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Then he swore softly, and, beside him, Kerim sucked in her breath. The screen showed the janandra in violent but apparently purposeful motion inside the lock ... and it was also apparent now that it was a more complexly constructed creature than the long worm-body and heavy head had indicated. The skin, to a distance of some eight feet back of the head, had spread out into a wide, flexible frill.
He was following instructions again when he tried to kill me after I'd got away from the thing in the vault. The real brain around here was the janandra ... and it was a real brain. With a little luck it would have had the ship." Kerim smiled briefly. "You handled that big brain rather well, I think." "I was the one who got lucky," Gefty said.
"Anyway, where Maulbow came from, it's the janandra's kind that gives the orders. And the thing is, Maulbow liked it that way. He didn't want it to be different. When the light hit us, it killed the janandra on the outside of the ship. Maulbow felt it happen and it cracked him up. He wanted to kill us for it. But since he was helpless, he killed himself. He didn't want to be healed not by us.
It should throw us back into normspace." Kerim nodded again. "What about Mr. Maulbow's janandra animal?" Gefty shrugged. "Depends on the mood I find it in. He said it wasn't usually aggressive. Maybe it isn't. I'll get into a spacesuit for protection and break out some of the mining equipment to move it along with. If I can maneuver it into an empty compartment where it will be out of the ..."
From what Maulbow had said, it could live for a while without air, but it still could gain nothing but eventual death from leaving the ship Unless, Gefty thought, the janandra had become aware in some way that he was about to blow their machine out of the Queen.
Then there was the janandra the big, snakish thing in the storage which Maulbow had brought back up from the moon along with the battered machine. It had been, he said, his shipboard companion on another voyage. It wasn't ordinarily aggressive Gefty's sudden appearance in the vault must have startled it into making an attack. It was not exactly a pet.
Climb into a spacesuit, empty the air from the entire storage deck, leaving the janandra imprisoned in the cargo lock ... with Maulbow incapacitated in sick bay, and Kerim back in the control compartment and also in a suit, for additional protection.
But they weren't his plans ... they were the janandra's. He wasn't exactly its servant. I suppose you'd have to say he was something like a pet animal." Kerim said incredulously, "But that isn't possible! Think of how intelligently Mr. Maulbow ..." "He was following instructions," Gefty said. "The janandra let him know whatever it wanted done.
But the inner lock doors won't open until someone opens them right on this panel. No, the thing's safely trapped. On the other hand ..." On the other hand, Gefty realized that he wouldn't now be able to bring himself to eject the janandra out of the cargo lock and into the Great Current.
He didn't feel like telling Kerim about it just yet, but it had been solely because of Maulbow's concern for his master's creature comforts. The janandra could go for a long time without food, but after fasting for several years on the moon, a couple of snacks on the homeward run would have been highly welcome. And the janandra was a gourmet.
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