Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; War stories
He reduced everything he could to a consistent basis, and added other
formulae which might apply from the incomplete relationship tables
that strove to reconcile the two recognized spectra. Those might also
indicate something about any third spectrum. Either his memory was
coming back or his reading of the books and articles was beginning to
take effect, he was pleased to notice.
Pat worked the computer, which had fortunately suffered only minor
damages, and had been repaired. From the computations, they made the
indicated experiments, and fed the results into the machine. This time,
it gave only seven suggested answers, with a rough weighing of them.
The second one called for one of several organic substances soaked in
potassium ferrocyanide and grounded.
While they waited for the chemistry shed to handle that with due
precautions on the radio-active isotope, they tried the others. One
gave a better than fifty percent reduction, which meant that the
females were only mildly crazy.
"Don't they ever relax?" Pat wondered, unwrapping one of the
sandwiches Miles had ordered sent in to them.
The female sand lizard's libido mattered less than nothing to Norden at
the moment. He was staring at the work he had done in relating hints
and fragments of information with pure hunches to get new facts, and
realizing that he could never have done that, even before the Aliens
had tampered with him. Either he was mysteriously more capable, now
that he'd managed to overcome a few of the taboos in his mind, or
else the loss of so much of his memory had left his thoughts freer to
operate.
"We'll call this the Hardwick spectrum," he decided aloud. "The man was
a crackpot cultist, but he was a genius, all the same. And with this,
we'll pay those damned Aliens back for what they did to him."
"We wouldn't be able to if you hadn't had time to get the males and
yourself into oxygen suits before Armsworth exploded," Pat told him.
"They're the only males left alive, now that Mars has been scoured by
the Aliens."
He swung around in surprise. "I never...."
The phone saved him from finishing. He hadn't had time to get into a
space suit immediately. After the blast he had fumbled around searching
for one. And he'd arrived outside the lock without ever having felt
discomfort from living in a vacuum for _five full minutes_!
His self-satisfaction vanished, and revulsion took its place. He
stared at his body in horror. No human body could have endured such
punishment. But he had taken it without noticing it!
Pat came back at a run. "Come on, Bill. A messenger just arrived from
Earth with five hundred pounds of K-40!"
"Five hundred?" Norden could almost hear again the amazed voice of
General Dawes when he asked for a mere five pounds--a quantity nearly
impossible to secure.
Pat's face confirmed his suspicions. Earth couldn't have made five
hundred pounds so rapidly.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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