They entered the room in which they slept. "That could be prevented by simply leaving that door open when the elevator was up and going into action at that time," contributed Leo as they pulled off their boots. "Then they couldn't get at either the elevator or its door."
"How about the other men?" asked Little. "It will be difficult to tell them all about the geletane, and how to avoid its effects. What will—"
"Stop worrying about it," interrupted Arthur. He had lain down with the pack for a pillow, moved it to a more comfortable spot, noticed the ease with which it moved and, with a horrible suspicion in his mind, looked into the kit box inside. "The communicator is gone."
Possibly the guards in the corridor and on the roof were laughing, if their unhuman cerebral processes had ever evolved an emotion akin to humor. Certainly, they were pleased with themselves.
"You loon," growled Leo. "Why did you have to celebrate finishing the thing by tearing outside to tell us? It would have been simpler just to step outside our door and hand it to a guard."
The night had not passed too peacefully, in spite of Little's advice to save recriminations until morning. Relations between the twins were slightly strained. The sunlight coming through the window revealed only too clearly on Leo's face that expression of smug, "I wouldn't do such a thing" superiority that tends to drive repentant sinners to homicide.
"The meeting will please come to order," interrupted the doctor. "Leo, lay off Arthur. If it will make you any happier, Art, I'll tell you that if neither of you boys had spilled the beans in a day or two, I should have done so myself—carefully, of course. It was better for it to happen naturally. Now sit around, and wear a disgusted expression for the benefit of the guards if you like, and listen. This will take some time.
"In the first place, I suppose you've realized by now that we were captured simply for observation purposes; the pentapods hoped to learn about our weapons and science from our efforts to escape. They have, we must admit, been rather successful. Our activities have probably been evident to them from the first, but they waited until the communicator was completed before taking it, naturally. That habit of theirs struck me when the Vegans first described the way in which their plans were never interfered with until nearly mature.
"There was also the question of the surprising ease with which they were able to divine our feeling and intentions. It took me longer to discover the reason for that; but information supplied by the Vegans again provided the key.
"Their language is not verbal. None of us has yet heard them utter a vocal sound. We couldn't understand how they communicated, but to the Vegans it was so evident as to be unworthy of comment—their captor's language was of the same type as their own, visual rather than audible, a sign language in which the thousands of mobile spines with which their bodies are covered replaced the two antennae of a Vegan. It was so complex that the Vegans couldn't begin to learn it, but the method was obvious to them.