when a copter came again a week later, it was not the same flier or the same crew. the bag of food and water was dropped from a different height. the copter hovered until it saw both jorgenson and ganti. then it went away.
they set to work again on seaweed hauled from the sea, and leaves smoothed over each other on suitable surfaces of rock. stems up to four and five inches in diameter to be straightened out and almost dried to seem rotor-shafts, and lesser stems to make a framework. the mockup was tied together with string. they finished it the night before the copter was due again, and they practiced with their bits of cloth and the stones until the light ended. they practiced again at day-break, but when the helicopter came across the sea they were nowhere visible.
but there was an aircraft aground upon the island. from the air it looked remarkably convincing.
the prisoners listened eagerly from the hollowed-out cave. the mockup on the ground was in a miniature valley between sections of taller stone. it could be seen from above, but not well from the side. from one end it could not be seen at all, but from the other it was a remarkable job. it would deceive any eyes not very close indeed.
the flying helicopter hovered and hovered, sweeping back and forth. its crew-members saw no movement anywhere, which was not possible. if there was an aircraft aground, there must be thrid who had flown it here. they were not to be seen. the prisoners were not to be seen. the situation was impossible.
jorgenson and ganti waited.
the flying jailers could not report what they saw. a previous crew had done that, and when they were proved mistaken or worse, they donned chains to do hard labor so long as they lived. but the thrid in the copter over the island dared not not-report. somebody else might sight it, and they'd be condemned for not reporting. they couldn't report it and they couldn't not-report it!
jorgenson grinned when the throbbing of the rotors became louder and louder as the steam-helicopter descended. he and ganti made ready.
the flying vehicle landed. they heard it. its crew got out, fearful but alert and with weapons handy. one stayed close by the ship, his ears shriveled with terror. the other two, weapons very much to the fore, moved cautiously to examine the aircraft which could not possibly be here.
jorgenson and ganti, together, scrambled from the hollowed-out cave.
ganti swung his strip of cloth. it had a strong cord attached to each end, and he held the cords so the cloth formed a pocket in which a stone lay. the whole whirled furiously. ganti released one cord. the stone flew. it struck the thrid on guard by the machine squarely in the middle of his forehead. jorgenson's stone arrived the fraction of a second later, before the thrid started to fall. they moved out, jorgenson grinning in a most un-businessman-like manner. they heard the startled exclamation of the other two newcomers as they realized that they saw only a mockup of a landed flier, a thing which crumbled as they touched it.
jorgenson and ganti swung their slings together. the jailer-thrid turned just in time to see what was happening to them. it was final.
and the copter took off again with ganti and jorgenson clothed and with an adequate supply of stones in improvised pockets in their garments.
it was perfectly simple from that time on. they walked into a village of the thrid, on the mainland. it was the village where ganti had lived; whose governor had spoken and said and observed that ganti's wife wished to enter his household and that ganti wished her to. ganti marched truculently down its wider street. astonished eyes turned upon him. ganti said arrogantly:
"i am the new governor. call others to see."
the villagers could not question the statement of an official. not even the statement that he was an official. so ganti—with jorgenson close behind—swaggered into the local governor's palace. it wasn't impressive, but merely a leafy, thatched, sprawling complex of small buildings. ganti led the way into the inmost portion of the palace and found a fat, sleeping thrid with four villager-thrid fanning him with huge fans. ganti shouted, and the fat thrid sat up, starkly bewildered.
"i speak and say and observe," said ganti coldly, "that i am the new governor and that you are about to die, with no one touching you."
the fat thrid gaped at him. it was incredible. in fact, to a thrid who had never heard of a missile weapon—it was impossible. ganti swung his strip of cloth by the two cords attached to it. it whirled too swiftly to be seen clearly. a stone flew terribly straight. there was an impact.
the local governor who had spoken and said and observed that ganti's wife wanted to enter his household was quite dead.
"i," said ganti to his former fellow-villagers, "i am the governor. if any deny it, they will die with no one touching them."
and that was that.
ganti grimaced at jorgenson:
"i'll speak and say and observe something useful for you presently, jorgenson. right now i'm going to march on foot and talk to the provincial governor. i'll take a train of attendants, so he'll receive me. then i'll tell him that he's about to die with nobody touching him. he's earned it!"
unquestionably, ganti was right.
any thrid official, to whom it was impossible to be mistaken, would develop eccentric notions.
most humans couldn't stand by and watch. they got off thriddar as soon as possible. at the moment, jorgenson couldn't leave the planet, but he didn't want to see what ganti could and would and by human standards probably ought to do. he camped in the steam-copter, in hiding, until ganti sent him a message.
then he started up the copter and flew back to the trading post. it was empty. gutted. looted. but there was a high official waiting for him in the courtyard. he held a scroll in his hand. it glinted golden. when jorgenson regarded him grimly, the high official made a sound equivalent to clearing his throat, and the witness-hatted thrid around him became silent.
"on this day," intoned the high official, "on this day did ganti, the never-mistaken, as have been his predecessors through the ages;—on this day did the never-mistaken ganti speak and say and observe a truth in the presence of the governors and the rulers of the universe."
jorgenson listened grimly. the new grand panjandrum had made him—jorgenson—a provincial governor.
ganti was grateful. the contents of the trading post would be returned. from this time on the rim stars trading corporation would prosper as never before.
but jorgenson wasn't a thrid. he saw things as a businessman does, but also and contradictorily he saw them as right and just or wrong and intolerable. as a businessman, he saw that everything had worked out admirably. as a believer in right and wrong, it seemed to him that nothing in particular had happened.
he'd have done better, he considered, to do what most humans did after understanding what went on on thriddar, and what seemingly always must go on on thriddar. because the thrid had noticed that they were the most intelligent race in the universe, and therefore must have the most perfect possible government whose officials must inevitably be incapable of making a mistake....
when the rim stars trading ship came to ground, a month later, jorgenson went on board and stayed there. he remained on board when the ship left. thriddar was no place for him.
