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bowed and took off. Then I had to listen to
Pelops
.
He glared at the meta. "
If you keep it around, sire, you will get the sores and the sickness. I am
convinced of it. Let me throw it over the side. I have long thought, ever
since I
"
By this time I knew when he was getting ready to go into a lecture and I cut
him short. I was a little curt with him.
"
One night will do no harm," I told him. "Forget it. And here is an order
find me an ingot of refined meta, or a coin of the stuff, and bring it to me
at once. Hurry up
."
He thought I was bonkers. "An ingot of meta, sire? Where would I find that
aboard this ship
?"
I admitted the unlikelihood. "Find me a coin, then. Any coin. They are all
made of meta, aren't they
?"
"
Of course, sire. What else? But surely you know
Otto the Black controlled all coinage
even the Queen had few coins
how am I to find a coin among slaves? It is impossible. I myself have not
possessed a meta coin in years. And as I was about to say, sire, when you
switched the talk to coins, I
"
I leveled a finger at him
remember to clean your nails, Blade and said, "As you are not
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about to say, Polonius, get the hell out of here and find me a coin. You have
four hundred ex-slaves to search. Surely one of them somehow and somewhere,
will have concealed a coin.
Look for it. Don't come back until you find it
."
When I get that tone in my voice Pelops knows I mean it, But he stopped at the
cabin door and looked at me. "Polonius? I am Pelops, as you well know. Why did
you call me by another name?
Who is Polonius
?"
It was hard to keep from laughing, but I managed. "A very great man in the
literature of my own land," I told him. "Very wise. Of the finest character. A
fount of good advice and much looked up to. He only had one failing.
"
Pelops, all smiles now, mollified, was bowing and smirking at me. "His
failing, sire? What was it
?"
"
HE TALKED TOO DAMNED MUCH. OUT OUT! FIND ME A COIN
!"
When he was gone I examined the chunk of raw meta again. I forced my memory
back to a class I had attended at the Naval School in Greenwich. J had made me
go
.
Just suppose, I thought to myself. Symbol U or UR. AT. no., 92 AT. wt.,
238.07.
It all came slipping back into my mind. Possible? Hell
I was in Sarma! Who would have thought that possible before Lord L came up
with his master computer
?
Just before dark Pelops came back with a small square coin. He had washed it
well, he explained, because one of the former slaves had had it concealed up
his anus. I did not ask how
Pelops had come by it.
I examined the coin with the crude telescope I had inherited. Not very
satisfactory, but good enough. I scratched it with a knife. Heavy, dense,
nickellike. Very hard. It could just be.
That night, before the cabin lamp was lit, I lay on the bunk and studied the
chunk of raw meta.
After staring at it for a long time I had to call in Pelops and Ixion for
their opinions. I was beginning to doubt my own eyes
.
They saw it, too. A faint glow in the dark, just a hint of fluorescence, a
barely seen nimbus around the chunk of meta.
Pitchblende.
For the first time in four trips out into Dimension X I had found a treasure
that could really be called a treasure. In Sarma there were whole mountain
ranges of pitchblende. Chephron had radiation sores.
I have decided to have a special pocket made in my clothes for the piece of
meta and the coin.
Recompense the man for his coin
.
All the above is written in retrospect, long after the fact, for the simple
reason that I have just gotten back to this log. A hell of a lot has happened
since I identified that chunk of meta as pitchblende. Most all of it bad.
Some good, though. I have found Zeena again
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!
Not that finding her turned out to be such a good thing. It really wasn't. But
none of that, because I can't bring myself to write about it. The biggest
trouble is that I now have another woman on my hands. The two of them are
driving me crazy.
Let me see. It is hard to pick up a log like this after so much time and so
many events so I
will just say that I was lying there thinking about the pitchblende and
wondering if Lord L
could ever invent teleportation so we could get the stuff back to H Dimension,
when Ixion came in with bad news. I am trying to remember just how he put it.
I remember that he still had a bandage do
around his neck and was very pale. Ixion was a good man and a fine seaman. If
it were not for
Ixion I wouldn't be writing in this log again
.
Ixion said, "There is weather making, Captain Blade. Looks like one of the
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