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Updated: May 7, 2025
And if he happened to be up to something illegal though it was difficult to imagine what Customs would nail him when they got back to the Hub. But those facts looked a little different now. Gefty scratched his chin, inquired, "Do you happen to know where Mr. Maulbow keeps the keys to the storage vault?" Kerim looked startled. "Why, no!
Both Maulbow's weapons the white rod lying innocently on the wall table and the round, golden device which had dropped from his hand spitting darts of smoking blackness had blasted unnervingly away into that area for almost thirty seconds after Maulbow was down and twisting about on the floor. Then he went limp and the firing instantly stopped.
"Maulbow," Gefty went on, speaking distinctly enough to make sure Maulbow heard, "has a gun, too. He'll stay there in the passage and we'll stay in the instrument room until we agree on what should be done. He's responsible for what's happened and seems to know where we are." He looked at Kerim's frightened eyes, dropped his voice to a whisper. "Don't let this worry you too much.
He glanced back, saw Maulbow coming out of the half-opened door, something like a twenty-inch, thin, white rod in one hand. Then Gefty went bounding on along the passage, hunched forward and zigzagging from wall to wall to give Maulbow if the thing he held was a weapon and he actually intended to use it as small and erratic a target as possible. Maulbow shouted angrily behind him.
It was big enough to have flattened him and smashed every bone in his body if the stroke had landed. Some kind of guard animal a snakelike watchdog? What other connection could it have with the mystery machine? Perhaps Maulbow had intended to leave it confined in one of the cases, and it had broken loose Too many questions by now, Gefty thought. But Maulbow had the answers.
I haven't found out just what he's up to, but so far his tricks have pretty much backfired. He was counting on taking us both by surprise, for one thing. That didn't work, so now he'd like us to co-operate." "Are you going to?" Gefty shrugged. "Depends on what he has in mind. I'm just interested in getting us out of this alive. Let's hear what Maulbow has to say "
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.
Within the flimsy-looking protective cage was a double bank of instruments, some of them alive with the flicker and glow of lights. Those must be the very expensive and difficult-to-build items Maulbow had brought out from the Hub. Beside them stood the machine, squat and ponderous. In the vague light, it looked misshaped and discolored.
"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.
There was a psychological relationship between it and Maulbow which Maulbow would not attempt to explain because Gefty and Kerim would be unable to grasp its significance. The janandra was essential, in this unexplained manner, to his well-being. That item was almost curious enough to seem to substantiate his other statements; but it didn't really prove anything.
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