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“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 spa

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.

He tried to summon up a hatred of the Wheelers, but he found there was no hatred. They were too alien, too far removed from mankind, to inspire a hatred. They were abstractions of evil rather than actual evil beings, although that distinction, he realized, made them no less dangerous. There had been that other Peter Maxwell and surely he had been murdered by the Wheelers, for when he had been found there had been a curious, repulsive odor lingering, and now, since that moment in Sharp’s office, Maxwell knew what that odor was. Murdered because the Wheelers had believed that the first Maxwell to return had come from the crystal planet and murder had been a way to stop him from interfering with the deal with Time for the Artifact. But when the second Maxwell had appeared, the Wheelers must have been afraid of a second murder. That was why, Maxwell told himself, Mr. Marmaduke had tried to buy him off.

And there was the matter of a certain Monty Churchill, Maxwell reminded himself. When this all was finished, no matter how it might come out, he would hunt up Churchill and make certain that the score he owed him was all evened out.

They came up to the bridge and walked under it and halted.



“All right, you trashy trolls,” Mr. O’Toole yelled at the silent stone, “there is a group of us out here to hold conversation with you.”

“You hush up,” Maxwell told the goblin. “You keep out of this. You and the trolls do not get along.”

“Who,” the O’Toole demanded, “along can get with them. Obstinate things they are and without a shred of honor and of common sense bereft…”

“Just keep still,” said Maxwell. “Don’t say another word.”

They stood, all of them, in the silence of the coming dawn, and finally a squeaky voice spoke to them from the area underneath the far end of the bridge.

“Who is there?” the voice asked. “If you come to bully us, bullied we’ll not be. The loudmouthed O’Toole, for all these years, has bullied us and nagged us and no more we’ll have of it.”

“My name is Maxwell,” Maxwell told the speaker. “I do not come to bully you. I come to beg for help.”

“Maxwell? The good friend of O’Toole?”

“The good friend of all of you. Of every one of you. I sat with the dying Banshee, taking the place of those who would not come to see out his final moments.”

“But drink with O’Toole, you do. And talk with him, oh, yes. And give credence to his lies.”

The O’Toole strode forward, bouncing with wrath.

“That down your throats I’ll stuff,” he screamed. “Let me get my paws but once upon their filthy guzzles-”

His words broke off abruptly as Sharp reached out and, grabbing him by the slack of his trouser-seat, lifted him and held him, gurgling and choking in his rage.

“You go ahead,” Sharp said to Maxwell. “If this little pipsqueak so much as parts his lips, I’ll find a pool and dunk him.”

Sylvester sidled over to Sharp, thrust out his head and sniffed delicately at the dangling O’Toole. O’Toole batted at the cat with windmilling arms. “Get him out of here,” he shrieked.

“He thinks you’re a mouse,” said Oop. “He’s trying to make up his mind if you are worth the trouble.”

Sharp hauled off and kicked Sylvester in the ribs. Sylvester shied off, snarling.

“Harlow Sharp,” said Carol, starting forward, “don’t you ever dare to do a thing like that again. If you do, I’ll-”

“Shut up!” Maxwell yelled, exasperated. “Shut up, all of you. The dragon is up there fighting for his life and you stand here, wrangling.”

They all fell silent. Some of them stepped back. Maxwell waited for a moment, then spoke to the trolls. “I don’t know what’s gone on before,” he said. “I don’t know what the trouble is. But we need your help and we’re about to get it. I promise you fair dealing, but I also promise that if you aren’t reasonable we’re about to see what a couple of sticks of high explosives will do to this bridge of yours.”