea. I was afraid you might not. No broken bones?”
“I’m O.K.”
“Hurry, then. I gassed the guard, but pretty soon he’ll come to.” Blixa set off at what was almost a run through the shadows. George hurried after her.
“Hadn’t we better take an abrotanon car?” he asked when he had caught up.
Blixa shook her dark red curls. “We’re safer on foot. As soon as they miss you, the alarm will go out, and they’ll alert all the cars. Wait a minute, though.”
She steered him under a light, untied the end of her shari, and with the cosmetics it contained began deftly making up his face. His black eye was hidden, his cheek bones heightened. She drew a frown between his eyes and added lines around his mouth. With tiny bits of plastic she even changed the set of his ears.
“That’s better,” she said, “but—” She rolled up his sleeves, unbuttoned his tunic, tied up its hanging tail. “And don’t walk so straight. Slump, sort of. No, not like that. Relax more. Pretend you’re drunk.—Say, have you got the egg?”
George handed it to her. She tied it up tightly in her shari. “It’ll go down as it dries out,” she explained. “I wouldn’t want to lose it. It’s a handy sort of thing.”
The streets were so quiet and dark that George asked whether the Anagetalia was over and learned from Blixa that it had ended at twenty-four that night. “Everybody’s at home,” she said, “getting caught up on his sleep. Say, where are you going? Not that way!” They had come to Ares Avenue and George had turned to the left, thinking they were going to the spaceport. She tugged at his sleeve. “The embassy’s to the right. What do you think I got you out of jail for? We’ve got to get the pig. You promised you’d help me get the pig.”
“Oh,” George said. It was all he could think of to say. Somehow he had forgotten all about that blasted, blasted pig.
Blixa looked at him slantingly and laughed. “I’d have got you out anyhow, George,” she said. “You know I would. But the pig was the reason I had to hurry so much. I don’t know how much longer it will be at the embassy. And it means a lot to Mars.”
“Oh,” George said again. Without his being aware of it, his face relaxed. “You know,” he said after a pause, while they walked steadily along, “I have a feeling that somebody’s following us.”