"Where do you suppose we are?" Roger inquired, gingerly brushing sparkling dust from the unaccustomed curves of his borrowed form.
"How do I know?" Q'nell snapped. She stamped awkwardly up and down like a spotlit performer, swinging Roger's arms and staring out across the shining landscape to a row of phosphorescent hills. "How the devil do you balance this infernal body? These feet weigh a ton—and the hip joints are too close together."
"Well! I'd trade back in a minute! I feel like my rear is a mile wide—and what do you do about the topheavy feeling?"
Q'nell glanced at him, then looked again, her gaze lingering. "Say, you know, that's not a bad-looking little form, if I do say so myself." She sauntered closer. "There's something kind of appealing about the way it sticks out here and there—and when it moves—" She broke off, a startled look on Roger's face. "Good heavens!" she murmured. "Is that the way it feels to be a male?"
"Keep away from me, you onanist!" Roger shrilled, backing up, noting in passing that the sensation of alarm coursing through him had curiously pleasurable overtones.
"You poor thing," Q'nell said. "Imagine going around reacting like that to the mere sight of a female!"
"I'm no female! I'm Roger Tyson, one hundred percent red-blooded male man! And you keep your sticky hands to yourself! I mean, you keep my sticky hands to yourself!"
"Are you sure you want me to?" Q'nell advanced.
"Get back!" Roger yelped. "You're ogling again!"
"Well, why don't you cover yourself up, you—you exhibitionist! How do you expect me to keep my mind on the problem at hand with you undulating around? You're doing it on purpose! I suppose it gives you some kind of sense of power or something!"
"For the first time I'm getting an insight into the origin of Puritanism," Roger muttered. "It's dirty-minded voyeurs like you that are responsible for all the prudery in the world! It's not my fault if the sight of me upsets you!" He felt his—or Q'nell's—right hip execute a flawless grind, ending in a modest bump that set his superstructure quivering.
"Hey!" he yelped. "I didn't do that—it was this troublemaking body of yours! Suddenly I'm beginning to understand a lot of things about the battle of the sexes!"
"Why fight?" Q'nell inquired reasonably. Roger's face was twisted into an obnoxious smirk, he noted with dismay. Surely he had never looked at a helpless female that way!"
"Hey!" Q'nell pointed past him. "Company coming!" She jumped forward to place herself before Roger as a weird spectacle appeared dramatically over a nearby ridge. It was a luminous horse of a pale, glowing turquoise shade, hung about with jet-black harness from which depended glittering baubles like Christmas-tree lights. Astride the creature's back sat a rider whose hide gleamed a pale blue. He was scantily garbed, topped by a nodding headdress of plumes like colored flames. The apparition galloped up to rein in facing the two adventurers at a distance of ten feet. The rider spoke, an effect like the blipping of blank spots on a magnetic tape.
"Take it easy, honey," Q'nell said grimly. "I'll handle this." She stepped forward, fists on hips, buzzed a speech in Culture One Speedspeak, at which the rider leaned from the saddle and fetched her a solid blow on the side of the head with a long knobbed stick.
"You monster!" Roger shrilled, springing forward to stand astride his fallen body.
"Wha—" Q'nell inquired, rolling groggily to Roger's feet. She leaped up suddenly, brushed Roger aside, caught the stick as it swung again, yanked the rider from the saddle. The mount shied and galloped away as the two rolled in the dust, blue arms and dusty white rising and falling to the accompaniment of dull thuds. Roger felt a curious thrill as Q'nell rolled clear and jumped up, dusting her borrowed hands.
"All right, who's next?" she yelled, waving Roger's fists. The blue man groaned.
"No takers," Q'nell said, smiling broadly. Roger had never before noticed what an inane smile he had . . . but on the other hand, it was rather cute in a way—almost boyish, as if he needed mothering.
"I've never understood before just what it was you fellows got out of all those body-contact sports," Q'nell said cheerfully. "But you know, there's something about crunching your knuckle into somebody's skull that's good for the repressed psyche!" She put a casual hand on Roger's shoulder. With horror, he felt his borrowed knees begin to quiver.
