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get going.'
Stevens dropped Dr Augustus Grimes at the doctor's home, then
proceeded to his office. He had no more than parked his car and
entered the tunnel leading towards the zone plant when he ran into his
assistant. McLcod seemed a little out of breath. 'Gee, chief,' he said,
'I hoped that was you. I've had 'em watching for you. I need to see you.'
'What's busted now?' Stevens demanded apprehensively.. 'One of the cities?'
'No. What made you think so?'
'Go ahead with your story.'
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'So far as I know ground power is humming sweet as can be. No trouble
with the cities. What I had on my mind is this: I fixed my heap.'
'Huh? You mean you fixed the ship you crashed in?'
'It wasn't exactly a crash. I had plenty of power in the reserve banks;
when reception cut off, I switched to emergency and landed her.'
'But you fixed it? Was it the deKalbs? Or something else?'
'It was the deKalbs all right. And they're fixed. But I didn't exactly
do it myself. I got it done. You see-'
'What was the matter with them?'
'I don't know exactly. You see I decided that there was no point in
hiring another skycar and maybe having another forced landing on the way
home. Besides, it was my own crate I was flying, and I didn't want to
dismantle her just to get the deKalbs out and have her spread out all
over the countryside. So I hired a crawler, with the idea of taking her
back all in one piece. I struck a deal with a guy who had a twelve-ton
semitractor combination, and we-'
'For criminy's sake, make it march! What happened?'
'I'm trying to tell you. We pushed on into Pennsylvania and we were making
pretty fair time when the crawler broke down. The right lead wheel,
ahead of the treads. Honest to goodness, Jim, those roads are something fierce.'
'Never mind that. Why waste taxes on roads when ninety per cent of the
traffic is in the air? You messed up a wheel. So then what?'
'Just the same, those roads are a disgrace,' McLeod maintained stubbornly.
'I was brought up in that part of the country. When I was a kid the road
we were on was six lanes wide and smooth as a baby's fanny. They ought to be
kept up; we might need 'em someday.' Seeing the look in his senior's eye,
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he went on hastily: 'The driver mugged in with his home office, and they
promised to send a repair car out from the next town. All told, it would
take three, four hours - maybe more. Well, we were laid up in the country
I grew up in. I says to myself, "McLeod, this is a wonderful chance to
return to the scenes of your childhood and the room where the sun came
peeping in the morn." Figuratively speaking, of course. Matter of fact,
our house didn't have any windows.'
'I don't care if you were raised in a barrel!'
'Temper ... temper-' McLeod said imperturbably. 'I'm telling you this so
you will understand what happened. But you aren't going to like it.'
'I don't like it now.
'You'll like it less. I climbed down Out of the cab and took a look
around. We were about five miles from my home town - too far for me
to want to walk it. But I thought I recognized a clump of trees on
the brow of a little rise maybe a quarter of a mile off the road,
so I walked over to see. I was right; just over the rise was the
cabin where Gramps Schneider used to live.'
'Gramps Snyder?'
'Not Snyder - Schneider. Old boy we kids used to be friendly with.
Ninety years older than anybody. I figured he was dead, but it
wouldn't hurt any to walk down and see. He wasn't. "Hello, Gramps,"
I said. "Come in, Hugh Donald," he said. "Wipe the feet on the mat."
'I came in and sat down. He was fussing with something simmering in
a stewpan on his base-burner. I asked him what it was. "For morning
aches," he said. Gramps isn't exactly a hex doctor.'
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'Huh?'
'I mean he doesn't make a living by it. He raises a few chickens and
garden truck, and some of the Plain People -House Amish, mostly - give
him pies and things. But he knows a lot about herbs and such.
'Presently he stopped and cut me a slice of shoo-fly pie. I told
him danke. He said, "You've been up-growing, Hugh Donald,' and asked
me how I was doing in school. I told him I was doing pretty well.
He looked at me again and said, "But you have trouble fretting you."
It wasn't a question; it was a statement. While I finished the pie I
found myself trying to tell him what kind of troubles I had.
'It wasn't easy. I don't suppose Gramps has ever been off the ground
in his life. And modern radiation theory isn't something you can
explain in words of one syllable. I was getting more and more tangled
up when he stood up, put on his hat and said, "We will see this car
you speak about."
'We walked over to the highway. The repair gang had arrived, but the
crawler wasn't ready yet. I helped Gramps up on to the platform and
we got into my bus. I showed him the deKalbs and tried to explain
what they did - or rather what they were supposed to do. Mind you, I
was just killing time.
'He pointed to the sheaf of antennae and asked, "These fingers - they
reach out for the power?" It was as good an explanation as any, so I
let it ride. He said, "I understand," and pulled a piece of chalk out
of his trousers, and began drawing lines on each antenna, from front
to back. I walked up front to see how the repair crew were doing.
After a bit Gramps joined me. "Hugh Donald," he says, "the fingers -
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now they will make."
'I didn't want to hurt his feelings, so I thanked him plenty. The
crawler was ready to go; we said goodbye, and he walked back towards
his shack. I went back to my car, and took a look in, just in case.
I didn't think he could hurt anything, but I wanted to be sure.
Just for the ducks of it I tried out the receptors. They worked!'
'What!' put in Stevens. 'You don't mean to stand there and tell me
an old witch doctor fixed your deKalbs.'
'Not witch doctor - hex doctor. But you get the idea.'
Stevens shook his head. 'It's simply a coincidence. Sometimes they
come back into order as spontaneously as they go out.'
'That's what you think. Not this one. I've just been preparing you
for the shock you're going to get. Come take a look.'
'What do you mean? Where?'
'In the inner hangar.' While they walked to where McLeod had left
his broomstick, he continued, 'I wrote out a credit for the crawler
pilot and flew back. I haven't spoken to anyone else about it. I've
been biting my nails down to my elbows waiting for you to show up.'
The skycar seemed quite ordinary. Stevens examined the deKalbs and
saw some faint chalk marks on their metal sides - nothing else
unusual.
'Watch while I cut in reception,' McLeod told him.
Stevens waited, heard the faint hum as the circuits became activized,
and looked.
The antennae of the deKalbs, each a rigid pencil of metal,were bending,
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flexing, writhing like a cluster of worms. They were reaching out, like
fingers.
Stevens remained squatting down by the deKalbs, watching their
outrageous motion. McLeod left the control saddle, came back, and
joined him. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]