"Hush, Benzy," she
cooed. "I guess I made a few hardcases blush in my time. It's only words.
Besides he never knowed I was here."
" 'Only words,'
indeed!" Magnan persisted, then shut up as two more wresder-types came in
to view, and halted at sight of Piggy.
"Horny!" the
fallen man cried hoarsely. "Pud! Help me up at once. He done it again! Set
upon me when I weren't looking! I was coming to warn youse!"
"Why, the unprincipled
liar!" Magnan gasped. "Implying that it was
I
who tripped
him!"
"Wasn't it,
Benjy?" Gaby inquired encouragingly.
actually, miss gaby felled the wretch,
Voice spoke up.
"Hush!"
Magnan barked. "That was unchivalric in the extreme!"
"Whattaya mean,
'unchivalric'?" Piggy demanded at the same moment that Horny and Pud
uttered the same words.
"I never said—"
the fallen man barked.
"... who, me?"
another contributed. Then the leader cut the dispute short with a yell.
"Beat them bushes, you slobs!" At the same moment, he lunged directly
toward Magnan's hiding place. For a moment, Magnan stared directly into the
rage-contorted face, the red-rimmed eyes, noted the unshaven jowls, the pitted
yellowed teeth, the undersized terminally filthy pink-and-yellow sport coat.
"Good Lord!" he blurted. "It's Dirty Eddie!" Then he backed
away, barely evading the angry man's grab. He scrambled back on all fours,
after a few yards got to his feet and ran directly into Retief.
"Easy, sir,"
Retief soothed. Magnan tried frantically to push past. "He's right behind
me!" he yelped. "Quick, let me go!" Retief, still holding the
Smeer intellect engaged, stepped aside and an unshaven, red-eyed face burst
into view from the underbrush.
"I
seen
him!"
Eddie yelled. "Lemme at him! It's the same tricky rascal I done brast my
spear on!"
"First, let's have a
little talk," Retief suggested gently, then grabbed Eddie's neck as he
started past. Eddie made gurgling sounds.
"Leggo my neck,
Mister!" he demanded loudly, if awkwardly.
Retief flipped the noisy
fellow
on*
his back, just as Horny and Pud came up. Horny sprang at
Retief, rebounded from a stiff-arm, and wandered away, mumbling. Pud paused.
"Me, I never wanted no
trouble," he explained to Posterity. "Heard old Boss kinda gurgling
and that, so I come to see could a fella render aid. Humanitarian, see?"
He was attempting to edge around Retief as he delivered his stirring appeal to
the angel in us all.
"Touching in the
extreme," Retief commended. "But as you see, the situation is well in
hand."
"Hows come you're
holding Boss by the Adam's apple?" Pud wondered aloud. "Hey,
Horny!" he called as an afterthought. "Ain't no time fer you to be
going off like that! This here feller's choking Boss!"
"No shielding offen
my
hull-plates," Horny pointed out. "Anyways, got no way to climb
over that there slabite wall I run inta."
Pud craned his neck to look,
over, past, and through Retief, who stood quietly, holding Boss down with one
hand; with the other, he grabbed the open-mouthed Lout's shoulder and spun him
around to face in the direction from which he had come; he gave him a slight
push, which sent him headfirst ten feet into the dense foliage, where he
threshed about noisily.
"That way, Pud,"
Retief directed the confused fellow. "Keep going. You'd better
hurry." Then he returned his attention to the squirming mind-entity
struggling against his impalpable restraint.
"Never seen no
automatic deck-loader," Pud informed the ever-watchful spirits of air and
water. "Can't blame a feller fer tryna get clear o' the machinery,"
he further informed his critics.
"I'll get you swabs for
this!" Boss Eddie, AKA Looie Segundo announced, his voice somewhat blurred
by the pressure of the rocky ground against his mouth. Retief cut off the flow
of rhetoric by applying another few dozen foot-pounds of pressure.
"Before you start
planning your revenge," he told the struggling chieftain, "let's talk
about where you've been keeping yourself."
"Retief!" Magnan
yelped, fairly dancing with excitement. "We mustn't linger here! I was
bravely carrying on alone—then you interposed your presence between me and
Dirty Eddie. Lucky for the scamp; I was about to take a just and dispassionate
revenge for the upset he's caused me—
and
dear Gaby. Gaby! Gaby! Where
is
she? She was just here; I was shielding her with my body—but—"
"Easy, Benji,"
Gaby soothed as she emerged from behind a giant whum-whum tree. "I seen
how you and yer friend here throwed old Horny and Pud fer a three-yard loss.
Old Eddie, too," she added, glancing down at the now-quiescent Boss as she
stepped daintily over him.
"I hope you'll excuse
me, Ben," Retief said solemnly, "for interfering. We need him in a
single unwashed piece for questioning. He's been the one behind most of the
nonsense we've encountered here."
"Yes, he
was
rather
quick to appear just after we'd met Nudine," Magnan babbled. Gaby gave his
arm a demanding tug.
"Nudine?" she
echoed. "You been hanging around with that exhibitionist again?"
"Not for some time, my
dear," Magnan improvised. "Anyway, she was Retief's friend. I was
merely a bystander."
