"What was that?"

"Myob!"

"The same to you," retorted the Ambassador, his patience evaporating.

"That's precisely what I'm trying to do," insisted the prisoner, enigmatically.

"Only you won't let me do it."

"If I may make a suggestion, Your Excellency," put in Shelton, "allow me--"

"I require no suggestions and I won't allow you," said the Ambassador, somewhat

out of temper. "I have had enough of all this stupid tomfoolery. I think we have

landed at random in an area reserved for imbeciles. It would be as well to recognize the fact and get out of it with no more delay."

"Now you're talking," approved Ginger Whiskers. "And the farther the better."

"We have no intention of leaving this planet, if that is what's in your incomprehensible mind," asserted the Ambassador. He stamped a proprietary foot into the turf. "This is part of the Terran Empire. As such it is going to be recognized, charted and organized."

"Heah, heah!" put in the senior civil servant who aspired to honors in elocution.

His Excellency threw a frown behind, went on, "Well move the shop to some other section where brains are brighter." He turned attention to the escort. "Let him go. Probably he is in a hurry to borrow a razor."

They released their grips. Ginger Whiskers at once turned toward the distant farmer much as if he were a magnetized needle irresistibly drawn Zekeward. Without another word he set off at his original slovenly pace. Disappointment and disgust showed on the faces of Bidworthy and Gleed as they watched him depart.

"Have the vessel shifted at once, Captain," the Ambassador said to Grayder. "Plant it near to a likely town-not out in the wilds where every yokel views strangers as a bunch of crooks."

He marched importantly up the gangway. Captain Grayder followed, then Colonel Shelton, then the elocutionist. Next, their successors in correct order of precedence. Lastly, Gleed and his men.

The airlock closed. The warning siren sounded. Despite its immense bulk the ship shivered briefly from end to end and soared without deafening uproar or spectacular display of flame.

Indeed, there was silence save for a little engine going chuff-chuff and the murmurings of the two men walking behind it. Neither took the trouble to look around to see what was happening.

"Seven pounds of prime tobacco is a heck of a lot to give for one case of brandy," Ginger Whiskers protested.

"Not for my brandy," said Zeke. "It's stronger than a thousand Gands and smoother than an Earthman's downfall."

Chapter 8.

The great ship's next touchdown was made on a wide flat about two miles north of a town estimated to hold twelve to fifteen thousand people. Grayder would have preferred to survey the place from low altitude before making his landing but one cannot handle a huge space-going vessel as if it were an atmospheric tug. Only two things can be done when so close to a planetary surface-the ship is taken straight up or brought straight down with no room for fiddling between times.

So Grayder dumped the ship in the best spot he could find when finding is a matter of split-second decisions. It made a rut only ten feet deep, the ground being hard with a rock bed. The gangway was shoved out. The procession descended in the same order as before..

Casting an anticipatory look toward the town, the Ambassador registered irritation. "Something is badly out of kilter here. There's the town not so far away. Here we are in plain view with a ship like a metal mountain. At least a thousand people must have seen us coming down even if all the rest are holding seances behind drawn curtains or playing poker in the cellars. Are they interested? Are they excited?"

"It doesn't seem so," contributed Shelton, pulling industriously at an eyelid for the sake of feeling it spring back.

"I wasn't asking you. I am telling you. They are not excited. They are not surprised. They are not even interested. One would almost think they'd had a ship here that was full of smallpox or that swindled them out of something. What's wrong with them?"

"Possibly they lack curiosity," Shelton ventured.

"Either that or they're afraid. Or maybe the entire gang of them is more cracked than any bunch on any other world. Practically all these planets were appropriated by dotty people who wanted to establish a haven where their eccentricities could run loose. And nutty notions become conventional after four hundred years of undisturbed continuity. It is then considered normal and proper to nurse the bats out of your grandfather's attic. That and generations of inbreeding can create some queer types. But well cure them before we're through."

"Yes, Your Excellency, most certainly we will"

"You don't look so well-balanced yourself, chasing that eyelid around your face," reproved the Ambassador. He pointed south-east as Shelton stuck the fidgety hand firmly into a pocket. "There's a road over there. Wide and well-built by the looks of it. They don't construct such a highway for the mere fun of it. Ten to one it's an important artery."

"That's how it looks to me," Shelton agreed.

"Put that patrol across it, Colonel. If your men don't bring in a willing talker within reasonable time we'll send the entire battalion into the town itself."

"A patrol," said Shelton to Major Hame.

"Call out the patrol," Hame ordered Lieutenant Deacon.

"That patrol again, Sergeant Major," said Deacon.

Bidworthy raked out Gleed and his men, indicated the road, barked a bit and shooed them on their way.

They marched, Gleed in front. Their objective was half a mile away and angled toward the town. The left-hand file had a clear view of the nearest suburbs, eyed the buildings wistfully, wished Gleed in warmer regions with Bidworthy stoking the hell-fire beneath him.

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 like a motorcycle. It ran on a big pair of 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 reminded everybody of Bidworthy in the presence of dirty boots.

"Stay put," warned Gleed. "I'll skin the fellow 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 slow 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 metal mountain-and say, "Earth ship."

"Well, what do you expect me to do about it?-throw a fit of hysterics?"

"We expect you to cooperate," informed Gleed, still bemused by the pigtail. He had never seen such a thing before. It was in no way effeminate, he decided. Rather did it lend a touch of ferocity like that worn-according to the picture book-by certain North American aborigines in the dim and distant past.

"Cooperation," mused the rider. "Now there is a beautiful word. You know exactly what it means, of course?"

