"Crazy?" Bayley questioned. "No, Harwich, you can't say that, when you're all tangled up and fuddled yourself! What I said about wishing is true. Telepathic control of machines, it must be. This place is so damned wonderful that it would turn Aladdin of the Wonderful Lamp green with envy! And it would drive the Genie of the Lamp down into his shoes in shame!"
Harwich's doubts, if they had been doubts, and not just confusions, began to dim a trifle. After all, one of the big objectives of the science of Earthmen, was to make life easier; to transfer as much of the burden of work as possible to machines. Why couldn't the same objective have been conceived here on the Forbidden Moon? Not only conceived, but accomplished? Io was an old world; life had begun here sooner than on Earth, and science, too! So there had been more time for advancement.
"All right, Bayley," Harwich growled grudgingly. "Tell us what you've discovered."
"Yes, for Pete sake, tell us!" Paul Arnold joined in.
It was odd, the way they were asking the fat printer for information, now, when they should be hating him for the wrongs he had done them. But, perhaps, the human mind can hold only so much at one time. For the moment there was room only for dazed awe and questioning in their thoughts, and hatred was temporarily pushed into the background. The equal of Aladdin's miracles did not seem so far from possibility, here!
"Okay!" George Bayley rumbled. "Glad to spill the beans; what I know of them. I arrived here in my space ship about fourteen hours ago, when it was still dark. The Tower building here looked by far the most important, so I came straight to it. There were machines flying about, but they paid no attention to me at all, so I wasn't worried much about what they might do to me.
"Leaving my ship on the other side of the Tower, I got into this room through a tunnel. I was wearing a space armor, of course. I passed through a kind of airlock. This chamber was just like you see it now, except that lights were burning, because it was night."
"And then?" Paul Arnold questioned eagerly.
"Exploring, I climbed into this little metal coop, here at the foot of the pyramid," Bayley went on. "By then I was pretty flabbergasted with all I'd seen. I began to think I needed a drink of something strong. Yep, it must have been telepathy! Because presto—one of those flat flying machines with the tentacles, whizzed up to me from a tunnel exit. It was carrying a kind of crystal carafe.
"Boy, I didn't know what to think! I didn't know whether I ought to taste the stuff in that carafe, at first. But finally I did. It was damned good. Not alcoholic, but something a whole lot better."