What happened after that was shocking. Galbraith aimed the gadget and pulled the trigger, and rings of light jumped out, yaller this ~time. I’d told Paw to fix the range so nobody outside the Town Hall would be bothered. But inside-Well, it sure fixed them toothaches. Nobody’s gold filling can ache if he ain’t got a gold filling.
The gadget was fixed now so it worked on everything that wasn’t growing. Paw had got the range just right. The seats was gone all of a sudden, and so was part of the chandelier. The audience, being bunched together, got it good. Pegleg Jaffe’s glass eye was gone, too. Them that had false teeth lost ’em.
Everybody sorta got a once-over-lightly haircut.
Also, the whole audience lost their clothes. Shoes ain’t growing things, and no more are pants or shirts or dresses. In a trice everybody in the hall was naked as needles. But, shucks, they’d got rid of their toothaches, hadn’t they?
We was back to home an hour later, all but Uncle Les, when the door busted open and in come Uncle Les, with the Perfesser staggering after him. Galbraith was a mess. He sank clown and wheezed, looking back at the door in a worried way.
“Funny thing happened,” Uncle Les said. “I was flying along outside town and there was the Perfesser running away from a big crowd of people, with sheets wrapped around ’em-some of ’em. So I picked him up. I brung him here, like he wanted.” Uncle Les winked at me.
“Ooooh!” Galbraith said. “Aaaahl Are they coming?”
Maw went to the door.
“They’s a lot of torches moving up the mountain,” she said. “It looks right bad.”
The Perfesser glared at me.
“You said you could bide me! Well, you’d better! This is your fault!”
“Shucks,” I said.
“You’ll hide me or else!” Calbraith squalled. “I-I’ll bring that commission down.”
“Look,” I said, “if we hide you safe, will you promise to fergit all about that commission and leave us alone?”
The Perfesser promised. “Hold on a minute,” I said, and went up to the attic to see Grandpaw.
He was awake.
“How about it, Grandpaw?” I asked.
He listened to Little Sam for a second.
“The knave is lying,” he told me pretty soon. “He means to bring his commission of stinkards here anyway, recking naught of his promise.”
“Should we hide him, then?”
“Aye,” Grandpaw said. “The Hogbens have given their word-there must be no more killing. And to hide a fugitive from his pursuers would not be an ill deed, surely.”
Maybe he winked. It’s hard to tell with Grandpaw. So I went down the ladder. Galbraith was at the door, watching the torches come up the mountain.
He grabbed me.
“Saunk! If you don’t hide me—”
“We’ll hide you,” I said. “C’mon.”
So we took him down to the cellar.
When the mob got here, with Sheriff Abernathy in the lead, we played dumb. We let ’em search the house. Little Sam and Grandpaw turned invisible for a bit, so nobody noticed them. And naturally the crowd couldn’t find hide nor hair of Galbraith. We’d hid him good, like we promised.
That was a few years ago. The Perfesser’s thriving. He ain’t studying us, though. Sometimes we take out the bottle we keep him in and study him.
Dang small bottle, too!
THE TWONKY
The turnover at Mideastern Radio was so great that Mickey Lloyd couldn’t keep track of his men.
Employees kept quitting and going elsewhere, at a higher salary. So when the big-headed little man in overalls wandered vaguely out of a storeroom, Lloyd took one look at the brown dungaree suit-company provided-and said mildly, “The whistle blew half an hour ago. Hop to work.”
“Work-k-k?” The man seemed to have trouble with the word.
Drunk? Lloyd, in his capacity as foreman, couldn’t permit that. He ffipped away his cigarette, walked forward and sniffed. No, it wasn’t liquor. He peered at the badge on the man’s overalls.
“Two-o-four, rn-mm. Are you new here?”
“New. Huh?” The man rubbed a rising bump on his forehead. He was an odd-looking little chap, bald as a vacuum tube, with a pinched, pallid face and tiny eyes that held dazed wonder.
“Come on, Joe. Wake up!” Lloyd was beginning to sound impatient. “You work here, don’t you?”
“Joe,” said the man thoughtfully. “Work. Yes, I work. I make them.” His words ran together oddly, as though he had a cleft palate.
With another glance at the badge, Lloyd gripped Joe’s arm and ran him through the assembly room.
“Here’s your place. Hop to it. Know what to do?”
The other drew his scrawny body erect. “I ani-expert,” he remarked. “Make them better than Ponthwank.”
“O.K.,” Lloyd said. “Make ’em, then.” And he went away.
The man called Joe hesitated, nursing the bruise on his head. The overalls caught his attention, and he examined them wonderingly. Where-oh, yes. They had been hanging in the room from which he had first emerged. His own garments had, naturally, dissipated during the trip-what trip?
Amnesia, he thought. He had fallen from the… the something when it slowed down and stopped.
How odd this huge, machinefilled barn looked! It struck no chord of remembrance.
Amnesia, that was it. He was a worker. He made things. As for the unfamiliarity of his surroundings, that meant nothing. He was still dazed. The clouds would lift from his mind presently. They were beginning to do that already.
Work. Joe scuttled around the room, trying to goad his faulty memory. Men in overalls were doing things. Simple, obvious things. But how childish-how elemental! Perhaps this was a kindergarten.
After a while Joe went out into a stock room and examined some finished models of combination radio-phonographs. So that was it. Awkward and clumsy, but it wasn’t his place to say so. No. His job was to make Twonkies.
Twonkies? The name jolted his memory again. Of course he knew how to make Twonkies. He’d made them all his life-had been specially trained for the job. Now they were using a different model of Twonky, but what the hell! Child’s play for a clever workman.
Joe went back into the shop and found a vacant bench. He began to build a Twonky. Occasionally he slipped off and stole the material he needed. Once, when he couldn’t locate any tungsten, he hastily built a small gadget and made it.
His bench was in a distant corner, badly lighted, though it seemed quite bright to Joe’s eyes. Nobody noticed the console that was swiftly growing to completion there. Joe worked very, very fast. He ignored the noon whistle, and, at quitting time, his task was finished. It could, perhaps, stand another coat of paint; it lacked the Shimmertone of a standard Twonky. But none of the others had Shimmertone. Joe sighed, crawled under the bench, looked in vain for a relaxopad, and went to sleep on the floor.
A few hours later he woke up. The factory was empty. Odd! Maybe the working hours had changed.
Maybe-Joe’s mind felt funny. Sleep had cleared away the mists of amnesia, if such it had been, but he still felt dazed.
Muttering under his breath, he sent the Twonky into the stock room and compared it with the others.
Superficially it was identical with a console radio-phonograph combination of the latest model.
Following the pattern of the others, Joe had camouflaged and disguised the various organs and reactors.
He went back into the shop. Then the last of the mists cleared from his mind. Joe’s shoulders jerked convulsively.