"Pull up," directed the Old Man. "Might as well see the fun, eh?"
"Right, Uncle Charlie," I agreed.
The Old Man bounced out with only a trace of limp, swinging his cane. I handed Mary out and she snuggled up to me, grasping my arm. She looked up at me, managing to look both stupid and demure. "My, but you're strong. Buddy."
I wanted to slap her, but gave a self-conscious smirk instead. That poor-little-me routine from an agent, from one of the Old Man's agents. A smile from a tiger.
"Uncle Charlie" buzzed around, bothering state police, buttonholing people to give them unasked-for opinions, stopping to buy cigars at one of the stands, and in general giving a picture of a well-to-do, senile old fool, out for a holiday. He turned back to us and waved his cigar at a state sergeant. "The inspector says the whole thing is a fraud, my dears-a prank thought up by some boys. Shall we go?"
Mary looked disappointed. "No space ship?"
"There's a space ship, if you want to call it that," the cop answered. "Just follow the suckers, and you'll find it. It's 'sergeant', not 'inspector'."
"Uncle Charlie" pressed a cigar on him and we set out, across a pasture and into some woods. It cost a dollar to get through the gate and many of the potential suckers turned back. The path through the woods was rather deserted. I moved carefully, wishing for eyes in the back of my head instead of a phone. According to the book six agents had gone down this path and-none had come back. I didn't want it to be nine.
Uncle Charlie and Sis walked ahead, Mary chattering like a fool and somehow managing to be both shorter and younger than she had been on the trip out. We came to a clearing and there was the "space ship".
It was the proper size, more than a hundred feet across, but it was whipped together out of light-gauge metal and sheet plastic, sprayed with aluminum. It was roughly the shape of two giant pie plates, face to face. Aside from that, it looked like nothing in particular. Nevertheless Mary squealed. "Oh, how exciting!"
A youngster, eighteen or nineteen, with a permanent sunburn and a pimply face, stuck his head out of a sort of hatch in the top of the monstrosity. "Care to see inside?" he called out. He added that it would be fifty cents a piece more and Uncle Charlie shelled out.
Mary hesitated at the hatch. Pimple face was joined by what appeared to be his twin and they started to hand her down in. She drew back and I moved in fast, intending to do any handling myself. My reasons were 99 percent professional; I could feel danger all through the place. "It's dark in there," she quavered.
"It's perfectly safe," the second young man said. "We've been taking sightseers through all day. I'm Vine McLain, one of the owners. Come on, lady."
Uncle Charlie peered down the hatch, like a cautious mother hen. "Might be snakes in there," he decided. "Mary, I don't think you had better go in."
"Nothing to fear," the first McLain said insistently. "It's safe as houses."
"Just keep the money, gentlemen." Uncle Charlie glanced at his finger. "We're late as it is. Let's go, my dears."
I followed them back up the path, my hackles up the whole way.
We got back to the car and I pulled out into the road. Once we were rolling, the Old Man said sharply, "Well? What did you see?"
I countered with, "Any doubt about that first report? The one that broke off?"
"None."
"That thing over in the woods wouldn't have fooled an agent, even in the dark. This wasn't the ship he saw."
"Of course not. What else?"
"How much would you say that fake cost? That was new sheet metal, fresh paint, and from what I saw of the inside through the hatch, probably a thousand feet, more or less, of lumber to brace it."
"Go on."
"Well, the McLain house hadn't been painted in years, not even the barn. The place had 'mortgage' spelled out all over it. If the boys were in on the gag, they didn't foot the bill."
"Obviously. You, Mary?"
"Uncle Charlie, did you notice the way they treated me?"
"Who?" I said sharply.
"Both the state sergeant and the two boys. When I use the sweet-little-bundle-of-sex routine, something should happen. Nothing did."
"They were all attentive," I objected.
"You don't understand. You can't understand-but I know. I always know. Something was wrong with them. They were dead inside. Harem guards, if you know what I mean."
"Hypnosis?" asked the Old Man.
"Possibly. Or drugs perhaps." She frowned and looked puzzled.
"Hmm-" he answered. "Sammy, take the next turn to the left. We're investigating a point about two miles south of here."
"The triangulated location by the pic?"
"What else?"
But we didn't get there. First it was a bridge out and I didn't have room enough to make the car hop it, quite aside from the small matter of traffic regulations for a duo on the ground. We circled to the south and came in again, the only remaining route. We were stopped by a highway cop and a detour sign. A brush fire, he told us; go any farther and we would probably be impressed into firefighting. He didn't know but what he ought to send me up to the firelines anyhow.
Mary waved her lashes and other things at him and he relented. She pointed out that neither she nor Uncle Charlie could drive, a double lie.
After we pulled away I asked her, "How about that one?"
"What about him?"
"Harem guard?"
"Oh, my, no! A most attractive man."
Her answer annoyed me.
The Old Man vetoed taking to the air and making a pass over the triangulated spot. He said it was useless. We headed for Des Moines. Instead of parking at the toll gates we paid to take the car into the city proper, and ended up at the main studios of Des Moines stereo. "Uncle Charlie" blustered his way into the office of the general manager, us in tow. He told several lies-or perhaps Charles M. Cavanaugh was actually a big wheel with the Federal Communications Authority. How was I to know?
Once inside and the door shut he continued the Big Brass act. "Now, sir, what is all this nonsense about a spaceship hoax? Speak plainly, sir; I warn you your license may depend on it."
The manager was a little round-shouldered man, but he did not seem cowed, merely annoyed. "We've made a full explanation over the channels," he said. "We were victimized by one of our own people. The man has been discharged."
"Hardly adequate, sir."
The little man-Barnes, his name was-shrugged. "What do you expect? Shall we string him up by his thumbs?"
Uncle Charlie pointed his cigar at him. "I warn you, sir, that I am not to be trifled with. I have been making an investigation of my own and I am not convinced that two farm louts and a junior announcer could have pulled off this preposterous business. There was money in it, sir. Yes, sir-money. And where would I expect to find money? Here at the top. Now tell me, sir, just what did you-"
Mary had seated herself close by Barnes's desk. She had done something to her costume, which exposed more skin, and her pose put me in mind of Goya's Disrobed Lady. She made a thumbs-down signal to the Old Man.
Barnes should not have caught it; his attention appeared to be turned to the Old Man. But he did. He turned toward Mary and his face went dead. He reached for his desk.