Ross turned. Behind him stood a mechanical monstrosity vaguely recognizable as a heavily-armed truck, its motor faintly humming. A man leaned darkly from the cab and transfixed them to the ground with a powerful spotlight. From the dazzling circle of light his voice came, hasty and furtive. “Thought it was two women and a man, but I guess you’re the ones. Ugh, those faces on you! Yes, you’re the ones. Get in. Fast.”
The light blinked out. ·· When their eyes adjusted to the dimmer illumination of the stars and the aurora display they saw a side door in the body of the truck standing open. Too, one of the long, slim gun barrels with which the truck seemed copiously supplied swiveled to cover them.
Ross stupidly read aloud a sign on the truck: “Jones Floor-Cover Company. Finest Tile on Jones. Wall-to-Wall a Specialty. ‘Rugs Fit For a Jones’.”
“Yeah,” the man said. “Yeah, yeah. Just don’t try to buy any. Get in, for Jones’ sake! If I’d of known you were half-wits I wouldn’t of taken this job for a million Joneses, cash. Get in!” His voice was hysterical and the gun covering them moved ominously. “If this is a frame——” he began to shrill.
“Get in,” Ross said shakily to the others. They climbed in and the door slammed violently and automatically. Helena began to cry in a preoccupied sort of way and Bernie began a long, mumbling inventory of his own mental weaknesses for ever getting involved in this crackbrained, imbecilic, feeble-minded. . . .
There were windows in the truck body and Ross turned from one to another. He saw the guns on the cab telescope into stubs, the stubs fold into the mounts, the mounts smoothly descend flush with the sheet metal. He saw the cursing driver manipulate a dozen levers as the car began to glide across the green sand, purple-dotted with vegetation. Finally, through the rear window, he saw three figures racing across the sand waving their arms, rapidly being left behind. All he could make out was that they seemed to be two women and a man.
Helena was wailing softly, “———and I am not ugly and just because we’re young and we’re strangers isn’t any reason to go around insulting people——”
From Bernie: “——fatheaded, goggly-eyed, no-browed, slobber-lipped, dim-witted——”
“Shut up,” Ross said softly. “Before I bang both your heads together.”
They stared.
“Thank you. We’ve got to think. What’s this spot we’re in? What can we do about it? I don’t have any F-T-L contact name for Earth and obviously this fellow picked us up by mistake. I saw two women and a man—remember what he said?—just now trying to catch up with us. He seems to be some kind of criminal. Otherwise why a disguised gun-carrier? Why floor coverings ‘but don’t try to buy any’? And Jones seems to be the name of the local political subdivision, the name of the local deity and the currency. That’s important. It points to a rigid one-man dictatorship—Jones, of course, or possibly his dynasty. What course of action should we take? Kick it around. Helena, what do you think?”
“He shouldn’t have said we were ugly,” she pouted. “Isn’t that important?”
“Women!” Ross said grimly. “If you’ll kindly forget the trivial affront to your vanity perhaps we can figure something out.”
Helena said stubbornly: “But he shouldn’t. We’re not. What if they just think we are because they all look alike and we don’t look like them?”
Ross collapsed. After a long pause during which he tried and almost failed to control his temper he said slowly: “Thank you, Helena. You’re wrong, of course, but it was a contribution. You see, you can’t build up such a wild, farfetched theory from the few facts available.” His voice was beginning to choke with anger. “It isn’t reasonable and it isn’t really any help. In fact it’s the God-damndest stupidest imitation of reasoning I have ever——”
“City,” Bernard croaked, pointing. The jolting ride had become smoother, and gliding past the windows were green tiled buildings and street lights.
“Fine,” Ross said bitterly. “We had a few clear minutes to think and now we find they were wasted by the crackpot dissertation of a female and my reasonable attempt to show her the elements of logical thinking.” He put his head in his hands and tried to ignore them, tried to reason it out. But the truck made a couple of sharp turns and jolted to a stop.