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Our Snark is a Boojum. Anything from a distorted appeal for reconsideration to a euphemistic warning to a wasp concerning certain flowers-distorted as it was by the handedness barrier. I would have given a lot just then to know, though.
"What are you going to do with it now?" I asked.
"Get it to a safe place," Ragma said, "after you've taken your little turnabout. Then it will be up to your United Nations for a time, since they are its current custodians. Still, a report on this new finding will have to be circulated among all our member worlds, and I would imagine your authorities will want to act under their advisement as to tests and observations that might now be in order."
"I'd imagine," I said, and he reached to pick it up.
"There's a good little fellow" came an all too familiar voice from across the hall. "Gingerly, gingerly now! Wrap it in the towel, please. I'd hate to have it chipped or scratched."
Zeemeister and Buckler had entered the hall, carrying guns, pointing them. Jamie, who was gri
"So that's how you hid it, Fred," he observed. "Neat trick."
I said nothing but rose slowly to my feet, nothing in mind but the fact that I could move faster from that position.
He shook his head.
"No need for trouble," he said. "This time you are safe, Fred. Everyone here is safe. So long as I get the stone."
I wondered, in a hopefully telepathic fashion, whether M'mrm'mlrr might reach out and burn his brain as a contribution to domestic tranquillity.
The suggestion was apparently accepted just as he came up beside me and hefted the stone. For he shrieked then and suffered a minor convulsion.
I grabbed for the gun with both hands. Jamie was far enough away to give me sporting odds on the attempt. I did not think he would take a chance on hitting his boss.
The pistol was fired twice before I tore it away from him. I did not get to keep it, however, as he jabbed me in the belly and caught me with an uppercut that knocked me to the floor. The weapon went spi
Zeemeister kicked Ragma, who had chosen that moment to attack, away from him. Still clutching the stone, he produced a long, shiny blade from somewhere in the vicinity of his forearm. Then he shouted to Jamie but stopped in mid-cry.
I looked to see what had happened and decided that it must be another hallucination.
Jamie's weapon lay half a dozen paces behind him, and he stood rubbing his wrist, facing the man with the neat beard and the amused expression, the man who held one hand in his pocket and twirled a shillelagh with the other.
"I'll kill you," I heard Jamie say.
"No, Jamie! No!" Zeemeister cried. "Don't go near him, Jamie! Run!"
Zeemeister backed away, pausing only to slash one of M'mrm'mlrr's tentacles, as if knowing the source of his mental anguish.
"He's not much," Jamie called back.
"That's Captain Al!" Zeemeister shouted. "Run, you fool!"
But Jamie decided to swing instead.
It was instructive to almost behold. "Almost," I say, because the cudgel moved a bit too fast for me to trace its passage. So I was not certain exactly where or how many times it touched him. It seemed only an instant after Jamie began his swing that he was falling.
Then, still twirling the stick, casually, jauntily now, the hallucination moved past Jamie's crumpled form and headed on toward Zeemeister.
Not taking his eyes from the advancing figure, Zeemeister continued to retreat, holding the knife low before him, edge upward.
"I thought you were dead," he finally said.
"Obviously you were mistaken" came the reply.
"What interest have you in this thing, anyway?"
"You tried to kill Fred Cassidy," he said, "and I've invested a lot in that boy's education."
"I did not associate the name," Zeemeister replied. "But I never really intended to harm him."
"That is not the way that I heard it."
Zeemeister continued to back away, passing through the gate in the guardrail, moving until the rotating platform of the Rhe
"What are you going to do, Al?" Zeemeister inquired, turning back to face the other.
But there was no reply, only a continued advance, a continued twirling of the club, a smile.
At the last instant, before he came into shillelagh range, Zeemeister bolted. Raising one foot to the platform, he sprang back on it, turning, and rushed forward all of two paces. Its rotation, however, had so positioned the apparatus that he collided with the central unit, which faintly resembled a wide hand cupped as in the act of scratching.
His momentum and angle of incidence were such that his stumbling rebound bore him down atop the belt. His knife and the towel-swathed star-stone flew from his hands as he tried to stay his fall. They bounced from the platform down onto the floor as he was borne on into the tu
It apparently turned him inside out.
Which of course delivered the contents of his circulatory and digestive systems to the floor.
Also, it seemed to have inverted all of the organs which were now exposed.
The contents of my own stomach sought egress, reinforced by the noises which had begun about me. Like I said, I looked away. But not in time.
It was Charv who finally managed to get up stomach enough to get to them and throw someone's coat over the remains, where they had fallen from the belt as it advanced toward the perpendicular. Then, and only then, did Ragma's practicality return, punctuated by his near hysterical "The stone! Where is the stone?"
Through watering eyes, I sought for it and then beheld the racing form of Paul Byler, bloody towel clutched beneath his arm, on his way across the hall.
"Once a jolly swagman," he called out, "always a jolly swagman!" and he was gone out the door.
Pandemonium reigned. Over the just and the near just.
My hallucination then gave a final spin to his stick, turned, nodded in my direction and approached us. I rose to my feet, nodded back, found a smile and showed it to him.
"Fred, my boy, you've grown," he said. "I hear you have acquired a high degree and a responsible position. Congratulations!"
"Thank you," I said.
"How are you feeling?"
"Rather like Pip," I told him, "though my expectations are simple things, I never realized what your export-import business was actually all about."
He chuckled. He embraced me.
"Tut, lad. Tut," he said, pushing me back to arm's length again. "Let me look at you. There. So that's how you turned out, is it? Could be worse, could be worse."
"Byler has the stone!" Charv shrieked.
"The man who just left-" I began.
"-shan't get very far, lad. Frenchy is outside to prevent anyone's departing this place with unseemly haste. In fact, if you listen you may hear the clatter of hoofs on marble."
I did, and I did. I also heard profanity and the sounds of a struggle without.
"Who, sir, are you?" Ragma inquired, rising up onto his hind legs and drawing near.
"This is my Uncle Albert," I said, "the man who put me through school: Albert Cassidy."
Uncle Albert studied Ragma through narrowed eyes as I explained, "This is Ragma. He is an alien cop in disguise. His partner is named Charv. He is the kangaroo."
Uncle Al nodded.
"The art of disguise has come a long way," he observed. "How do you manage the effect?"
"We are extraterrestrial aliens," Ragma explained.