"Eh? Let me see." He had a look, found that it was so. A chain and a small but heavy and complicated
padlock linked the driver"s leg to his coach. "Where"s the key?"
"Search me," invited the driver, grinning.
They did just that. The frisk proved futile. No key.
"Who"s got it?"
"Myob!"
"Shove him back into his seat," ordered Bidworthy, looking savage. "We"ll take the pa.s.sengers. One
yap"s as good as another so far as I"m concerned." He strode to the doors, jerked them open. "Get out and
make it snappy."
n.o.body budged. They studied him silently and with varied expressions, not one of which did anything to help his ego. The fat man with the candy-striped hat mooned at him sardonically. Bidworthy decided that he did not like the fat man and that a stiff course of military calisthenics might thin him down a bit.
"You can come out on your feet," he suggested to the pa.s.sengers in general and the fat man in particular,
"or on your necks. Whichever you prefer. Make up your minds."
"If you can"t use your head you can at least use your eyes," commented the fat man. He shifted in his seat to the accompaniment of metallic clanking noises.
Bidworthy did as suggested, leaning through the doors to have a gander. Then he got right into the vehicle, went its full length and studied each pa.s.senger. His florid features were two shades darker when he came out and spoke to Sergeant Gleed.
"They"re all chained. Every one of them." He glared at the driver. "What"s the big idea, manacling the lot?"
"Myob!" said time driver, airily.
"Who"s got the keys?"
"Myob!"
Taking a deep breath, Bidworthy said to n.o.body in particular, "Every so often I hear of some guy
running amok and laying "em out by the dozens. I always wonder why-but now I know." He gnawed his knuckles, then added to Gleed, "We can"t run this contraption to the ship with that dummy blocking the driver"s seat. Either we must find the keys or get tools and cut them loose."
"Or you could wave us on our way and go take a pill," offered the driver.
"Shut up! If I"m stuck here another million years I"ll see to it that-"
"The colonel"s coming," muttered Gleed, giving him a nudge.
* * * Colonel Shelton arrived, walked once slowly and officiously around the outside of the coach, examining its construction and its occupants. He flinched at the striped hat whose owner leered at him through the gla.s.s. Then he came over to the disgruntled group.
"What"s the trouble this time, Sergeant Major?"
"They"re as crazy as the others, sir. They give a lot of lip and say, "Myob!" and couldn"t care less about
his excellency. They don"t want to come out and we can"t get them out because they"re chained to their seats."
"Chained?" Shelton"s eyebrows shot upward. "What for?"
"I don"t know, sir. They"re linked in like a load of lifters making for the pen, and-"
Shelton moved off without waiting to hear the rest. He had a look for himself, came back.
"You may have something there, Sergeant Major. But I don"t think they are criminals."
"No, sir?"
"No." He threw a significant glance toward the colorful headgear and several other sartorial
eccentricities, including a ginger-haired man"s foot-wide polka-dotted bow. "It is more likely that they"re a bunch of whacks being taken to a giggle emporium. I"ll ask the driver." Going to the cab, he said, "Do you mind telling me your destination?"
"Yes," responded the other.
"Very well, where is it?"
"Look," said the driver, "are we talking the same language?"
"Huh?"
"You asked me if I minded and I said yes." He made a gesture. "I do mind."
"You refuse to tell?"
"Your aim"s improving, sonny."
"Sonny?" put in Bidworthy, vibrant with outrage. "Do you realize you are speaking to a colonel?"
"Leave this to me," insisted Shelton, waving him down. His expression was cold as he returned his
attention to the driver. "On your way. I"m sorry you"ve been detained."
"Think nothing of it," said time driver, with exaggerated politeness. "I"ll do as much for you some day."
With that enigmatic remark, he let his machine roll forward. The patrol parted to make room. The coach
built up its whine to top note, sped down the road, diminished into the distance.
"By the Black Sack!" swore Bidworthy, staring purple-faced after it. "This planet has got more punks in
need of discipline than any this side of-"
"Calm yourself, Sergeant Major," advised Shelton. "I feel the same way as you-but I"m taking care of my arteries. Blowing them full of b.u.mps like seaweed won"t solve any problems."
"Maybe so, sir, but-"
"We"re up against something mighty funny here," Shelton went on. "We"ve got to find out exactly what it is and how best to cope with it. That will probably mean new tactics. So far, the patrol has achieved
nothing. It is wasting its time. We"ll have to devise some other and more effective method of making contact with the powers-that-be. March the men back to the ship, Sergeant Major."
"Very well, sir." Bidworthy saluted, swung around, clicked his heels, opened a cavernous mouth. "Patro-
o-ol! . . . right form!"
The conference lasted well into the night and halfway through the following morning. During these argumentative hours various oddments of traffic, mostly vehicular, pa.s.sed along the road, but nothing paused to view the monster s.p.a.ceship, n.o.body approached for a friendly word with its crew. The strange
inhabitants of this world seemed to be afflicted with a peculiar form of mental blindness, unable to see a thing until it was thrust into their faces and then surveying it squint-eyed.
One pa.s.ser-by in midmorning was a truck whining on two dozen rubber b.a.l.l.s and loaded with girls
wearing colorful head-scarves. The girls were singing something about one little kiss before we part, dear. Half a dozen troops lounging near the gang-way came eagerly to life, waved, whistled and yoohooed. The effort was wasted, for the singing continued without break or pause and n.o.body waved back.
To add to the discomfiture of the love-hungry, Bidworthy stuck his head out of the lock and rasped, "If you monkeys are bursting with surplus energy, I can find a few jobs for you to do-nice dirty ones." He scared them one at a time before he withdrew.
Inside, the top bra.s.s sat around a horseshoe table in the chartroom near the bow and debated the situation. Most of them were content to repeat with extra emphasis what they had said the previous evening, there being no new points to bring up.
"Are you certain," the Earth Amba.s.sador asked Captain Grayder, "that this planet has not been visited since the last emigration transport dumped the final load three hundred years back?"
"Positive, your Excellency. Any such visit would have been recorded."
"If made by an Earth ship. But what about others? I feel it in my bones that at sometime or other these people have fallen foul of one or more vessels calling unofficially and have been leery of s.p.a.ceships ever since. Perhaps somebody got tough with them, tried to muscle in where he wasn"t wanted. Or they"ve had to beat off a gang of pirates. Or they were swindled by some unscrupulous fleet of traders."
"Quite impossible, your Excellency," declared Grayder. "Emigration was so scattered over so large a number of worlds that even today every one of them is under-populated, only one-hundredth developed, and utterly unable to build s.p.a.ceships of any kind, even rudimentary ones. Some may have the techniques but not the facilities, of which they need plenty."
"Yes, that"s what I"ve always understood."
"All Blieder-drive vessels are built in the Sol system, registered as Earth ships and their whereabouts known. The only other ships in existence are eighty or ninety antiquated rocket jobs bought at sc.r.a.p
price by the Epsilon system for haulage work between their fourteen closely-planned planets. An old- fashioned rocket job couldn"t reach this place in a hundred years."
"No, of course not."