Hardly had they reached their goal than a customer appeared. He came from the town’s outskirts, zooming along at fast pace on a contraption vaguely resembling a motorcycle. It ran on a pair of big rubber balls and was pulled by a caged fan. Gleed spread his men across the road.
The oncomer’s machine suddenly gave forth a harsh, penetrating sound that vaguely reminded them of Bidworthy in the presence of dirty boots.
“Stay put,” warned Gleed. “I’ll skin the guy who gives way and leaves a gap.”
Again the shrill metallic warning. Nobody moved. The machine slowed, came up to them at a crawl and stopped. Its fan continued to spin at low rate, the blades almost visible and giving out a steady hiss.
“What’s the idea?” demanded the rider. He was lean-featured, in his middle thirties, wore a gold ring in his nose and had a pigtail four feet long.
Blinking incredulously at this get-up, Gleed managed to jerk an indicative thumb toward the iron mountain and say, “Earth ship.”
“Well, what d’you expect me to do about it?”
“Co-operate,” said Gleed, still bemused by the pigtail. He had never seen one before. It was in no way effeminate, he decided. Rather did it lend a touch of ferocity like that worn—according to the picture books—by certain North American aborigines of umpteen centuries ago.
“Co-operation,” mused the rider. “Now there is a beautiful word. You know what it means, of course?”
“I ain’t a dope.”
“The precise degree of your idiocy is not under discussion at the moment,” the rider pointed out. His nose-ring waggled a bit as he spoke. “We are talking about co-operation. I take it you do quite a lot of it yourself?”
“You bet I do,” Gleed assured. “And so does everyone else who knows what’s good for him.”
“Let’s keep to the subject, shall we? Let’s not sidetrack and go rambling all over the map.” He revved up his fan a little then let it slow down again. “You are given orders and you obey them?”
“Of course. I’d have a rough time if—”
“That is what you call co-operation?” put in the other. He shrugged his shoulders, indulged a resigned sigh. “Oh, well, it’s nice to check the facts of history. The books could be wrong.” His fan flashed into a circle of light and the machine surged forward. “Pardon me.”
The front rubber ball barged forcefully between two men, knocking them sidewise without injury. With a high whine, the machine shot down the road, its fan-blast making the rider’s plaited hairdo point horizontally backward.
“You goofy ghimps!” raged Gleed as his fallen pair got up and dusted themselves. “I ordered you to stand fast. What d’you mean, letting him run out on us like that?”
“Didn’t have much choice about it, sarge,” answered one, giving him a surly look.
“I want none of your back-chat. You could have busted a balloon if you’d had your weapons ready. That would have stopped him.”
“You didn’t tell us to have guns ready.”
“Where was your own, anyway?” added a voice.
Gleed whirled round on the others and bawled, “Who said that?” His irate eyes raked a long row of blank, impassive faces. It was impossible to detect the culprit. “I’ll shake you up with the next quota of fatigues,” he promised. “I’ll see to it—”
“The sergeant major’s coming,” one of them warned.
Bidworthy was four hundred yards away and making martial progress toward them. Arriving in due time, he cast a cold, contemptuous glance over the patrol.
“What happened?”
Giving a brief account of the incident, deed finished aggrievedly, “He looked like a Chickasaw with an oil well.”
“What’s a Chickasaw?” Bidworthy demanded.
“I read about them somewhere once when I was a kid,” explained Gleed, happy to bestow a modicum of learning. “They had long haircuts, wore blankets and rode around in gold-plated automobiles.”
“Sounds crazy to me,” said Bidworthy. “I gave up all that magic-carpet stuff when I was seven. I was deep in ballistics before I was twelve and military logistics at fourteen.” He sniffed loudly, gave the other a jaundiced eye. “Some guys suffer from arrested development.”
“They actually existed,” Gleed maintained. “They—”
“So did fairies,” snapped Bidworthy. “My mother said so. My mother was a good woman. She didn’t tell me a lot of tomfool lies—often.” He spat on the road. “Be your age!” Then he scowled at the patrol. “All right, get out your guns, assuming that you’ve got them and know where they are and which hand to hold them in. Take orders from me. I’ll deal personally with the next one along.”
He sat on a large stone by the roadside and planted an expectant gaze on the town, Gleed posed near him, slightly pained. The patrol remained strung across the road, guns held ready. Half an hour crawled by without anything happening.
One of the men said, “Can we have a smoke, sergeant major?”
“No.”
They fell into lugubrious silence, watching the town, licking their lips and thinking. They had plenty to think about. A town—any town of human occupation—had desirable features not found elsewhere in the cosmos. Lights, company, freedom, laughter, all the makings of life. And one can go hungry too long.
Eventually a large coach came from the outskirts, hit the high road, came bowling toward them. A long, shiny, streamlined job, it rolled on twenty balls in two rows of ten, gave forth a whine similar to but louder than that of its predecessor, but had no visible fans. It was loaded with people.
At a point two hundred yards from the road block a loud-speaker under the vehicle’s bonnet blared an urgent, “Make way! Make way!”
“This is it,” commented Bidworthy, with much satisfaction. “We’ve got a dollop of them. One of them is going to chat or I leave the service.” He got off his rock, stood in readiness.
“Make way! Make way!”
“Bust his bags if he tries to bull his way through,” Bidworthy ordered the men.
