Borrow nodded silently.
“And now,” Duke Harald added, “if this drug works the way it’s said to—just flash that lamp on my left arm, here—you can look forward to the first real counterstroke against the aliens in fifty years. There, that should be enough, I think. Now, take this hypo and… you know how to locate a vein?”
“Yes, your grace. These instruments are nearly self-locating.”
Despite himself—despite the fact that the ultra-fine and ultra-fast jet spray went through the skin without an actual sensation—Duke Harald felt his muscles tighten. He grew a little dizzy. Just lack of sleep and overmuch imagination, he decided; and made himself relax and smile. Taking the empty hypospray, he wrapped it loosely in a handkerchief, placed the Untidy bundle on the floor, and crushed it underfoot with grinding heels. Bending and picking up the wadded mass of cloth and broken glass and twisted metal, he tossed it in the wall incinerator chute.
“And now,” Duke Harald said, and matched the words with action, “I’ll just stretch out on this bed and wait. Thirty minutes, more or less; then things are supposed to happen.”
The half hour dragged along. Borrow, apparently on orders from Count Godfrey, waited in an easy-chair, quiet and scarcely moving. Duke Harald felt vaguely glad of his presence.
At last the necessary time had passed. Confidently, Duke Harald reached out with his mind and groped for contact with the secretary. Nothing! Not a whisper yet; only blank mental silence.
He let five minutes more go by and tried again, this time more strongly. Still nothing.
Was there, he wondered, something he had failed to learn? Some trick of the mind, some knack like—he let his thoughts drift back to boyhood in search of an apt comparison—those hours he had spent without success, trying to—
“Can you wiggle your ears, Borrow?” he asked suddenly, completing the thought aloud. Then he noticed Borrow looking at him strangely, and the apprehensive, puzzled glance touched off a more erratic impulse. Shouting with laughter—while a corner of his mind looked on in helpless wonder—he tore a pillow from beneath his head, poised it carefully; and let it fly!