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"Not unless I have to," he replied, composedly. "I don't believe that he can really hurt us, and if I use a ray of any kind I'm afraid that it will kick up enough disturbance to bring Nerado down on us like a hawk after a chicken. However, if he takes us much deeper I'll have to go to work on him. We're getting down pretty close to our limit, and the bottom's a long way down yet."
"They don't seem to want us to talk outside, but his interference is as good as my talking they can trace it, of course. Now I'll see what I can find out about our breakfast." He stepped over to the plate and shot its projector beam forward into the control room, where he saw Nerado lying, doglike, at his instrument panel.
The shrillest note of a Terrestrial piccolo is to them so profoundly low that it cannot be heard. "We have much to do." Nerado turned away from the captives. "We must postpone further study of the specimens until we have taken aboard a full cargo of the iron which is so plentiful here." "What shall we do with them, sir?" asked one of the Nevian officers. "Lock them in one of the storage rooms?"
No sooner had the precious fluid been stored away than the detectors again broke into an uproar. In one direction was an enormous mass of iron, scarcely detectable; in another a great number of smaller masses; in a third an isolated mass, comparatively small in size. Space seemed to be full of iron, and Nerado drove his most powerful beam toward distant Nevia and sent an exultant message.
"You know Nerado mentioned several times the 'semi-civilized fishes of the greater deeps'?" he reminded her. "I gather that there are at least three intelligent races here. We know two the Nevians, who are amphibians, and the fishes of the greater deeps. The fishes of the lesser deeps are also intelligent.
Bring the boat in without converting it, so that we may study at our leisure both the beings and their mechanisms," and Nerado swung his own visiray beam into the emergency boat, seeing there the armored figures of Clio Marsden and the two Triplanetary officers. "They are indeed intelligent," Nerado commented, as he detected and silenced Costigan's ultra-beam communicator.
And that same battle was being watched, also with intense interest, by the Nevians. "It is indeed a blood-thirsty combat," mused Nerado at his observation plate. "And it is peculiar or rather, probably only to be expected from a race of such a low stage of development that they employ only ether-borne forces.
Ten pounds of iron will be a fearful loss to the world. If we should find iron, however, see to it that the other vessel loses no time in following us." "No fear of that! If you find iron all space will be full of vessels, as soon as they can possibly be built good-bye!" The last opening was sealed and Nerado shot the great vessel into the air.
Nerado would not allow the Terrestrials to visit their own ship he was taking no chances but after a thorough ultra-ray inspection he did finally order some of his men to bring into the middle room the electric range and a supply of Terrestrial food. Soon the Nevian fish were sizzling in a pan and the appetizing odors of coffee and of browning biscuit permeated the room.
Clio looked once, then gasped, shutting her eyes and turning away from the table, but Costigan flipped the three fish into a platter and set it aside before he turned back to the visiplate. "They'll go good fried," he remarked to Bradley, signaling vigorously to Nerado that the meal was not acceptable and that he wanted to talk to him, in person.
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