Interstellar travel -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction
The police arrived in five minutes or so. An excited elder man with many
stripes on his arms strode up to them excitedly as they stood among the
shredded ruins of the dresses. “Where’d they go?” he demanded. “Didja
see what they looked like?”
“We’re them. We three. We tore these dresses up. You’d better take them
along for evidence.”
“Oh,” the cop said. “Okay. Go on into the wagon. And no funny business,
hear me?”
They offered no funny business. In the wagon Ross expounded on his theme
that there must be directing intelligences and that they must be at the
top. Helena was horribly depressed because she had never been arrested
before and Bernie was almost jaunty. Something about him suggested that
he felt at home in a patrol wagon.
It stopped and the elderly stripe-wearer opened the door for them. Ross
looked on the busy street for anything resembling a station house and
found none.
The cop said, “Okay, you people. Get going. An’ let’s don’t have no
trouble or I’ll run you in.”
Ross yelled in outrage, “This is a frame-up! You have no right to turn
us loose. We demand to be arrested and tried!”
“Wise guy,” sneered the cop, climbed into the wagon and drove off.
They stood forlornly as the crowd eddied and swirled around them. “There
was a plate of sandwiches at that party,” Helena recalled wistfully.
“And a ladies’ room.” She began to cry. “If only you hadn’t acted so
darn superior, Ross! I’ll bet they would have let us have all the
sandwiches we wanted.”
Bernie said unexpectedly, “She’s right. Watch me.”
He buttonholed a pedestrian and said, “Duh.”
“Yeah?” asked the pedestrian with kindly interest.
Bernie concentrated and said, “Duh. I yam losted. I yam broke. I losted
all my money. Gimme some money, mister, please?”
The pedestrian beamed and said, “That is real tough luck, buddy. If I
give you some money will you send it to me when you get some more? Here
is my name wrote on a card.”
Bernie said, “Sure, mister. I will send the money to you.”
“Then,” said the pedestrian, “I will give you some money because you
will send it back to me. Good luck, buddy.”
Bernie, with quiet pride, showed them a piece of paper that bore the
interesting legend Twenty Dollars.
“Let’s eat,” Ross said, awed.
A machine on a restaurant door changed the bill for a surprising heap of
coins and they swaggered in, making beelines for the modest twin doors
at the rear of the place. Close up the doors were not very modest, but
after the initial shock Ross realized that there must be many on this
planet who could not read at all. The washroom attendant, for instance,
who collected the “dimes” and unlocked the booths. “Dime” seemed to be
his total vocabulary.
By comparison the machines in the restaurant proper were intelligent.
The three of them ate and ate and ate. Only after coffee did they spare
a thought for Dr. Sam Jones, who should about then be awakening with a
murderous hangover aboard the starship.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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