"You one o' them
voyeurs?" Gaby demanded.
"Oh, that's an early
French explorer on North America," Magnan suggested hopefully. "No I,
Gaby I I've never explored that or any other world."
"Don't go weaseling on
me, Ben Magnan!" Gaby objected. "Them Frogs you was talking about was
voyageurs.
Voyeurs is like Peeping Irvings!"
"You wrong me deeply,
my dear," Magnan huffed. "It was just that I couldn't quite believe
you'd accuse me of voyeurism."
"Aw, Benny," Gaby
cooed.
"I must decline further
to discuss the baggage," Magnan declared loftily. "I have this Eddie
person to deal with." Magnan paused, looking expectantly at Retief.
"When last I saw you,
Jim," he stated, "you were about to investigate a most uninviting
excavation. Now, abruptly, some hours later, you pop up here—not that I'm
ungrateful for your assistance in laying by the heels this uncouth fellow,
Dirty Eddie, Looie Segundo, Boss, or Sir Farbelow, as you prefer."
"The hole led back into
the cave where we had lunch," Retief told him. "Colonel Underknuckle
and Counselor Overbore were still there, still arguing. They seem to disagree
as to which one has priority in the deal with someone called Wiggly."
"Good Lord!"
Magnan gasped. "No wonder matters are in a state of anarchy here:
double-dealing of the highest level—or almost. The Captain has referred to his
pet Worm as Wiggly! Surely His Excellency isn't actually implicated?"
"Not in writing,"
Retief reassured his supervisor. "I had no idea the situation might be
deteriorating here." As they spoke, Eddie had carefully shifted position.
When he was ready to make his try, Retief stepped on his ankle, then released
him.
"Nothing I couldn't
have dealt with myself, of course," Magnan pointed out stiffly, his eye on
Gaby. "Still, your advent was well-timed. Now, what's to be done with
Eddie?"
"Don't trouble yerselfs
none, gents," Eddie urged, rising cautiously. "Hang loose. Ta."
And he was gone into the underbrush, though not before Gaby had delivered a
vigorous lack to his departing derriere.
"Quick!" Magnan
blurted. "We'll have to go after him!"
"No need," Retief
suggested. "We know where he's going."
"Do we indeed?"
Magnan challenged. "I, for one, find the comings and goings of this
chameleon-like scamp quite baffling."
"That's because you
haven't yet seen the Domes," Retief pointed out. "Up close, I mean.
We saw them from a distance, just after we met Nudine, you'll recall."
"That dame again!"
Gaby objected. She turned to confront Magnan. "You must've spent a lot of
time with her, eh, Benny?"
"Only a few minutes,
actually," Magnan stammered. "Then our party divided. But as for the
Domes—I simply assumed—" he broke off, looking puzzled.
"Go ahead, sir,"
Retief urged.
"Well," Magnan
resumed hesitantly, "everything was so halcyon—or it seemed so at the
moment—that a cluster of golden domes in the distance just seemed to fit."
Gaby spat. "Halcyon,
ey?" she burst out. "It so happens I know what that means: 'Peaceful
and calm!' So you and this dame were peaceful and calm, were you? I bet—"
She was interrupted by a hoarse yell, accompanied by a crashing of underbrush
suggesting the charge of a rhino; instead, Dirty Eddie burst into view, on the
reverse tack.
"I
seen
'em!"
he yelled, then came to a halt and made an effort to compose himself.
"Big ones!" he
stated loudly. "Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!"
"Could you perhaps
clarify that a trifle, sir?" Magnan suggested tentatively.
"I'm tryna tell youse,
ain't I?" Eddie demanded. "Go ahead, you're so smart,
you
tell
it!"
"I haven't the least
idea," Magnan said coldly, "what you're talking about. Now get
yourself together, man, and explain why you came bursting in here, shouting in
that unseemly fashion!"
"I guess you'd yell
some, too, Dude, you seen what
I
seen!
"What I
saw,
I
presume you mean," Magnan corrected tartly.
"How do I know what
you
seen?" Eddie demanded.
"Aw, shut up, Ed,"
Gaby suggested. "Soon's you say what's scared you so bad."
"Me, scared?"
Eddie scoffed. "Nid-nuts! Takes more'n a fire-breathing dragon to scare
Dirty Eddie Magoon!"
"You seen the
dragon?" Gaby gasped.
"Dern near got stepped
on," Eddie confirmed, almost contentedly. "Two hundred foot long if
it was a inch," he amplified. "Snorting and smoking, don't know why
it never set the woods afire."
" 'If it was an inch,'
you said," Retief pointed out. "That seems to be precisely the point
at issue."
"Now don't go talking
like one o' them dipplemacks back Zanny-du," Eddie protested. "I
heard enough o' that jabber to last me. That Mister Overbore, now, smooth as
blurb flops and mean as two fire-toads in a bucket. Crooked, too. Never done
what he said, open up the front without no trouble. Don't know how the sucker
figgered to work it, withouten
my
help! Heard old Worm had him, serve
him right."
"Are you suggesting,
sir," Magnan demanded haughtily, "that Counselor Overbore had engaged
in some sort of trafficking with undesirable local elements in the person of
yourself?"