"My apologies, Captain. I hope you'll understand that in times of war, such incidents as this are unavoidable. My government will make a formal apology to yours."
Then he, and his men, and his ship, and Thaxton—the dopey little squirt—were gone. And we were free to continue our journey. With all mental strain forever relieved. Because now we had the carte blanche of the Venusian government....
Afterward, it was a crestfallen skipper who held out his hand to Lancelot Biggs in open-hearted apology.
"I'm sorry, Biggs," he said frankly. "I was completely wrong. I might have known that the man who could win my daughter wouldn't be the kind to fold up in a tight spot. But I—I—"
He choked up. Biggs said,
"That's all right, Skipper. I had to do it that way. It's the only way I could get him off guard."
Which was my cue. I said,
"Yeah, come clean, pal. Would you mind giving it the once-over-lightly for my benefit? Maybe I'm slow on the draw, but it's all still a deep, dark mystery to me. You hypnotized Thaxton, made him tell his superior we were as clean as a whale's ears. But how? And when did you figure out—"
"It was simple," explained Biggs, "once I got the clue. Back in the twentieth century, when the science of extra-sensory perception was in its infancy, they discovered among other things that the best natural 'espers' are hyperthyroids.
"Thaxton was a hyper-thyroid. The bulging brow, the pop-eyes, the nervousness—all these indicated that. And I remembered, too, the curious fact discovered by an early experimenter in telepathy that the 'esper', while working at his trade, is wide open to hypnosis.