Mr. Untz thought it over, only long enough to keep himself within the time limits of a Man of Decision. Then he said, “Okay, so we’ll go now.”
They passed Jimsy LaRoche on the way out. He was drinking pineapple juice and sitting with his tutor, studying his lines. He smirked as Mr. Untz passed. Mr. Untz scowled back but didn’t say anything. In Jovian silence he led the way to his car.
It turned out to be a longer ride than they had expected. Dr. Mildume lived in Twenty-nine Palms and, as Mr. Untz explained it, this was too short for an airplane and too long for an automobile. 54 Mr. Untz was not in his best humor when they stopped before Dr. Mildume’s stucco and tile-roof house.
Mildume directed them immediately to a walled-in patio in the rear of the place. A shed-roof covered one side of the patio and under it were racks of equipment. Harold recognized banks of relays, power amplifiers, oscillographs and some other familiar devices. There were also some strange ones.
Mildume waved his long fingers at all of it. “My teleportation set-up is entirely too bulky so far for practical use, as you can see.”
“Nph,” said Mr. Untz, eyeing it. During the drive Dr. Mildume and Harold had explained more to him about teleportation and the monsters and he was more doubtful than ever about the whole thing. “So let’s see the monsters,” he said now. “Time is fleeing.”
Mildume went in his hopping step across the patio to a huge tarpaulin that covered something square and bulky. He worried the tarpaulin away. Two steel cages stood there.
“Sacred carp!” said Mr. Untz.
Two somethings were in the steel cages.
They were both iridescent greenish-gray in color, they had globular bodies, no discernible heads and eyes on stalks growing from their bodies. Three eyes apiece. If they were eyes—anyway, they looked like eyes. Sweeping fibrillae came down to the ground and seemed to serve as feet. Great saw-toothed red gashes in the middle of each body might have been mouths.