Sugar Plum Part 4

"Betty! You--you sound different, somehow."

"Oh, I am! So is Charles. We're both uninhibited now."

There was one cry of horror from Cousin Aurelia and then silence.

Betty turned to the captain. He looked downcast, and Herman did, too.

"We'll just have to try something else, something clever," she told the captain. "Cousin Aurelia seems dead set against you. It's because of your being a pirate, I guess."

Charles and Betty spent the next couple of days avoiding any mention of the captain's former profession and helping him think up new ways to uninhibit Cousin Aurelia. He tried singing again, this time with an augmented chorus of Herman's relations. When that also failed, he cooked her a fine mushroom omelette. Then he caught her a young animal with lavender ears to keep as a pet and he spent a whole evening reading _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ aloud at her window.

She responded with sniffs and with occasional sc.r.a.ping noises of furniture being moved to reinforce her defenses. Finally, to Betty's distress, she pushed out a note announcing that henceforth she would have nothing to do with the b.u.t.tons--and that no one could tell her that poems like those were _Victorian_.

Before the third day was half over, the Captain was moping around, Charles was peevish, and Betty had started to worry and fret.

So, in the late afternoon, they went on a picnic. Followed by Herman, and by the four-armed dining room robot carrying two wicker hampers, they walked around the lake to a broad gra.s.sy knoll where the strange square trees grew in a circle, and prisms of quartz leaned from the ground like Druids turned into stone. While they ate, the night advanced softly, its moons weaving crystalline shadows of celadon, rose, and old ivory.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Betty waited until the last hint of daylight had vanished. Then, "It's lovely," she whispered. "Poor Cousin Aurelia, it'd all be so simple if she'd only come out, but--oh, I'm afraid that it's hopeless!"

"Hopeless?" Charles snorted. "It's easy. We'll break into her room, me and Burgee, and hold her while you pour some of Sugar Plum's water down her gullet. She'll be fixed up before she finds out what hit her."

"We mustn't do that," the captain said stiffly. "We can't employ violence."

"Look who's talking!" Charles was amused. "An old pirate like you.

Robbing s.h.i.+ps, making pa.s.sengers walk the plank into s.p.a.ce, shooting people with ray guns, and--"

"Shh!" Betty warned. "Charles, that isn't polite. You know he's sensitive about--"

The captain seemed to be strangling. "And I thought it was _sn.o.bbery_!"

Then he exploded with laughter. He lay back on the gra.s.s and he howled.

The b.u.t.tons stared in amazement, and some creatures came out of the trees to see what the uproar was all about.

The captain sat up. "What century is this?" he asked.

"The Twenty-second, of course," answered Betty. "But--but why?"

"I just wondered. I'll tell you later." He controlled himself with an effort. "But we really mustn't use force on Aurelia, even in such a good cause. It might turn her into the wrong kind of person."

"Turn her?" Betty repeated sadly. "I'm afraid that she already is. I don't think she'll ever come out. I'm afraid she'll do something desperate."

"I'm worried, too," the captain admitted, "but I'm certain she is the right kind. The wrong kind of people can't live here. Sugar Plum doesn't like them."

Betty and Charles both looked puzzled.

"I'll try to explain. It happens within a few hours, even if they aren't uninhibited. If they are, then it's practically instantaneous. It's a--"

He broke off and looked up at the sky with a frown. There was an angry red glow right above them, a far-distant roar.

They leaped to their feet. The glow brightened swiftly. It seemed to be headed straight for them. The sound filled the air.

"We have visitors!" shouted the captain.

"Wh-who?" stammered Betty. "The police?"

"They don't use braking jets any more. It's an obsolete freighter."

"Oh!" Betty put her hands to her face in terror. "It's the _Beautiful Joe_. That man Possett--he's coming back after Cousin Aurelia!"

The red glow pa.s.sed to the northward. They saw the s.h.i.+p's shape for a moment, spurting flame, slowing. Then it dropped out of sight. The ground shuddered briefly. There was quiet.

The captain grabbed Betty's arm. "They're down in the clearing. Quick!

When he dropped you, did Possett take anything with him?"

"Just a fresh supply of water."

"My G.o.d!" blurted Charles. "That means they're--"

"_Uninhibited!_" yelled the captain. "And they're the wrong kind of people. Betty! Charles! Can you run? Hey, Steward, give them a hand!"

"Aye, aye, sir," snapped the robot, hoisting the hampers and reaching an elbow to each of the b.u.t.tons.

"Then let's go. I hope we can make it in time to save them!"

"_Them?_" gulped Charles, as the robot started to run.

But the captain already was too far ahead to have heard him.

Pulled by the untiring robot, Charles and Betty made very good time, but they couldn't catch up with the captain. They had to make several stops to get their wind back, and they were still half a mile from the house when they heard her.

"Help! Murder! Police! Save me!" screamed Cousin Aurelia.

"He--he's got her!" puffed Charles, as the shrieks died away. "Hurry!"

When they got to the house, it was empty. Not even Herman was there. In the living room and the hall, there were signs of a t.i.tanic struggle.

The door of Cousin Aurelia's room hung wide open.

"Look!" Charles gave it a great goldfish stare. "She unlocked it herself!"

"He probably told her--he was rescuing her--from the pirate," panted Betty.

"We--we'll have to go on--" Charles felt his legs start to collapse--"to the clearing."