Or was it weeks?
He went in to find Toll.
“It’s been a wonderful visit,” he said, “but I’ll have to be leaving, I guess. Tomorrow morning, early…”
Toll put some fancy sewing she was working on back in a glass basket, laid her strong, slim witch’s hands in her lap, and smiled up at him.
“We thought you’d be thinking that,” she said, “and so we… you know, Captain, it was quite difficult to decide on the best way to reward you for bringing back the children.”
“It was?” said the captain, suddenly realizing he’d also clean forgotten he was broke! And now the wrath of Onswud lay close ahead.
“However,” Toll went on, “we’ve all been talking about it in the town, and so we’ve loaded a lot of things aboard your ship that we think you can sell at a fine profit!”
“Well, now,” the captain said gratefully, “that’s fine of—”
“There are furs,” said Toll, “the very best furs we could fix up — two thousand of them!”
“Oh!” said the captain, bravely keeping his smile. “Well, that’s wonderful!”
“And the Kell Peak essences of perfume,” said Toll. “Everyone brought one bottle, so that’s eight thousand three hundred and twenty-three bottles of perfume essences!”
“Perfume!” exclaimed the captain. “Fine, fine — but you really shouldn’t—”
“And the rest of it,” Toll concluded happily, “is the green Lepti liquor you like so much and the Wintenberry jellies. I forget just how many jugs and jars, but there were a lot. It’s all loaded now.” She smiled. “Do you think you’ll be able to sell all that?”
“I certainly can!” the captain said stoutly. “It’s wonderful stuff, and I’ve never come across anything like it before.”
The last was very true. They wouldn’t have considered miffel fur for lining on Karres. But if he’d been alone he would have felt like bursting into tears.
The witches couldn’t have picked more completely unsalable items if they’d tried! Furs, cosmetics, food, and liquor — he’d be shot on sight if he got caught trying to run that kind of merchandise into the Empire. For the same reason it was barred on Nikkeldepain — they were that scared of contamination by goods that came from uncleared worlds!
He breakfasted alone next morning. Toll had left a note beside his plate which explained in a large rambling script that she had to run off and catch the Leewit, and that if he was gone before she got back she was wishing him good-by and good luck.
He smeared two more buns with Wintenberry jelly, drank a large mug of cone-seed coffee, finished every scrap of the omelet of swan hawk eggs and then, in a state of pleasant repletion, toyed around with his slice of roasted Bollem liver. Boy, what food! He must have put on fifteen pounds since he landed on Karres.
He wondered how Toll kept that slim figure.
Regretfully, he pushed himself away from the table, pocketed her note for a souvenir and went out on the porch. There a tear-stained Maleen hurled herself into his arms.
“Oh, Captain!” she sobbed. “You’re leaving—”
“Now, now!” murmured the captain, touched and surprised by the lovely child’s grief. He patted her shoulders soothingly. “I’ll be back,” he said rashly.
“Oh, yes, do come back!” cried Maleen. She hesitated and added, “I become marriageable two years from now — Karres time.”
“Well, well,” said the captain, dazed. “Well, now—”
He set off down the path a few minutes later, a strange melody tinkling in his head. Around the first curve, it changed abruptly to a shrill keening which seemed to originate from a spot some two hundred feet before him. Around the next curve, he entered a small, rocky clearing full of pale, misty, early-morning sunlight and what looked like a slow motion fountain of gleaming rainbow globes. These turned out to be clusters of large, varihued soap bubbles which floated up steadily from a wooden tub full of hot water, soap, and the Leewit. Toll was bent over the tub; and the Leewit was objecting to a morning bath with only that minimum of interruptions required to keep her lungs pumped full of a fresh supply of air.
As the captain paused beside the little family group, her red, wrathful face came up over the rim of the tub and looked at him.
“Well, Ugly,” she squealed, in a renewed outburst of rage, “who you staring at?” Then a sudden determination came into her eyes. She pursed her lips.
Toll upended her promptly and smacked her bottom.
“She was going to make some sort of a whistle at you,” she explained hurriedly. “Perhaps you’d better get out of range while I can keep her head under… And good luck, Captain!”
Karres seemed even more deserted than usual this morning. Of course it was quite early. Great banks of fog lay here and there among the huge dark trees and the small bright houses. A breeze sighed sadly far overhead. Faint, mournful bird-cries came from still higher up — it might have been swan hawks reproaching him for the omelet.
Somewhere in the distance somebody tootled on a wood instrument, very gently.
He had gone halfway up the path to the landing field when something buzzed past him like an enormous wasp and went CLUNK! into the bole of a tree just before him.
It was a long, thin, wicked-looking arrow. On its shaft was a white card, and on the card was printed in red letters:
The captain stopped and looked around cautiously. There was no one in sight. What did it mean?
He had a sudden feeling as if all of Karres were rising up silently in one stupendous cool, foggy trap about him. His skin began to crawl. What was going to happen?
“Ha-ha!” said Goth, suddenly visible on a rock twelve feet to his left and eight feet above him. “You did stop!”
The captain let his breath out slowly.
“What did you think I’d do?” he inquired. He felt a little faint.
She slid down from the rock like a lizard and stood before him. “Wanted to say good-by!” she told him.
Thin and brown, in jacket, breeches, boots, and cap of gray-green rock lichen color, Goth looked very much in her element. The brown eyes looked up at him steadily; the mouth smiled faintly; but there was no real expression on her face at all. There was a quiverful of those enormous arrows slung over her shoulder, and some arrow-shooting device — not a bow — in her left hand.
She followed his glance.
“Bollem hunting up the mountain,” she explained. “The wild ones. They’re better meat.”
The captain reflected a moment. That’s right, he recalled; they kept the tame Bollem herds mostly for milk, butter, and cheese. He’d learned a lot of important things about Karres, all right!
“Well,” he said, “good-by, Goth!”
They shook hands gravely. Goth was the real Witch of Karres, he decided. More so than her sisters, more so even than Toll. But he hadn’t actually learned a single thing about any of them.
Peculiar people!
He walked on, rather glumly.
“Captain!” Goth called after him. He turned.
“Better watch those take-offs,” Goth called, “or you’ll kill yourself yet!”
The captain cussed softly all the way up to the Venture.
And the take-off was terrible! A few swan hawks were watching but, he hoped, no one else.
There was, of course, no possibility of resuming direct trade in the Empire with the cargo they’d loaded for him. But the more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed that Councilor Onswud would let a genuine fortune slip through his hands because of technical embargoes. Nikkeldepain knew all the tricks of interstellar merchandising, and the councilor was undoubtedly the slickest unskinned miffel in the Republic. It was even possible that some sort of trade might be made to develop eventually between Karres and Nikkeldepain.
Now and then he also thought of Maleen growing marriageable two years hence, Karres time. A handful of witch-notes went tinkling through his head whenever that idle reflection occurred.