“ ’Scuse me, ma’am, I’m looking for the biggest man in town.”
She half-turned, gave him no more than a casual glance, pointed her dipping-shears southward. “That’d be Jeff Baines. First on the right, second on the left. It’s a small delicatessen.”
“Thank you.”
He moved on, hearing the snip-snip resume behind him. First on the right. He curved around a long, low, rubber-balled truck parked by the corner. Second on the left. Three children pointed at him and yelled shrill warnings that his back wheel was going round. He found the delicatessen, propped a pedal on the curb, gave his machine a reassuring pat before he went inside and had a look at Jeff.
There was plenty to see. Jeff had four chins, a twenty-two-inch neck, and a paunch that stuck out half a yard. An ordinary mortal could have got into either leg of his pants without taking off a diving suit. He weighed at least three hundred and undoubtedly was the biggest man in town.
“Wanting something?” inquired Jeff, lugging it up from far down.
“Not exactly.” Tenth Engineer Harrison eyed the succulent food display, decided that anything unsold by nightfall was not given to the cats. “I’m looking for a certain person.”
“Are you now? Usually I avoid that sort—but every man to his taste.” He plucked at a fat lip while he mused a moment, then suggested, “Try Sid Wilcock over on Dane Avenue. He’s the most certain man I know.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” said Harrison. “I meant I was searching for somebody particular.”
“Then why the dub didn’t you say so?” Jeff Baines worked over the new problem, finally offered, “Tod Green ought to fit that bill. You’ll find him in the shoeshop end of this road. He’s particular enough for anyone. He’s downright finicky.”
“You misunderstand me,” Harrison explained. “I’m hunting a bigwig so’s I can invite him to a feed.”
Resting himself on a high stool which he overlapped by a foot all round, Jeff Baines eyed him peculiarly and said, “There’s something lopsided about this. In the first place, you’re going to use up a considerable slice of your life finding a guy who wears a wig, especially if you insist on a big one. And where’s the point of dumping an ob on him just because he uses a bean-blanket?”
“Huh?”
“It’s plain common sense to plant an ob where it will cancel an old one out, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” Harrison let his mouth hang open while his mind moiled around the strange problem of how to plant an ob.
“So you don’t know?” Jeff Baines massaged a plump chop and sighed. He pointed at the other’s middle. “Is that a uniform you’re wearing?”
“Yes.”
“A genuine, pukka, dyed-in-the-wool uniform?”
“Of course.”
“Ah!” said Jeff. “That’s where you’ve fooled me—coming in by yourself, on your ownsome. If there had been a gang of you dressed identically the same, I’d have known at once it was a uniform. That’s what uniform means—all alike. Doesn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” agreed Harrison, who had never given it a thought. “So you’re off that ship. I ought to have guessed it in the first place. I must be slow on the uptake today. But I didn’t expect to see one, just one, messing around on a pedal contraption. It goes to show, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Harrison, glancing around to make sure that no confederate had swiped his bicycle while he was detained in conversation. The machine was still there. “It goes to show.”
“All right, let’s have it—what have you come here for?”
“I’ve been trying to tell you all along. I’ve been sent to—”
“Been sent?” Jeff’s eyes widened a little. “Mean to say you actually let yourself be sent?”
Harrison gaped at him. “Of course. Why not?”
“Oh, I get it now,” said Jeff Baines, his puzzled features suddenly clearing. “You confuse me with the queer way you talk. You mean you planted an ob on someone?”
Desperately, Harrison said, “What’s an ob?”
“He doesn’t know,” commented Jeff Baines, looking prayerfully at the ceiling. “He doesn’t even know that!” He gave out a resigned sigh. “You hungry by any chance?”
“Going on that way.”
“O.K. I could tell you what an ob is, but I’ll do something better—I’ll show you.” Heaving himself off the stool, he waddled to a door at back. “Don’t know why I should bother to try to educate a uniform. It’s just that I’m bored. C’mon, follow me.”
Obediently, Harrison went behind the counter, paused to give his bicycle a reassuring nod, trailed the other through a passage and into a yard.
Jeff Baines pointed to a stack of cases. “Canned goods.” He indicated an adjacent store. “Bust ’em open and pile the stuff in there. Stack the empties outside. Please yourself whether you do it or not. That’s freedom, isn’t it?” He lumbered back into the shop.
Left by himself, Harrison scratched his ears and thought it over. Somewhere, he felt, there was an obscure sort of gag. A candidate named Harrison was being tempted to qualify for his sucker certificate. But if the play was beneficial to its organizer it might be worth learning because the trick could then be passed on. One must speculate in order to accumulate.
So he dealt with the cases as required. It took him twenty minutes of brisk work, after which he returned to the shop.
“Now,” explained Baines, “you’ve done something for me. That means you’ve planted an ob on me. I don’t thank you for what you’ve done. There’s no need to. Ail I have to do is get rid of the ob.”
“Ob?”
“Obligation. Why use a long word when a short one is good enough? An obligation is an ob. I shift it this way: Seth Warburton, next door but one, has got half a dozen of my obs saddled on him. So I get rid of mine to you and relieve him of one of his to me by sending you around for a meal.” He scribbled briefly on a slip of paper. “Give him this.”
Harrison stared at it. In casual scrawl, it read, “Feed this bum. Jeff Baines.”
Slightly dazed, he wandered out, stood by the bicycle and again eyed the paper. Bum, it said. He could think of several on the ship who would have exploded with wrath over that. His attention drifted to the second shop farther along. It had a window crammed with comestibles and two big words on the sign-strip above: Seth’s Gulper.
