Mindswap

'Sorry, I'm not'

'Sure you are,' the ganzer egg said, a note of desperation in his voice, 'So OK, you've had your fun. Now let me out of here.'

'Sorry …'

'Let me out!'

'I can't.'

'Why?'

'Because I'm hunting ganzer eggs.'

'My God,' the ganzer egg said, 'this is the craziest thing I've ever heard in my life. You never met me before, did you? So why are you hunting me?'

'I've been hired to hunt ganzer eggs,' Marvin told him.

'Look, fella, are you trying to tell me that you just go around hunting any ganzer egg at all? You don't care which one?'

'That's right.'

'And you aren't really looking for one particular ganzer egg who maybe did you a bad turn?'

'No, no,' Marvin said. 'I've never even met a ganzer egg before.'

'You've never … and yet you hunt … ? I must be going out of my mind, I can't be hearing right. I mean, things like this just don't happen. I mean, it's like some kind of an incredible nightmare … I mean, it's the sort of thing you get crazy nightmares about – some crazy-looking guy walking up calm as you please and grabbing you and saying in a sort of crazy deadpan voice, "I happen to be hunting for ganzer eggs." I mean – look, fella, you are putting me on, aren't you?'

Marvin was embarrassed and exasperated, and he wished the ganzer egg would shut up. He said gruflly, 'I'm not fooling. My job is to collect ganzer eggs.'

'Collect … ganzer eggs!' the ganzer egg moaned. 'Oh no, no, no, no! My God, I can't believe this is happening, and yet it really is happening, it really is-'

'Control yourself,' Marvin said; the ganzer egg was clearly on the thin edge of hysteria.

'Thank you,' the ganzer egg said, after a moment. 'I'm all right now. I didn't mean to – to give way.'

'That's all right,' Marvin said. 'Are you ready to be collected now?'

'I – I'm trying to get used to the idea. It's so … so … Look, could I ask you just one question?'

'Hurry it up,' Marvin said.

'The thing I want to ask,' the ganzer egg said, 'do you get some kind of a charge out of this sort of thing? I mean are you some sort of pervert? I don't mean to be insulting.'

'That's all right,' Marvin said. 'No, I'm not a pervert, and I can assure you I take no pleasure in this. It's strictly a job with me.'

'Strictly a job,' the ganzer egg repeated. 'A job. To kidnap a ganzer egg whom you've never met before. Just a job. Like picking up a stone. Only I'm not a stone, I'm a ganzer egg!'

'I realize that,' Marvin said. 'Believe me. I'm finding all of this very strange.'

'You're finding it strange!' the ganzer egg said, his voice rising to a scream. 'How do you think I feel? Do you think maybe I think it's natural for someone to come along like in a nightmare and collect me?'

'Steady,' Marvin said.

'Sorry,' the ganzer egg said. 'I'm all right now.'

'I'm really very sorry about this,' Marvin said. 'But you see, I've got this job and this quota, and if I don't do it I'll have to spend the rest of my life here.'

'Crazy,' the ganzer egg whispered to himself. 'He's absolutely and completely insane.'

'So I have to collect you,' Marvin finished, and reached out.

'Wait!' the ganzer egg howled, in so panicstricken a voice that Marvin desisted.

'What is it now?'

'May – may I leave a note for my wife?'

'There isn't time,' Marvin said firmly.

'Then will you at least let me say my prayers?'

'Go ahead and say them,' Marvin said. 'But you'll really have to be quick about it.'

'Oh Lord God,' the ganzer egg intoned, 'I don't know what is happening to me, or why. I have always tried to be a good person, and although I am not a regular churchgoer, You surely know that true religion is in the heart. I've maybe done some bad things in my life, I won't deny it. But Lord, why this punishment? Why me? Why not someone else, one of the real bad ones, one of the criminals? Why me? And why like this? Something is collecting me like I'm some sort of a thing… And I don't understand. But I know that You are All-Wise and All-Powerful, and I know that You are good, so I guess there must be a reason … even if I'm too stupid to see it. So look, God, if this is it, then OK, this is it. But could you look after my wife and kids? And could you especially look after the little one?' The ganzer egg's voice broke, but he recovered almost at once. 'I ask especially for the little one, God, because he's lame and the other kids pick on him and he needs a lot – a lot of love. Amen.'

The ganzer egg choked back his sobs. His voice became abruptly stronger.

'All right,' he said to Marvin. 'I'm ready now. Go ahead and do your damnedest, you lousy son-of-a-bitch.'

But the prayer of the ganzer egg had umnanned Marvin completely. With eyes wet and fetlocks trembling, Marvin opened the net and released his captive. The ganzer egg rolled out a little distance and then stopped, clearly fearing a trick.

'You – you really mean this?' he said.

'I do,' Marvin said. 'I was never cut out for this kind of work. I don't know what they will do to me back at the camp, but I shall never gather a single ganzer egg!'

'Praised be the name of the Lord,' the ganzer egg said softly. 'I've seen a few strange things in my time, but it seems to me that the Hand of Providence-'

The hypothesis of the ganzer egg (known as the Interventionalist Fallacy) was interrupted by a sudden ominous crashing in the underbrush. Marvin whirled, and remembered the dangers of the planet Melde. He had been warned, but had forgotten. And now, desperately, he fumbled for his blaster, which had become entangled in his net. Violently he wrenched at it, pulled it free, heard a shrill warning from the ganzer egg-

And then he was flung violently to the ground. The blaster spun away into the underbrush. And Marvin gazed up into slit black eyes beneath a low armoured forehead.

No introductions were necessary. Flynn knew that he had met a full-grown adult marauding ganzer, and had met him under possibly the worst of all circumstances. The evidence (if evidence were needed) was all too evident; close to hand was the damning net, the telltale sunglasses, the revealing tongs. And closer still – closing on his neck – was the tooth-edged jaw of the gigantic saurian, so close that Marvin could see three gold molars and a temporary porcelain filling.

Flynn tried to wriggle free. The ganzer pressed him back with a paw the size of a yak saddle; his cruel claws, each the size of a pair of ice tongs, bit cruelly into Marvin's golden hide. The slavering jaws gaped hideously, descended, about to engulf his entire head …

Chapter 11

Suddenly – time stopped! Marvin saw the ganzer's jaws arrested in midslaver, his bloodshot left eye fixed in midblink, and his entire great body gripped in a strange and unyielding rigidity.

Nearby, the ganzer egg was as motionless as a carven replica of itself.

The breeze was stopped in midcareer. Trees were caught in straining postures, and a meritheian hawk was fixated in midflight like a dummy attached to a wire.

The sun stopped its inexorable rolling flight!

And in this strange tableau, Marvin stared with tremulous sensations in the direction of a single movement in the air three feet above his head and slightly to his left.

It began as a whorl of dust, broadened, expanded, expatiated, thickening at the base and becoming convex at the apex. The rotation came faster, and the figure solidified.

'Detective Urdorf!' Marvin cried. For it was indeed the Martian detective with the streak of bad luck who had promised to solve Marvin's case and to return to him his rightful body.

'Terribly sorry to barge in like this,' Urdorf said, materializing fully and falling heavily to the ground.