"Unhand me, you—you barbarian!" he squeaked, and threw the offending member off. "Just look at that poor man! You've hurt him!" He knelt by the fallen warrior, began dabbing ineffectually at the dust caking his face. The patient opened his eyes—a startling clear yellow, like illuminated lemon drops—and smiled, showing excellent teeth. The next second a blue hand was fumbling Roger's thigh. In instant reflex, he landed an open-handed slap across the reviving face that sent the blue casualty back for another count.
"Say, did that rapist try to get fresh?" Q'nell started, advancing pugnaciously.
"Never mind that," Roger countered. "Just get busy and get us out of here!"
"I've got a good mind to revive that degenerate and—"
"Q'nell! It was nothing! Now, let's concentrate on those parameters you were so worried about a few minutes ago!"
"Believe me, a maniac like that has just one thing in mind!"
"So have I: getting away from here! This is a totally alien environment, in case you haven't noticed! We're lucky we can even breathe the air! For all we know, we're soaking up a lethal dose of radiation right now!"
"I wonder"—Q'nell eyed the native with unabated hostility—"what gave the clown the idea . . . "
"You ought to know," Roger said. "All men are alike! I mean, the fact that he's a male—I mean, well, after all, it's perfectly natural, isn't it? I mean—"
"You led him on!" Q'nell charged. "Why, you promiscuous little tramp!"
"Q'nell! Come to your senses! Our lives are at stake! Thousands of lives! Now just figure out what you did before, and do it again, backwards."
"Actually, I've got a feeling we've flipped out into a reverse-polarity universe," Q'nell said carelessly. "But let's forget that for now. You know, T'son," she went on in an oily tone which made Roger's skin crawl, "you and I have never really had a chance to get acquainted." She edged closer. "Back in Culture One they kept me so busy dashing around I never really had time to notice what a charming, ah, personality you have."
"Skip my personality," Roger snapped. "Just get busy and retwiddle those parameters!"
"How'm I supposed to concentrate on all that technical business with this funny feeling creeping over me every time I look at that slinky little torso of yours, and that slender little waist, and those nice—"
"Look here, Q'nell!" Roger snapped, fending off his hands. "Get control of myself, girl! Put your intelligence in charge! Remember what S'lunt said! If this trap system isn't destroyed, it'll rip the whole space-time continuum wide open! Imagine the confusion, with Genghis Khan galloping around the middle of World War One, and Louis the Fifteenth coming face to face with de Gaulle, and Teddy Roosevelt bumping heads with LBJ, and—"
"All right, all right, you've made your point." Q'nell slumped back, breathing hard, promptly sat up again. "But are you sure you don't really want to—"
"No! Stick to the subject at hand! The Channel! It's not hard, Q'nell; just close your eyes and try to sort of firm up the gray into a nice even sort of custardy consistency."
"I'm trying," Q'nell said, squeezing Roger's eyes shut. "But it just looks like a lot of garbage to me."
Roger closed the eyes of the body he was occupying. "There's really nothing to it," he said in a calm, reasonable tone. "I didn't have any trouble. You just exclude all extraneous thoughts from your mind."
"Did you know that when you run you have the most delightful jounce?" Q'nell said.
"I assure you, it's unintentional!" Roger said icily. "Now concentrate! Think about it!"
"I am! I can't think about anything else! Great galloping galaxies, T'son, I really have to admire you men for the little restraint you show! It's like . . . like . . . "
"It's like nothing else in the world," Roger said. "I remember it well—even though it all seems pretty silly now, which goes to show the decisive role glands play in philosophy."
"I suppose you're right," Q'nell said resignedly. "But since it's really your fault for scrambling us up like this, you ought to be willing to—"
"Don't go feminine on me now!" Roger yelped. "We'll both concentrate! Maybe together we can manage it!" He groped mentally toward the insubstantial stuff floating before his closed eyes, but it boiled imperviously, stubbornly refusing to coalesce into the characteristic gray of the Channel.
"How are you doing, Q'nell?" he asked.
"I'm not sure . . . but I think . . . maybe . . . "
"Yes? Keep trying! You can do it!"
"Maybe," Q'nell went on, "you'd better open your eyes."
Roger complied instantly—and was looking up into the massed spears of a company of ghostly blue riders hemming them in from all sides.
"The very idea," Roger said an hour later, after a rough ride strapped behind a sweating blue warrior, and an unsatisfying interview in a pitch-dark room with unseen locals. "Putting us together in the same cell!"
