“All alone, the King of the Elves held off the entire Troll army,” an Elf announced shrilly.
“Eh?” Shadrach said, taken aback. Then he smiled. “That’s true, I did fight them alone for a while. I did hold off the Trolls all by myself. The whole darn Troll army.”
“There is more,” an Elf said.
Shadrach blinked. “More?”
“Look over here, O King, mightiest of all the Elves. This way. To the right.”
The Elves led Shadrach over.
“What is it?” Shadrach murmured, seeing nothing at first. He gazed down, trying to pierce the darkness. “Could we have a torch over here?”
Some Elves brought little pine torches.
There, on the frozen ground, lay Phineas Judd, on his back. His eyes were blank and staring, his mouth half open. He did not move. His body was cold and stiff.
“He is dead,” an Elf said solemnly.
Shadrach gulped in sudden alarm. Cold sweat stood out abruptly on his forehead. “My gosh! My old friend! What have I done?”
“You have slain the Great Troll.”
Shadrach paused.
“I what?”
“You have slain the Great Troll, leader of all the Trolls.”
“This has never happened before,” another Elf exclaimed excitedly. “The Great Troll has lived for centuries. Nobody imagined he could die. This is our most historic moment.”
All the Elves gazed down at the silent form with awe, awe mixed with more than a little fear.
“Oh, go on!” Shadrach said. “That’s just Phineas Judd.”
But as he spoke, a chill moved up his spine. He remembered what he had seen a little while before, as he stood close by Phineas, as the dying moonlight crossed his old friend’s face.
“Look.” One of the Elves bent over and unfastened Phineas’s blue-serge vest. He pushed the coat and vest aside. “See?”
Shadrach bent down to look.
He gasped.
Underneath Phineas Judd’s blue-serge vest was a suit of mail, an encrusted mesh of ancient, rusting iron, fastened tightly around the squat body. On the mail stood an engraved insignia, dark and time-worn, embedded with dirt and rust. A moldering half-obliterated emblem. The emblem of a crossed owl leg and toadstool.
The emblem of the Great Troll.
“Golly,” Shadrach said. “And I killed him.”
For a long time he gazed silently down. Then, slowly, realization began to grow in him. He straightened up, a smile forming on his face.
“What is it, O King?” an Elf piped.
“I just thought of something,” Shadrach said. “I just realized that—that since the Great Troll is dead and the Troll army has been put to flight—”
He broke off. All the Elves were waiting.
“I thought maybe I—that is, maybe if you don’t need me any more—”
The Elves listened respectfully. “What is it, Mighty King? Go on.”
“I thought maybe now I could go back to the filling station and not be king any more.” Shadrach glanced hopefully around at them. “Do you think so? With the war over and all. With him dead. What do you say?”
For a time, the Elves were silent. They gazed unhappily down at the ground. None of them said anything. At last they began moving away, collecting their banners and pennants.
“Yes, you may go back,” an Elf said quietly. “The war is over. The Trolls have been defeated. You may return to your filling station, if that is what you want.”
A flood of relief swept over Shadrach. He straightened up, grinning from ear to ear. “Thanks! That’s fine. That’s really fine. That’s the best news I’ve heard in my life.”
He moved away from the Elves, rubbing his hands together and blowing on them.
“Thanks an awful lot.” He grinned around at the silent Elves. “Well, I guess I’ll be running along, then. It’s late. Late and cold. It’s been a hard night. I’ll—I’ll see you around.”
The Elves nodded silently.
“Fine. Well, good night.” Shadrach turned and started along the path. He stopped for a moment, waving back at the Elves. “It was quite a battle, wasn’t it? We really licked them.” He hurried on along the path. Once again he stopped, looking back and waving. “Sure glad I could help out. Well, good night!”
One or two on the Elves waved, but none of them said anything.
Shadrach Jones walked slowly toward his place. He could see it from the rise, the highway that few cars traveled, the filling station falling to ruin, the house that might not last as long as himself, and not enough money coming it to repair them or buy a better location.
He turned around and went back.
The Elves were still gathered there in the silence of the night. They had not moved away.
“I was hoping you hadn’t gone,” Shadrach said, relieved.
“And we were hoping you would not leave,” said a soldier.
Shadrach kicked a stone. It bounced through the tight silence stopped. The Elves were still watching him.
“Leave?” Shadrach asked. “And me King of the Elves?”
“Then you will remain our king?” an Elf cried.
“It’s a hard thing for a man of my age to change. To stop selling gasoline and suddenly be a king. It scared me for a while. But it doesn’t any more.”
“You will? You will?”
“Sure,” said Shadrach Jones.
The little circle of Elf torches closed in joyously. In their light, he saw a platform like the one that had carried the old King of the Elves. But this one was much larger, big enough to hold a man, and dozens of the soldiers waited with proud shoulders under the shafts.
A soldier gave him a happy bow. “For you, Sire.”
Shadrach climbed aboard. It was less comfortable than walking, but he knew this was how they wanted to take him to the Kingdom of the Elves.
Colony
Major Lawrence Hall bent over the binocular microscope, correcting the fine adjustment.
“Interesting,” he murmured.
“Isn’t it? Three weeks on this planet and we’ve yet to find a harmful life form.” Lieutenant Friendly sat down on the edge of the lab table, avoiding the culture bowls. “What kind of place is this? No disease germs, no lice, no flies, no rats, no—”
“No whiskey or red-light districts.” Hall straightened up. “Quite a place. I was sure this brew would show something along the lines of Terra’s eberthella typhi. Or the Martian sand rot corkscrew.”
“But the whole planet’s harmless. You know, I’m wondering whether this is the Garden of Eden our ancestors fell out of.”
“Were pushed out of.”
Hall wandered over to the window of the lab and contemplated the scene beyond. He had to admit it was an attractive sight. Rolling forests and hills, green slopes alive with flowers and endless vines; waterfalls and hanging moss; fruit trees, acres of flowers, lakes. Every effort had been made to preserve intact the surface of Planet Blue—as it had been designated by the original scout ship, six months earlier.
Hall sighed. “Quite a place. I wouldn’t mind coming back here again some time.”
“Makes Terra seem a little bare.” Friendly took out his cigarettes, then put them away again. “You know, the place has a funny effect on me. I don’t smoke any more. Guess that’s because of the way it looks. It’s so—so damn pure. Unsullied. I can’t smoke or throw papers around. I can’t bring myself to be a picnicker.”
“The picnickers’ll be along soon enough,” Hall said. He went back to the microscope. “I’ll try a few more cultures. Maybe I’ll find a lethal germ yet.”
“Keep trying.” Lieutenant Friendly hopped off the table. “I’ll see you later and find out if you’ve had any luck. There’s a big conference going on in Room One. They’re almost ready to give the go-ahead to the E.A. for the first load of colonists to be sent out.”
“Picnickers!”
Friendly grinned. “Afraid so.”