“If you’ve still got to look for the kidnappers,” I said, “why not do it here? There’s a good chance Lloobee’s somewhere on the base.”

“Nuts,” said Emil. He turned on the lift units, and we took off. “Bellamy’s yacht is the only ship that fits.”

“There’s another ship that fits. The Argos.”

“Put your goggles on. We’re about to go through the weather dome. What about the Argos?”

“Think it through. There had to be someone aboard in the first place to plant the gas bomb that knocked us out. Why shouldn’t that same person have hidden Lloobee somewhere, gagged or unconscious, until the Argos could land?”

“Finagle’s gonads! He could still be on the Argos! No, he couldn’t; they searched the Argos.” Emil glared at nothing. At that moment we went through the weather dome. CY Aquarii, which had been a soft white patch, became for an instant a tiny bright point of agony. Then a spot on each lens of my goggles turned black and covered the sun.

“We’ll have to check it out later,” said Emil. “But we can call city hall now and tell them one of the kidnappers was on the Argos.”

But we couldn’t. Where the car radio should have been was a square hole.

Emil smote his forehead. With his Jinxian strength it’s a wonder he survived. “I forgot. Car radios won’t work on Gummidgy. You have to use a ship’s com laser and bounce the beam off one of the orbital stations.”

“Do we have a com laser?”

“Do you see one? Maybe in ten years someone’ll think of putting com lasers in cars. Well, we’ll have to do it later.”

“That’s silly. Let’s do it now.”

“First we check on Bellamy.”

“I’m not going.”

Emil just grinned.

He was right. It had been a futile comment. I had three choices:

Fighting a Jinxian.

Getting out and walking home. But we must have gone a mile up already, and the base was far behind.

Visiting Bellamy, who was an old friend, and looking around unobtrusively while we were there. Actually, it would have been rude not to go. Actually, it would have been silly not to at least drop by and say hello while we were on the same planet.

Actually, I rationalize a lot.

“Do one thing for me,” I said. “Let me do all the talking. You can be the strong, silent type who smiles a lot.”

“Okay. What are you going to tell him?”

“The truth. Not the whole truth, but some of it.”

The four-hour trip passed quickly. We found cards and a score pad in a glove compartment. The car blasted quietly and smoothly through a Mach four wall of air, rising once to clear a magnificent range of young mountains.

“Can you fly a car?”