Maxwell staggered forward and reaching down, picked up Carol and slung her, like a sack, across one shoulder. Turning, he beat an unsteady retreat down the corridor.
Thirty feet away he stopped and turned around and as he did, the Wheeler burst out of the doorway, finally free of Sylvester and with both wheels spinning in unison. He came down the hall, wheeling crazily and lopsidedly-staggering blindly, if a thing with wheels could be said to stagger, slamming into one wall and caroming off it to smash into the other. From a great rent in his belly small whitish objects dropped and scattered all across the floor.
Ten feet from where Maxwell stood, the Wheeler finally collapsed when one wheel hit the wall and caved in. Slowly, with what seemed to be a rather strange sort of dignity, the Wheeler tipped over and out of the torn belly gushed a bushel or so of insects that piled up on the floor.
Sylvester came slinking down the hail, crouched low, his muzzle extended in curiosity, taking one slow step and then another as he crept upon his handiwork. Behind Oop and Sylvester came the rest of them.
“You can let me down now,” said Carol.
Maxwell let her down, stood her on her feet. She leaned against the wall.
“I never saw a more undignified way to be carried,” she declared. “You haven’t got a spark of chivalry to pack a girl around in a manner such as that.”
“It was all a mistake,” said Maxwell. “I should have left you there, laid out on the floor.”
Sylvester had stopped now and reaching out his neck, sniffed at the Wheeler, all the while with wrinkles of disgust and wonder etched upon his face. There was no sign of life in the Wheeler. Satisfied, Sylvester pulled back and squatted on his haunches, began to wash his face. On the floor beside the fallen Wheeler, the mound of bugs were seething. A few of them started crawling from the pile, heading out into the hall.
Sharp swung out past the Wheeler.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.” The corridor still was sour with the terrible stench.
“But what is it all about?” wailed Nancy. “Why did Mr. Marmaduke…”
“Nothing but stink bugs,” Oop told her. “Can you imagine that? A galactic race of stink bugs! And they had us scared!”
Inspector Drayton lumbered forward importantly. “I’m afraid it will be necessary for you all to come with me,” he said. “I will need your statements.”
“Statements,” Sharp said viciously. “You must be out of your mind. Statements, at a time like this, with a dragon loose and…”
“But an alien has been killed,” protested Drayton. “And not just an ordinary alien. A member of a race that could be our enemies. This could have repercussions.”
“Just write down,” said Oop, “killed by a savage beast.”
“Oop,” snapped Carol, “you know better than to say a thing like that. Sylvester isn’t savage. He’s gentle as a kitten. And he is not a beast.”
Maxwell looked around. “Where is Ghost?” he asked. “He took it on the lam,” said Oop. “He always does when trouble starts. He’s nothing but a coward.”
“But he said…”
“That he did,” said Oop. “And we are wasting time. O’Toole could do with help.”
Mr. O’Toole was waiting for them when they got off the roadway.
“I knew coming you would be,” he greeted them. “Ghost, he said he would get you yet. And badly do we need someone who will talk sense to the trolls, who hide and gibber in their bridge and will listen to no reason.”
“What have the trolls got to do with it?” asked Maxwell. “For once in your life, can’t you leave the trolls alone?”
“The trolls,” Mr. O’Toole explained, “filthy as they are, may be our one salvation. They be the only ones who, from lack of any civilization whatsoever, or any niceties, remain proficient in the enchantments of old times, and they specialize in the really dirty kinds of work, the most vicious of enchantments. The fairies, naturally, also cling to the old abilities, but all of their enchantments are of the gentle sort and gentleness is something of which we do not stand in need.”
“Can you tell us,” Sharp asked, “exactly what is going on. Ghost didn’t hang around to explain much of it to us.’
“Gladly,” said the goblin, “but leave us start to walking, and walking, I’ll relate to you all the happenstance. We have but little time to waste and the trolls are stubborn souls and vast persuasion they will need to do a job for us. They lurk within the mossy stones of that senseless bridge of theirs and they titter like things which have lost their minds. Although, bitter truth to tell, them stinking trolls have little minds to lose.”
They trudged in single file up the rocky ravine which lay in the notch between the hills and in the east the dawn-light had begun to show, but the path, buried in the trees and flanked by bushes, was dark. Here and there birds woke from sleep and twittered and somewhere up the hill a raccoon was whickering.
“The dragon came home to us,” O’Toole told them as they walked, “the one place on Earth left for him to go, to be with his own kind again, and the Wheelers which, in ancient times had another name than Wheelers, have attacked him, like broomsticks flying in formation. They must not force him to the ground, for then they have him caught and can whisk him hence very rapidly. And, forsooth, he has made a noble fight of it, the fending of them off, but he is growing tired and we must hurry rapidly and with much dispatch if we are to give him aid.”
“And you’re counting,” Maxwell said, “on the trolls being able to bring the Wheelers down like they brought down the flier.”
“You apprehend most easily, my friend. That’s what lingers in my mind. But these befouled trolls make a bargain of it.”
“I never knew,” said Sharp, “that the Wheelers could fly. All I’ve seen them do was trundle.”
“Of abilities they have many,” said O’Toole. “From their bodies they can grow devices without number and beyond imagination. Nozzles for the spreading of their nasty gas, guns to shoot the lethal bolt, jets to make them broomsticks that move with amazing speed. And never are they up to any good. Full of anger and resentment after all the ages, lying out there, deep in the galaxy, with rancor eating like a cancer into their putrid minds, waiting for a chance to be what they never can be-for no more than menials they are or ever will be.”
“But why bother with the trolls?” asked Drayton, out of sorts. “I could have guns and planes…”
“Don’t try to be any more of a fool than you already are,” said Sharp. “We can’t lay a finger on them. We can’t create an incident. The humans can take no part in this. This is something between the Little Folk and their former slaves.”
“But the cat already killed-”
“The cat. Not a human. We can-”
“Sylvester,” Carol said, “was only trying to protect us.”
“Do we have to go so fast?” protested Nancy. “I’m not used to this.”
“Here,” said Lambert, “take my arm. The path does seem slightly rough.”
“Do you know, Pete,” said Nancy, bubbling, “that Mr. Lambert has agreed to be my house guest for a year or so and paint some pictures for me. Isn’t that a lovely thing for him to do?”
“Yes,” said Maxwell. “I am sure it is.”
The path had been climbing the hillside for the last hundred feet or so and now it dipped down toward the ravine, which was clogged with tumbled boulders which, in the first faint light of morning, looked like crouched, humped beasts. And spanning the ravine was the ancient bridge, a structure jerked raw from an old medieval road. Looking at it, Maxwell found it hard to believe that it had been built only a few decades ago when the reservation had been laid out.
Two days, he thought-had it been only two days since he had returned to Earth to find Inspector Drayton waiting? So much had happened that it seemed much longer than just two days ago. So many things had happened that were unbelievable, and still were happening and still unbelievable, but on the outcome of these happenings, he knew, might depend the future of all mankind and the federation that man had built among the other stars.