"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. "h.e.l.lo, 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."
"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 - 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, flexing, writhing like a cl.u.s.ter 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.
"Well, chief," he demanded, "tell me about it. Whaduh yuh make of it?"
"Got a cigarette?"
"What are those things sticking Out of your pocket?"
"Oh! Yeah - sure." Stevens took one out, lighted it, and burned it halfway down, unevenly, with two long drags.
"Go on," McLeod urged. "Give us a tell. What makes it do that?"
"Well," Stevens said slowly, "I can think of three things to do next-"
"Yeah?"
"The first is to fire Dr Rambeau and give his job to Gramps Schneider."
"That"s a good idea in any case."
"The second is to just wait here quietly until the boys with the strait-jackets show up to take us home."
"And what"s the third?"
"The third," Stevens said savagely, "is to take this d.a.m.ned heap out and sink it in the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean and pretend like it never happened!"
A mechanic stuck his head in the door of the car. "Oh, Dr Stevens--"
"Get out of here!"
The head hastily withdrew; thc voice picked up in aggrieved tones.
"Message from the head office."
Stevens got up, went to the operator"s saddle, cleared the board, then a.s.sured himself that the antennae had ceased their disturbing movements. They had; in fact, they appeared so beautifully straight and rigid that he was again tempted to doubt the correctness of his own senses. He climbed out to the floor of the hangar, McLeod behind him.
"Sorry to have blasted at you, Whitey," he said to the workman in placating tones. "What is the message?"