Mrs. Full clutched his arm. "One of them struck Calvin with his prod," she wailed.
"Where is he?"
"Near that door."
Beginning to sing again, Summersby pelted for the prone milk inspector. He picked him up and slung him, limp as a dead doe, over his left shoulder. The others were gathering. He motioned them forward, and, as Watkins joined him, ran on.
"Where'd you find your case?"
"On a table. Hope the dough is all in there." He glanced back. "They're coming. We're racking 'em but they're game."
The woman, Adam and Villa were right behind them. As they reached the midpoint of the third room, the dining hall, one of the beings staggered through the door behind them. It had lost its goad and was flattening its hands on its skull as Adam and Mrs. Full swung into "Dixie." It came at them like a drunk, unable to navigate a straight course but determined to reach them. It'll stamp on us, thought Summersby, easing Full back a little on his arm. It only has to come down once or twice with that Cadillac-sized foot and we're squashed ants. He sang.
"To live and die in...."
The second brute appeared, lurched over and fell on the table, caught up a flat trencher and skimmed it at them. It was as big as a bathtub. "Drop!" cried Summersby, went to one knee, felt the wind of the trencher's passing ruffle his hair.
The next door was closed. Summersby slammed himself flat against the wall and Adam, cat-lithe and fast, scrambled up over him, stood on his shoulders and broke the controlling beam. The aliens came down the room like two epileptic furies. "Sing!" said Watkins. "Everybody!" The door slid aside with maddening slowness.
"Try a fast one," said Mrs. Full. "'Blow the Man Down.'" It was a funny suggestion, coming from her. Summersby actually chuckled as he started to sing.
"As I was a-walkin' down Paradise Street...."
The third monster entered the dining hall, caught the full blast of their five voices (Calvin Full was still out, but Villa was giving a rum-tum-tum accompaniment), and sank to its knees, shaking its head as though it had been sapped. One of the others made a desperate leap at them, landing prone within a yard of Summersby. Melodies affect its organ of equilibrium, he thought; poor thing's in agony. "I says to her, Lollie, and how d'ye do...."
They were through the doorway now. The only pursuer still on its feet was reeling after them, green rod still held in one shaking hand. Its rust-red eyes were bulging out from their deep pits, and a thin trickle of violet ichor came from its nostril. It made guttural, creaking noises.
"Down at the end," said Watkins. "The brown box."
"Did you gimmick it?" asked Summersby.
"I think so. We have to take a chance. The main idea is easy. I guessed at a few things, but I think it'll work. Unless one of our big pals checked on it and mucked up my improvements."
It was twenty yards away; but so was the last of the monsters. Summersby changed Full to his other arm and added his voice to the general clamor for a bar or so, then asked Watkins the question that had been nagging at him. "Can we all go? Or does somebody have to send the others?"
"I'll send you. I'm not too sure I can get through. The dials and focusing lenses are on the outside, you know."
"I'll work it, then." They were at the table; he dropped Full and helped Adam shove a chair to the table. The woman and Villa were singing "Quiereme Mucho" in Spanish, their voices a trifle hoarse by now.
"You will like hell. It'd take me ten minutes to teach you how to work the transmitter. Think we have ten minutes?"
The giant was standing still, weaving, pawing the air. It would not give in to its pain and dizziness. If it fell now it might hit them. It was that close.
"You'vegotto show me. I have a bad heart. I'm due to die in a month or two," said Summersby urgently.
Watkins stared at him. "Do you think you went through the past hours with a rotten ticker? Don't make me laugh."
"It's true. I'm just waiting to die. You're no more than thirty-eight or forty, and you've got twenty-two thousand dollars there," he said, gesturing at the briefcase. "I don't give a damn about the morals of the case. You're a decent fellow and you ought to have this break."
Watkins snarled, as he gave the valiantly singing Mrs. Full a hand up to the chair seat, "You think I have a martyr complex? You think Iwantto stay here? I'm elected, that's all! It's me stays or it's everybody! I haven't the time to teach you to work it!" He hit Summersby a hard blow on the chest. "Your heart's fixed up the same as Adam's eyes and Cal's sinus. These gentry could turn your lungs upside down without opening you up, they're that good. Go back to your woods. You're okay."
"No," said Summersby with stubborn rage. "I'm sick of waiting to die. That's why I took the coaster ride in the first place. That's why I wanted—"
"You're nuts. You have a heart to match your frame, Highpockets, if you'd admit it. Hand up old Cal."
The monster took two wobbling steps toward them. They were all on the chair, then clambering onto the table. Watkins swung open the door of the brown box. "Fast," he said urgently, "fast!"
Adam had Cal by the armpits; he lugged him into the dark interior. Villa jumped in, Mrs. Full following. Summersby confronted the safe-cracker.
"Show me how to work the machine. I don't believe they could mend a bad heart."
Watkins handed him the briefcase with so unexpected a motion that Summersby took it automatically. "Send it to Roscoe & Bates, if I don't turn up. I guess I can't use it here." He put a hand under his coat. "Go on, Highpockets."
