"Identify yourself at once! Screech, crackle. No ship permitted on or about, whee, ziggle, this planet by Section 12, Paragraph Z of our Charter of Planetary Sovereignty with your zeek, wheetle, Imperial government!" the irate Archimandrate sizzled, obviously having worked up a fine, ecclesiastical frenzy.
"Hi, there!" Hautley beamed jovially. "Sorry, friend, but I can't budge. Cracked my only Spasmodic Frammistator right smack in two coming through a nasty gravity-vortex a parsec back. Lucky to be able to transpose into Normal so near a fine inhabited-type planet like yours!"
"What? Zeek, week, weezle. What ship are you?"
"HMS Pinafore, out of New Poughkeepsie, Altair, bound for Y'ha-nthlei in the Askham Cluster, friend. I am the Most Honorable John Jacob Jingleheimer-Smith, second son of the Duke of Poughkeepsie, owner and pilot, and this is my ... ah ... secretary, Miss Ethel Glutz. Request-permission-to-land-for-emergency-repairs."
The irate Archimandrate burst into a superb torrent of profanity (revolving on rather recondite mythological Is symbolism derived, no doubt, from the Neothothic cultus). While he seethed and bubbled sulphurously, in bets between zeek wheetles, Hautley kept a bland, faintly embarrassed expression in place, but studied the Thothite narrowly. The people of Thoin IV were descended from nine-point-nine homonid norm stock, but the preponderance of monoatomic fluorhydrates in their soil and atmosphere had, over the fourteen-generation timespan since Frist Landing, embued their features with a delicate and not unattractive shade of mingled puce and mauve. Solar radiation from their primary (a Blue Giant), filtering through the weird ring of purple neon which encircled the planet, had tinctured their facial hair a peculiar rare shade of canary yellow. Hautley thought the combination a not unpleasant one; rather decorative, actually.
He had read about this planet's ring of purple gas: it was a galactic rarity. At one time, Thoth had a moon, but the planet being a very old one, its sole satellite had eventualy reached Roche's Limit and had disintegrated some centuries before. Since the satellite had been a solid globe of neon-ice, perhaps the debris of some comet's tail, a plume of free gas which condensed aeons ago into the ice ball, the kinetic energy released by the moon's destruction had produced heat, returning the ice-sphere to neon gas again. The vaporized ice-moon find formed extraordinary ring of violet gas through the simple action of centrifugal force. So rare and extraordinary was it, that this natural feature was listed in the Tourists Guide to Centrci Derghis (117th Edition) as one of the Seven Hundred Wonders of the Universe.
While these thoughts had passed through Hautley's mind, the Archimandrate, having temporarily exhausted his supplies of religious invective, broke off, wheezing.
Hautley amiably took up the burden of the conversation.
"Sorry, Padre," he grinned amiably, "but we have no choice—nor do you. According to the first article of the Universal Space Emergency Act of 11,493 Imperial Calendar, as ratified by the entire Imperial Enclave and countersigned by His Supreme Intelligence the Emperor Emil Fotheringay XIV—and I quote—'No planet may refuse shelter, haven, aid or sustenance to a Distressed Spaceman, as defined herein, under full penalty of economic sanctions.’ End quote. And I might also call your attention, padre, to the Humane Activities Act of 11,483, Article Seven, paragraphs 3, 12, 27, and Appendix F—"
"All right, all right!" Under the barrage of expertise, the stiff-necked ecclesiastic wilted. “You and Miss Glutz may descend in your dinghy, but be certain your pile is on 'neutral' and your craft in a stable orbit. And don't cal me 'padre'!"
Curtly the Archimandrate gave detailed landing instructions. It would seem that Hautley and Barsine could not just land any old place, but must follow very specific directions and descend in one certain area. Hautley recorded the landing instructions and broke the connection.
Barsine was still sizzling. "Miss Ethel Glutz, am I" she said with a certain touch of coldness in her mellow mezzo-soprano. "No doubt that ridiculous name reflects your true feelings for me, you louse. Listen here, Hautley—"
He stemmed her flow of invective with a lifted palm.
"Please," he said, with a pained expression. "There just might be an audio spy beam fixed on us from Thoth. So remember, I am Ser John or Very Honorable. And no temper. We are working now—Ethel."
She went into a chill silence, which was exactly what he had wanted. He was not really worried about the possibility of any converse between them being carried to listening ears below via aural scrutiny. A planet whose inter-world communications rig was so antiquated (zeek, zizzle) would hardly have installed anything so sophisticated as an audio-conductor beam ...
They cast off the dinghy and drifted down Thothwards.
30
THOTH, OR THOIN IV, was a small, cold, windy ball of rock. Bleak, barren, devoid of tree or leaf—a wilderness of stone stretching off on every side. No wonder the ancient and extinct Cavern Kings had constructed their unique civilization underground.
They were met at the landing stage and escorted from their craft by a silent group of priests in lizard-suit regalia, including dragonish false heads with eye-holes th the throatplates and imitation claws. Hautley's bland attempts to chafer with the ecclesiastics was severely rebuffed. One and all, the priests virtually radiated disapproval on all wave lengths.
The portly Archimandrate conducted them personally to the quarters apparently set aside for uninvited guests. The trip was short and swift, but Hautley did manage to observe something of the remarkable architectural style for which the extinct super-reptiles were widely known: a subtle matter of sloping walls, multiplanal ceilings and chambers of dodecahedral rather than cubicular format. Oddly impressive, in a non-Euclidian sort of way.
The Spartan simplicity of their quarters was depressing, to say the least. Two narrow cots with a privacy partition set between. Beside each cot stood a berrywood stool, a small three-legged tabouret for personal effects, and a washbasin. The walls themselves, eye-wrenchingly leaning awry at bewildering angles, were devoid of ornament or color. They were left to their own. devices as soon as they had reached the cell. The only reply to Hautley's amiable flow of chatter had been a curt, snappish remark to the effect that their dinner would be served in two hours, while Temple artificers wrought repairs in the fractured Spasmodic Frammistator. The lock clicked in the door and they were alone.
Hautley stretched out on the lumpy cot and smoked. It would seem that the frequent and aimless attempts to steal the Crown of Stars had developed within the breasts of the Neothothic priesthood an unhealthy degree of suspicion towards chance droppers-in. He had no doubt their quarters were bugged as thoroughly as Thoth's limited technology permitted. This was, in fact, more than Hautley's hunch. While being whisked via various shortcuts to their present abode, Hautley felt the warning tingle of a penetrascope which must have been in one or another of the chambers adjoining the corridor. This brief but penetrating subelectronic tickle was the response of his sensitive nervous system to the bath of theta-beams emitted by the scope, as they searched his physical structure down to the molecular level. He remained unruffled by the occurance. Anticipating a penetrascope, he had abandoned his customary "business suit" this once, and the equipment he did carry was completely unobservable by any, even sophisticated, means.