"But in the meantime, you go hungry, sort of?"
Nod. Then, the social amenities taken care of, Clatclit pointed to me, to the ground, and looked questioningly.
"The Ancients have decided I'm to bump off Baxter," I said. "Then they'll release Snow and the boys. Not before."
Clatclit stared at me a moment, placed a hand on my shoulder, and shook his head, like a sympathetic friend. Then he took his claws and made a tugging, struggling motion with them, as though trying to tear something which wouldn't give. He followed it up with an incongruously comic coin-flipping motion to the back of his hand. It was his devious way of expressing the slang phrase, "Tough luck."
"You said it," I muttered. "Come on, though. The less time I leave Snow with the blob of black sparklers, the better. I've got to get to the spaceport."
Clatclit nodded and began his lumbering waddle off into the labyrinth. The Ancients probably expected me to book passage on the next Earth flight, to assassinate Baxter. They didn't know he was sitting right in their laps, in the Security sector of the field. It was just as well. I didn't relish the possibility of my elimination if they knew he was right where a sugarfoot could blast him as well as anybody.
As I trailed Clatclit up the wearisome slope that was taking us to the surface, I did some heavy thinking. The Ancients, before Earthmen first landed on Mars, probably had wandered about the planet freely, on the surface, living in their dwellings of parabolite, using their artifacts of the same impervious mineral. Then Earth, that paradoxically peace-loving and war-making planet, lands colonists. The Ancients, just from plain discretion, hide themselves and observe these unwelcome newcomers. Once it becomes clear to them that there is a potential menace from Baxter—who is no young chicken, having been in power before the first landing—they stay hidden, and start scheming to get rid of this guy who can jolt them out of their liaison.
I pondered over that bit. The Ancient had said that Baxter intended doing it by detonating a portion of their contact-material. Hell, they must mean parabolite! What other substance in the solar system was so alien to—
And with that thought, I suddenly knew the secret of that apparently impervious mineral's strength. No wonder it could not be destroyed! It was only in existence in our skimpy three dimensions in a fractional way. One-fourth of it was always present in the Ancients' world, since it couldn't fit into our universe in its entirety. And that meant not only one-fourth of its apparent mass, but one-fourth of even its atomic structure!
Even the collapsers, working on subatomic particles, were at a disadvantage. You can't nudge an electron out of orbit if it isn't actually fixed in that orbit. Three-quarters of those four-dimensional electrons were always cushioned by that elusive final segment that lay outside our universe. So trying to destroy parabolite by force was in the same class as trying to shatter a rubber ball with a hammer; a rubber ball which was hanging from an elastic cord, in fact! It just gave into the other dimension and rebounded frisky as ever.