“Good for you—hail the conquering heroine!” he applauded. “It’ll do you good to have your ego inflated a little. But what do you do about this tail-tickling routine?”
“Oh, I grab their tails”—with her sense of perception, she could, of course—“and when they try to wiggle them free I wiggle back at them, like this,” she demonstrated, “and we have a perfectly wonderful time.”
“Wow! I’ll bet you do—and when I get you home, you shameless. . . .”
“Sorry, Storm, my friend,” the big Vegian who cut in wasn’t sorry at all, and he and Cloud both knew it. “You can dance with Joan any time and we can’t. So loosen all clamps, friend. Grab him, Vzelkt!”
Vzelkt grabbed. So, in about a minute, did another Vegian girl; and then after a few more minutes, it was Vesta’s turn again. No other girl could dance with him more than once, but Vesta, by some prearranged priority, could have him once every ten minutes.
“Where’s your brother, Vesta?” he asked once. “I haven’t seen him for an hour.”
“Oh, he had to go back to the police station. They’re all excited and working all hours. They’re chasing Public Enemy Number One—a Tellurian, they think he is, named Fairchild—why?” as Cloud started, involuntarily, in the circle of her arm. “Do you know him?”
“I know of him, and that’s enough.” Then, in thought: “Did you get that, Nordquist?”
“I got it.” Cloud was, as the Lensman had said that he would be, under surveillance every second. “Of course, this one may not be Fairchild, since there are three or four other suspects in other places, but from the horrible time we and the Vegians both are having, trying to locate this bird, I’m coming to think he is.”
The dance went on until, some hours later, there was an unusual tumult and confusion at the door.