But O'Dea's eyes lighted when he saw the huge portrait over the control board.
"Mercedes!" he shouted.
"Oh how happy I am to see you pleased!" exclaimed Morguma. "We found this divine female human being's picture and enlarged it as you see. She is an entrancing thing!"
"You talk the truth," O'Dea agreed. "But that won't change the fact that I don't like you. What happens now?"
Morguma looked mildly apologetic. "Now we must perform labor! The great task for which this ship has been fitted!"
The Centaur seated himself at the rear of the control room, produced an instrument that looked like a whip. It looked like a whip because it was one. He flicked it experimentally.
"Oh how devastated I would be," he told them, "if I should be forced to use this! You will take off and fly to our asteroid belt, following the intelligent directions I shall give you. We will find a substantial piece of some agreeable material and bring it back to Avignon."
The two men looked at each other and then at the whip. The alien snapped it lightly a few times as if nervous. They turned to the control board.
A few hours later they were in Alpha Centauri's asteroid belt, dodging debris. For a while they were nervous. It was here, in this field of small flying particles that was worse even than their Solar System's, that a baseball-sized rock had eluded their detectors and knifed through their vessel, passing through all three fuel chambers in its line of flight and taking a long stream of rocket fuel for its wake.