I plunge. "I want to swap your anti-gravity secret for a string of the most magnificent emeralds you ever dreamed of, Akroida. Why, they'd make that batch you're wearing look like little glass beads! You'll have to see them to—"

She didn't let me finish. A sort of high-pitched cackle of amazement issued from her bony jaws; but then she floored me by changing the subject completely, I thought. That was just my little error. A man can sure miss the boat when dealing with these foreign races. She began to ask me questions about the Earth, and was she interested! She even forgot about her hangover. And she completely ignored the emeralds. You'd have thought I hadn't even mentioned the things.

This went on for about an hour, and then all of a sudden she leaned back on her paris-green cushions, inhaled a pinch of arsenic, and began to chuckle a sort of brassy chuckle that sent shivers down my back. The chuckles got bigger and bigger until she busted out into a full-size horse laugh that would have jangled the chandelier if there'd been one to jangle.

Her head bounced back and forth on her skinny neck, and the Halcyon Diamond bounced around on her chest like a loose headlight. All her jewels began to bounce and jangle. Droves of servants swarmed around to peek, while Attaboy just floated there with his mouth wide open. I nudged him. "What's so funny?" I asked, but he only shook his head dumfounded.

That awful laughing was sure giving me the creeping jeevies, and it wasn't until she finally tapered off in a series of snorts and giggles that I began to breathe again. I braced myself for what might come next. But talk about unpredictable females! Human or scorpion, they're all the same. She floored me again.

"It's a deal, Casey Ritter!" She tapped out the words with relish. "Fair and open, straight across the board. Those emeralds for our anti-gravity plans and formulae."

I was stunned. A statement like that after that laugh! And she hadn't even seen the emeralds. You couldn't tell old horse trader Ritter that there wasn't something phony. But she just snickered at my expression and waved to the servants who were still hovering around. It took a dozen of them to hoist her up.

With me following on Attaboy, we flew down a serpentine hallway for half a mile until we came to a room even bigger than her audience chamber, only this one was filled with machinery suspended in the air just like the furniture was up above. It was big 

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