Jetboy sighed. "I understand."
"I sure do want you happy, 'cause Jetboy's my favorite comic. No, I really mean that. The others are just a job. My god, what a job: deadlines, working with drunks and worse, riding herd over printers-you can just imagine! But I like the work on Jetboy. It's special."
"Well, I'm glad."
"Sure, sure. Lowboy drummed his fingers on the desk. "Wonder what's taking them so long?"
"Probably getting out the other set of ledgers," said Jetboy.
"Hey, no! We're square here!" Lowboy came to his feet. "Just kidding."
"Oh. Say, the paper said you were, what, marooned on a desert island or something? Pretty tough?"
"Well, lonely. I got tired of catching and eating fish. Mostly it was boring, and I missed everything. I don't mean missed, I mean missed out. I was there from April twentyninth of '45 until last month."
"There were times when I thought I'd go nuts. I couldn't believe it one morning when I looked up, and there was the U. S. S. Reluctant anchored less than a mile offshore. I fired off a flare, and they picked me up. It's taken a month to get someplace to repair the plane, rest up, get home. I'm glad to be back."
"I can imagine. Hey, lots of dangerous animals on the island? I mean, lions and tigers and stuff?"
Jetboy laughed. "It was less than a mile wide, and a mile and a quarter long. There were birds and ats and some lizards."
"Lizards? Big lizards? Poisonous?"
"No. Small. I must have eaten half of them before I left. Got pretty good with a slingshot made out of an oxygen hose."
"Huhl I bet you did!"
The door opened, and a tall guy with an ink-smudged shirt came in.
"That him?" asked Lowboy.
"I only seen him once, but it looks like him," said the man. "Good enough for me!" said Lowboy.
"Not for me," said the accountant. "Show me some ID and sign this release."
Jetboy sighed and did. He looked at the amount on the check. It had far too few digits in front of the decimal. He folded it up and put it in his pocket.
"I'll leave my address for the next check with your secretary. And I'll send a letter with the objections this week."
"Do that. It's been a real pleasure meeting you. Let's hope we have a long and prosperous business together."
"Thanks, I guess," said Jetboy. He and the accountant left. Lowboy sat back down in his swivel chair. He put his hands behind his head and stared at the bookcase across the room.
Then he rocketed forward, jerked up the phone, and dialed nine to get out. He called up the chief writer for Jetboy Comics.
A muzzy, hung-over voice answered on the twelfth ring. "Clean the shit out of your head, this is Lowboy. Picture this: fifty-two-page special, single-story issue. Ready? Jetboy on Dinosaur Island! Got that? I see lots of cavemen, a broad, a what-you-call-it-king rex. What? Yeah, yeah, a tyrannosaur. Maybe a buncha holdout Jap soldiers. You know. Yeah, maybe even samurai. When? Blown off course in A. D. 1100? Christ. Whatever. You know exactly what we need."
"What's this? Tuesday. You got till five P M. Thursday, okay? Quit bitchin'. It's a hundred and a half fast bucksl See you then."
He hung up. Then he called up an artist and told him what he wanted for the cover.
Ed and Fred were coming back from a delivery in the Pine Barrens.
They were driving an eight-yard dump truck. In the back until a few minutes ago had been six cubic yards of new-set concrete. Eight hours before, it had been five and a half yards of water, sand, gravel, and cement and a secret ingredient.
The secret ingredient had broken three of the Five Unbreakable Rules for carrying on a tax-free, unincorporated business in the state.
He had been taken by other businessmen to a wholesale construction equipment center, and been shown how a cement mixer works, up close and personal.
Not that Ed and Fred had anything to do with that. They'd been called an hour ago and been asked if they could drive a dump truck through the woods for a couple of grand.
It was dark out in the woods, not too many miles from the city. It didn't look like they were within a hundred miles of a town over five-hundred population.
The headlights picked out ditches where everything from old airplanes to sulfuric-acid bottles lay in clogged heaps. Some of the dumpings were fresh. Smoke and fire played about a few. Others glowed without combustion. A pool of metal bubbled and popped as they ground by.
Then they were back into the deep pines again, jouncing from rut to rut.
"Hey!" yelled Ed. "Stop!"
Fred threw on the brakes, killing the engine. "Goddamn!" he said. "What the hell's the matter with you?"
"Back therel I swear I saw a guy pushing a neon cat's-eye marble the size of Cleveland!"
"I'm sure as hell not going back," said Fred.
"Nab! Come on! You don't see stuff like that every day."
"Shit, Ed! Someday you're gonna get us both killedl"
It wasn't a marble. They didn't need their flashlights to tell it wasn't a magnetic mine. It was a rounded canister that glowed on its own, with swirling colors on it. It hid the man pushing it.
"It looks like a rolled-up neon armadillo," said Fred, who'd been out west.
The man behind the thing blinked at them, unable to see past their flashlights. He was tattered and dirty, with a tobaccostained beard and wild, steel-wool hair.
They stepped closer.
"It's mine!" he said to them, stepping in front of the thing, holding his arms out across it.
Thirty Minutes Over Broadway!
"Easy, old-timer," said Ed. "What you got?"
"My ticket to easy street. You from the Air Corps?"
"Hell, no. Let's look at this."
The man picked up a rock. "Stay back! I found it where I found the plane crash. The Air Corps'll pay plenty to get this atomic bomb back!"
"That doesn't look like any atomic bomb I've ever seen," said Fred. "Look at the writing on the side. It ain't even English."
"Course it's not! It must be a secret weapon. That's why they dressed it up so weird."
"Who?"
"I told you more'n I meant to. Get outta my way." Fred looked at the old geezer. "You've piqued my interest," he said. "Tell me more."
"Outta my way, boyl I killed a man over a can of lye hominy once!"
Fred reached in his jacket. He came out with a pistol with a muzzle that looked like a drainpipe.
"It crashed last night," said the old man, eyes wild. "Woke me up. Lit up the whole sky. I looked for it all day today, figured the woods would be crawlin' with Air Corps people and state troopers, but nobody came."
"Found it just before dark tonight. Tore all hell up, it did. Knocked the wings completely off the thing when it crashed. All these weird-dressed people all scattered around. Women too." He lowered his head a minute, shame on his face. "Anyway, they was all dead. Must have been a jet plane, didn't find no propellers or nothing. And this here atomic bomb was just lying there in the wreck. I figured the Air Corps would ay real good to get it back. Friend of mine found a weather balloon once and they gave him a dollar and a quarter. I figure this is about a million times as important as that!"
Fred laughed. "A buck twenty-five, huh? I'll give you ten dollars for it."
"I can get a million!"
Fred pulled the hammer back on the revolver. "Fifty," said the old man.
"Twenty."
"It ain't fair. But I'll take it."
"What are you going to do with that?" asked Ed. "Take it to Dr. Tod," said Fred. "He'll know what to do with it. He's the scientific type."
"What if it is an A-bomb?"