"I'm not 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 cooperation. 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 conversational 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 cooperation?" put in the other. He hunched his shoulders, pursed his bottom lip. "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 aside without injury. With a high whine the machine shot down the road, its fan-blast making its rider's plaited hairdo point horizontally backward.

"You substandard morons!" raged Gleed as the pair got up and dusted themselves. "I told you to stand fast. What d'you mean by letting him run out on us like that?"

"Didn't have much choice about it, Sarge," answered one surlily.

"I want none of your back-chat. You could have busted one of his balloons if you'd had your guns ready. That would have stopped him."

"You didn't tell us to use our guns."

"Where was your own, anyway?" added a sneaky voice.

Gleed whirled on the others and demanded, "Who said that?" His eyes raked a long row of 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 that--"

"The Sergeant Major's coming," one of them warned. Bidworthy was four hundred yards away and making martial progress towards them. Arriving in due time, he cast a cold, contemptuous glance over the patrol "What happened?"

"Giving me a lot of lip, he was," complained Gleed after providing a brief account of the incident. "He looked like one of those Chickasaws with an oil well."

"Did he really?" Bidworthy surveyed him a moment, then invited, "And what is a Chickasaw?"

"I read about them somewhere once when I was a kid," explained Gleed, happy to bestow a modicum of learning. "They got rich on oil. They had long, plaited 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 when I was fourteen." He sniffed loudly and 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 goddam lies-often." He spat on the road. "Be your age!" Then he glowered 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 character who comes along."

Sitting on a large rock by the roadside, he planted an expectant gaze on the town. Gleed posed near him, slightly pained. The patrol remained strung across the road with guns held ready. Half an hour crawled by without anything happening.

One of the men pleaded, "Can we smoke, Sergeant Major?"

"No!"

They fell into lugubrious silence, licking their lips from time to time and doing plenty of thinking. They had lots about which to think. A town-any town of human occupation -had desirable features not to be found anywhere else in the cosmos. Lights, company, freedom, laughter, all the makings of life. And one can go hungry too long.

Eventually a large coach emerged from the town's outskirts, hit the high road and came bowling towards 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 the motorcycle, and had no visible fans. It was loaded with people.

At a point two hundred yards from the road-block a loudspeaker under the vehicle's bonnet blared an urgent, "Make way! Make way!"

"This is it," commented Bidworthy with much satisfaction. "We've caught a dollop of them. One of them is going to confess or I'll resign from the space service." He got off his rock and stood in readiness.

"Make way! Make way!"

"Perforate his balloons if he tries to bull his way through," ordered Bidworthy.

It wasn't necessary. The coach lost pace, stopped with its bonnet a yard from the waiting file. Its driver appeared out of the side of his cab. Other faces snooped curiously farther back.

Composing himself and determined to try the effect of fraternal cordiality, Bidworthy went up to the driver and said with great difficulty, "Good morning!"

"Your time-sense is shot to pot," responded the other ungratefully. He had a heavy blue jowl, a broken nose, cauliflower ears and looked the sort who usually drives with others in hot and vengeful pursuit. "Can't you afford a watch?"

"Eh?"

"It isn't morning. It's late afternoon."

"So it is," admitted Bidworthy, forcing a cracked smile. "Good afternoon!"

"I'm not so sure about that," mused the driver, leaning on his steering-wheel and moodily scratching his head. "We get an afternoon in every day. It's always the same. Morning goes and what happens? You're stuck with an afternoon. I've become hardened to it. And this one is just another nearer the grave."

"That may be," conceded Bidworthy, little struck with this ghoulish angle, "but I have other things to worry about and-"

"Fat lot of use worrying about anything, past, present or whatever," advised the driver. "Because there are far bigger worries to come. Stick around long enough and you'll have some real stinkers in your lap."

"Perhaps so," said Bidworthy, inwardly feeling that this was a poor time to contemplate the darker side of existence. "But I prefer to deal with my own troubles in my own way."

"Nobody's troubles are entirely their own, nor their methods of coping," continued the tough-looking oracle. "Are they now?"

"I don't know and I don't care," growled Bidworthy, his composure thinning down as his blood pressure built up. He was irefully conscious of Gleed and the patrol watching, listening and probably grinning like stupid apes behind his back. There was also the load of gaping passengers. "I think you're talking just to stall me. You might as well know that it won't work. I'm here for a purpose and that purpose is going to be served. The Terran Ambassador is waiting--"

"So are we," emphasized the driver. "He wants to speak to you," Bidworthy went stubbornly on, "and he's going to speak to you."

"I'd be the last to prevent him. We've got free speech here. Let him step up and say his piece so that we can go our way."

"You," informed Bidworthy, "are going to him." He signed to the rest of the coach. "The whole lot of you."

"Not me," denied a fat man sticking his head out of a side window. He wore thick-lensed glasses that made his eyes look like poached eggs. Moreover, he was adorned with a tall hat candy-striped in white and pink. "Not me," repeated this vision with considerable firmness. "Me neither," supported the driver. "All right." Bidworthy displayed maximum menace. "Move this birdcage one inch backward or forward and well shoot your pot-bellied tires to thin strips. Get out of that cab."

"Ha-ha. I'm too comfortable. Try fetching me." Bidworthy beckoned to the nearest six men. "You heard him-take him up on that."

Tearing open the cab door, they grabbed. If they had expected the victim to put up a futile fight against heavy odds, they were disappointed. He made no attempt to resist. They got him, lugged together and he yielded with good grace. His body leaned to one side and came halfway out of the door.

That was as far as they could get him. "Come on," urged Bidworthy, showing impatience. "Heave him loose. You don't have to be feeble. Show him who's who. He isn't a fixture."