"No!"
Watkins drew a gun, a small steel-blue thing that looked as wicked as a rattler. Summersby had had no idea that he was carrying it. "Hop in, tall man," said Watkins, grinning. "You're holding up the works."
Reluctantly Summersby backed away, stood in the door of the box. He could jump Watkins, but if the mechanism were so complex, he would only doom them all. "You're out of your head," he said.
"Sure."
Abruptly above the safe-cracker towered the fantastic form of their forgotten enemy, reaching for them, one hand still to its head. Summersby inflated his lungs.
"Should auld acquaintance be forgot," he roared tunefully, "and never brought to mind!"
Everyone joined him. It was a startling cataclysm of sound, even to Summersby. The alien tottered, hand outstretched; its mouth fell open, its eyes popped, the violet blood coursed from its nostril; with a shudder it clawed the air, honked grotesquely, and pitched forward, half on and half off the table, where it lay gurgling. A spot on the side of its skull, about the width of a gallon jug, on which the hair grew sparse and gray, pulsed as though there were no bone beneath the skin, as though a bellows within was puffing it in and out, in and out. Its ear, thought Summersby. Probably we've wrecked it for good. Maybe the thing will die. Then Watkins is a gone goose, if he stays. He was about to lunge at the steady gun-hand when Adam and Villa yanked him backward into the box. Adam was crying.
"Try and come too, Mr. Watkins, try and come too," he said.
Watkins laughed. "I'll make out okay, son. I like my hide pretty well." He waved with the gun. "Be seeing you." Then he tossed the dark weapon into the box and slammed the door.
There was darkness, then bright sun. They stood on a street corner, and Summersby could read the signs as plainly as Watkins must have read them in the focusing lens of the matter transmitter on the unknown planet.
Broadway and 42nd Street. The five of them had clicked into being on the busiest corner of New York.
"That old crook," said Adam, gulping. "He focused us here for a gag."
"I lookawful," gasped Mrs. Full, and Summersby, glancing at her, agreed. Like all of them, she had lost weight; her skin showed the effects of a week's washing without soap; and her skirt and blouse were mussed up, to say the least. All the men needed shaves. Calvin Full, recovering gradually from the shock of the goad, and still supported by Villa, looked like a Bowery wino.
"Is he coming?" asked Adam, addressing Summersby. "Will Watkins be along too?"
"I don't know," said Summersby. He stared up at as much of the sky as he could see beyond the block-high ads. "I hope so."
"My chili stand!" shouted Villa, suddenly awakening to the fact of New York about him. "That no-good relief man! I've got to see what he's done to it!" Pushing Calvin to Adam, who grasped him by an arm, the Mexican waved hurriedly. "Come and see me," he said to all of them. "I'll give you a bowl free." He hastened away into the crowd.
"We've got to see about our clothes at the hotel," said Mrs. Full. She sounded apologetic. "I hope we'll see you again, Adam, and Mr. Summersby."
"I doubt it," said Summersby. He looked at Full. "Coming out of it?" he asked.
"Thanks," said Cal, nodding. He took his wife's hand. "Gave you my address, didn't I?"
"I have it," said Summersby.
"Well, good-bye," said Mrs. Full.
"You did a fine job up there," said Adam Pierce. "I'm proud to have known you, ma'am."
"Thank you, Adam. Good-bye." They were gone.
"I suppose you'll be going too," said Adam, somewhat wistfully.
"I guess so. You'll go home?"
"I guess so," Adam repeated. "My folks will be sore. They'll never believe such a story. They'll think I ran wild or something."
Summersby, still looking upward, and wondering if he could be staring blindly at the planet which Watkins must be trying to leave even now, put a hand on his heart. "Was he right? They did fix up everyone else." He laughed. It was the first time he had laughed normally in seven months. "I could get into the rangers again," he said. "Adam, I've got to see a doctor. I've got to find out something."
"Yes, sir," said Adam unhappily. Summersby looked at him. "Really worried about your folks?"
"Yes, sir."
"I'll come home and tell them, if you like."
Adam said gratefully, "Mr. Summersby, you're a gentleman."
"No," said Summersby, "no."
"Yes, sir, you are. Can we wait just a minute more? Mr. Watkins might be along any minute now."
"We'll wait."
After a while Adam said, "Remember that first feed we got up there, pies and cookies and glass?"
"I remember it."
"They must have just aimed that machine at a bakery window here on Earth, and taken glass and all."
"That's it."
"Probably it was called a smash-and-grab robbery, down here." He kicked something, bent down and picked it up. It was the safe-cracker's gun. "I didn't think he'd carry one," said the boy. He looked closer at it. "God!"
"What is it?" Summersby shifted the briefcase and held out a hand. Adam laid the weapon in his big palm. "He must have won it at the park that day," Adam said. "That old crook! Old faker!"
Summersby held it up. It looked like a small automatic of blued steel, but it was plastic. He turned it over. A pencil-sharpener.
Summersby grunted. "A toy," he said, giving it back to Adam. "Nothing but a kid's toy."