"A little."
"Then lay it on my chest, and give me a quick death."
"Get it," Pink said to Daley. The lieutenant started a protest. Pink said, "My Lord, can't we afford to be merciful now? After all that slaughter?" And Daley went to find the lead.
Circe said, "Why do you want to go to Earth so badly? What's there that you want? You're such an independent form of life...."
"Atmosphere," said the djinni.
"But you don't breathe!"
"We do, however, talk; and we cannot hear each other in a vacuum. We wanted to find Earth again and know the pleasure of communication. On Oasis we had to talk with our hands." It groaned, grotesquely human in its agony. "Can you imagine living for centuries without the joy of conversation?" it asked pitifully.
Circe shook her head. "I don't much blame you," she said in a small voice.
Daley came back. He handed a small rough bar of lead to Pink. The Captain's mind seethed with questions he longed to ask; but the reaction of the battle was settling in with vengeance, and he could not see this great paralyzed brute live on because of his own more or less idle curiosity. He bent forward from the chair. "Sorry," he said, and dropped the bar onto its chest.
"Wait!" said Jerry. "How did you know how to spell _phony_?"
The djinni made a small hissing noise that had something in it of contentment. Its eyes turned jetty, and they knew it was dead.
"It died happy," said Daley to the slim O. O. "It knew it was leaving us a problem that we'd never solve. What a--what a malicious character it was!"
"Poor devil," said Circe. "No conversation for five hundred years!"
CHAPTER XXV
Four days later Pinkham and Circe stood quietly before a scanner screen, Pink leaning on a cane, and watched the great lead vat and then the multitude of bottles go tumbling into space. "We are giving them a chance of survival," mused Circe. "There's about one chance in a billion that some day they'll be found and released again."
"I wonder," said Pink, "if they did predate man in evolution? Or if they were originally native to another planet that expelled 'em? There were always legends of giants and ogres and djinn and demons on earth, myths that started to die out about the time this late friend of ours left the globe for good. Maybe the djinni developed side by side with man, but was limited because of his flaws. There are a million life-forms in the universe so alien to man as to be unexplainable, and a lot of them are right home on Terra."
Circe shook her dark head. "Is the whole thing real, Pink? Or is it a fantasy we've uncovered out here in the void?"
"Every damn thing about them is scientifically possible. But I know how you feel--it seems like a fairy story. If so many good guys weren't dead back there, I'd disbelieve it myself." He scowled a moment, then looked at her and brightened. "Honey," he said, "remind me that I have to send a radio message to Earth as soon as we're close enough."
"Radio message? What?"
"A sort of temperance warning, that's all." He grinned. "It goes like this: _If you find any bottles, don't open them!_"
THE END