party if—ah—we hadn’t gone swaggering around talking as if we knew everything. Maybe these people here aren’t very bright——”
Ross snorted.
Helena went on doggedly, “——not very bright, but they certainly can tell when somebody’s brighter than they are. And naturally they don’t like it. Would you like it? It’s like a really old person talking to a really young person about nothing but age. But here when you’re bright you make everybody feel bad every time you open your mouth.”
“So,” Ross said impatiently, “we can go on begging and drifting. But that’s not what we’re here for. The answer is supposed to be on Earth. Obviously none of the people we’ve seen could possibly know anything about genetics. Obviously they can’t keep this machine civilization going without guidance. There must be people of normal intelligence around. In the government, is my guess.”
“No,” said Helena, but she wouldn’t say why. She just thought not.
The inconclusive debate ended with them on the street again. Bernie, who seemed to enjoy it, begged a hundred dollars. Ross, who didn’t, got eleven dollars hi singles and a few threats of violence for acting like a wise guy. Helena got no money and three indecent proposals before Ross indignantly took her out of circulation.
They found a completely automatic hotel at nightfall. Ross tried to inspect Helena’s room for comfort and safety, but was turned back at the threshold by a staggering jolt of electricity. “Mechanical house dick,” he muttered, picking himself up from the floor. “Well,” he said to her sourly, “it’s safe. Good night.”
And later hi the gents’ room, to Bernie: “You’d think the damn-fool machine could be adjusted so that a person with perfectly innocent intentions could visit a lady——”
“Sure,” said Bernie soothingly, “sure. Say, Ross, frankly, is this Earth exactly what you expected it to be?”
The attendant moved creakily across the floor and said hopefully, “Dune?”
13
THEIR second day on the bum they accumulated a great deal of change and crowded into a telephone booth. The plan was to try to locate their starship and find out what, if anything, could be done for Sam Jones.
An automatic Central conferred with an automatic Information and decided that they wanted the Captain of the Port, Baltimore Rocket Field.
They got the Port Captain on the wire and Ross asked after the starship. The captain asked, “Who wan’sta know, huh?”
Ross realized he had overdone it and shoved Bernie at the phone. Bernie snorted and guggled and finally got out that he jus’ wannit ta know. The captain warmed up immediately and said oh, sure, the funny-lookin’ ship, it was still there all right.
“How about the fella that’s in it?”
“You mean the funny-lookin’ fella? He went someplace.”
“He went someplace? What place?”
“Someplace. He went away, like. I din’t see him go, mister. I got plenty to do without I should watch out for every dummy that comes along.”
“T’ankSi” said Bernie hopelessly at Ross’s signal
They walked the street, deep in thought. Helena sobbed, “Let’s leave him here, Ross. I don’t like this place.”
“No.”
Bernie growled, “What’s the difference, Ross? He can get a snootful just as easy here as anywhere else——”
“No! It isn’t the Doc, don’t you see? But this is the place we’re looking for. All the answers we need are here; we’ve got to get them.”
Bernie stepped around two tussling men on the ground, ineffectually thumping each other over a chocolate-covered confection. “Yeah,” he said shortly.
Helena said: “Isn’t that a silly way to put up a big sign like that?”
Ross looked up. “My God,” he said. A gigantic metal sign with the legend, Buy Smogs——You Can SMOKE Them, was being hoisted across the street ahead. The street was nominally closed to traffic by cheerfully inattentive men with red flags; a mobile boom hoist was doing the work, and quite obviously doing it wrong. The angle of the boom arm with the vertical was far too great for stability; the block-long sign was tipping the too-light body of the hoisting engine on its treads. . . .
Ross made a flash calculation: when the sign fell, as fall it inevitably would, perhaps two hundred people who had wandered uncaringly past the warning flags would be under it.