"At least this way we only have one door to break down," Q'nell said. "What did you expect, separate suites? His and Hers buckets?"
"Must you be crude?" Roger folded his arms, quickly unfolded them, disconcerted by the sensation.
"Just realistic," Q'nell said. "Let's face facts: I'm occupying an inferior brain. It's up to you, T'son. I did my best."
"What did you make of the interrogation?"
"What could I make of it? Total darkness, silent voices—I'm not even sure we were being questioned."
"Of course we were," Roger said loftily. "And they're not through yet. They'll be back soon."
"How do you know?"
"Feminine intuition."
"Oh, that!" Q'nell said disparagingly. "Just a mish-mash of wild guesses and wishful thinking."
"You'll see," Roger said complacently. "Now be quiet. Since you seem to be helpless, I'll have to try to do what I can." He stretched out on the floor and looked into the grayness swirling before his closed eyes . . .
. . . and was awakened by a foot prodding his side to see Q'nell struggling in the grip of a pair of husky fluorescent guards.
This time they were hustled unceremoniously along dull-glowing corridors out into a walled courtyard under an open sky just beginning to gray at zenith. Several dark points were visible there, like negative star images on an astronomical photograph.
"I think I'm beginning to understand what makes the light so funny," Roger confided to Q'nell as they stood together against one pockmarked wall. "The whole spectrum is shifted; we're seeing heat—that's why living things glow—and visible light is off in the radio range somewhere."
"I'm beginning to understand something even more fascinating than that," Q'nell said. "Those ten blue men over there with the guns in their hands are a firing squad!"
"You're a big success as a negotiator," Roger charged bitterly. "If this is a compromise, what were they holding out for?"
"At least we're not going to be tortured," Q'nell snapped back. "Be quiet and let's start concentrating! Maybe the spur of dire necessity will help me use some of the ninety-two percent of your brain our instruments showed was lying fallow!"
"I don't know how to operate your brain!"
"Well, try! It's a finely tuned instrument, trained in all the subtleties of Culture One mental science! Put it to use!"
Across the eerie courtyard, the rank of armed men were lining up, eyeing their prospective targets with shining yellow eyes. Roger shivered.
"I can't," he said. "All I can think about it what it will feel like to be shot!"
"In that case, I guess it's goodbye," Q'nell said. "I'm afraid your body's panic reactions are inhibiting my concentration, too."
"About those passes you were making," Roger said, feeling a sudden tenderness toward the girl. "I didn't mean to be stuffy or anything."
"Actually, I admire you for your stand," Q'nell said. "Only a tramp would have given in."
"What! Why, you practically fell all over yourself trying to make time with me! And if I'd taken pity on you, that makes me a tramp?"
"Calm down! I was complimenting you!"
"Of all the nerve! And I thought you liked me! And all the time you were just amusing yourself, testing my reactions!"
"Hey, that's not true! You're very appealing! I just meant that, uh . . . But what does it matter what I meant? This is the end. Goodbye, T'son. It's been very interesting."
Roger didn't answer. He was watching with fascination as the blue men loaded their guns . . .
A vertical line of light quivered into existence between Roger and the aimed guns. It wavered, faded, firmed again, flickered . . .
"T'son!" Q'nell said sharply. "It's a portal! It must be good old S'lunt!"
"He'd better hurry up and focus it," Roger said, gritting his teeth hard. "In about another two seconds—"
"On the count of three, hit the deck!" Q'nell hissed. "One!" The firing squad took aim.
"Two!"
The portal snapped into sharpness. A shape appeared, sliding forth from it—a bulbous shape, glowing a dull red, ringed about with jointed tentacles.
"Three!" Q'nell called. Roger dived flat, heard the close-spaced blips of silence that punctuated the background roar, saw the monster explode into a shower of fragments as it intercepted the fusillade intended for the humans. The shooters, astonished at the sudden obstacle that had interposed itself between them and their target, stood gaping dumbly as Roger and Q'nell came to their feet.
"Come on!" Q'nell yelled, and grabbed Roger's hand.
"But—but it's one of theirs!" he protested, pulling back.
"Any port in a storm!" Q'nell shouted.
"I guess you're right," Roger gulped, and together they dashed forward and plunged through the portal.