“Wait minute—your cure sounds as bad as the disease! We’re a couple of miles from the most densely populated section of the country! You’ll annihilate thousands!”
“You really are hipped on conservation,” Fom Berj said. “However, you can’t cure tentacle mildew without trimming off a few tentacles. Here goes . . . ”
“No!” Waverly grabbed for the detective’s long arm as the latter placed a spatulate finger on a large pink button. Taken by surprise, Fom Berj yanked the limb back, struck a lever with her elbow. At once, the canopy snapped up and was instantly ripped away by the hundred-mile-per-hour slipstream. Icy wind tore at Waverly’s pajamas, shrieked past his face, sucked the air from his lungs. Fom Berj grabbed for the controls, fought the bucking twifler as it went into a spin, hurtling down toward the black surface of the sea.
“Wivery! I can’t hold it! Vertigo! Take over . . . ” Waverly barely caught the words before the massive body of the feminine detective slumped and slid down under the dash. He reached, caught the wildly vibrating control tiller, put all his strength into hauling it back into line. The flier tilted, performed an outside loop followed by a snap-roll. Only Waverly’s safety harness prevented him from being thrown from the cockpit. He shoved hard on the tiller, and the twifler went into a graceful inverted chandelle. Waverly looked “up,” saw a vast spread of dark-glittering, white-capped ocean slowly tilting over him. With a convulsive wrench of the tiller he brought the Atlantic down and under his keel and was racing along fifty feet above the water. He dashed the wind-tears from his eyes, saw the lights of the barge rushing at him, gave a convulsive stab at four buttons at random and squeezed his eyes shut.
The twifler veered sharply, made a sound like ripped canvas and halted as suddenly as if it had dropped an anchor. Waverly pitched forward; the harness snapped. He hurtled across the short prow, clipping off a flagstaff bearing a triangular pink ensign, fell six feet and was skidding head over heels across the deck of the barge.
* * *
For a moment, Waverly lay half-stunned; then he staggered to his feet, holding a tattered strip of safety harness in one hand. The twifler was drifting rapidly away, some ten feet above the deck of the barge. He scrambled after it, made a despairing grab at a trailing harness strap, missed, skidded into the rail and clung there, watching the air car dwindle away downwind.
Behind him, a brilliant crimson spotlight blared into existence. Hoarse voices shouted. Other lights came up. The deck, Waverly saw, was swarming with excited figures. He ducked for the cover of a three-foot scupper, squinted as the floodlight caught him square in the face. Something hard was pressing into his hip. He groped, came out with the compact automatic he had jammed into the waistband of his pajamas. He raised the gun and fired a round into the big light. It emitted a deep-toned whoof!, flashed green and blue and went out.
“Hey!” a rubbery voice yelled. “I thought you boobs stuck a fresh filament in number twelve!”
“Get them extra persons in position before I put ’em over the side,” another voice bassooned.
“Zero minus six mini-units and counting,” a hoot came from on high.
The gobbling mob surged closer. Waverly clutched the pistol, made three yards sideways, then rose in shadow and darted toward a low deckhouse ahead. He rounded its corner, almost collided with an apparition with coarse-grained blue wattles, two-inch eyes of a deep bottle green, a vertically hinged mouth opening on triple rows of coppery-brown fangs, all set on a snaky neck rising from a body like a baled buffalo robe shrouded in leather wings; then he was skittering backward, making pushing motions with both hands.
“Hasrach opp irikik!” the creature boomed. “Who’re youse? You scared the pants off me in that getup! Whaddya want?”
“Izlik s-sent me,” Waverly improvised.
“Oh, then you want to see the boss.”
“Ah, yes, precisely. I want to see the boss.”
“You want the feeding boss, the mating boss, the leisure-time boss, the honorary boss, the hereditary boss or the compulsory boss?” The monster snapped a blue cigar butt over the rail.
“The, er, boss boss!”
“Balvovats is inside, rescripting scene two. Din’t you hear what happened out on the coast?”
“As a matter of fact, I just got in from Butte—”
“How did the fireball routine go?”
“Very impressive. Ah, by the way, how long before things get underway here?”
“Another five minutes.”
“Thanks.”
Waverly sidled past the horror, made for a lighted doorway fifty feet away. Above, invisible behind banked floodlights, someone was gabbling shrilly. Two beings appeared at the entrance as Waverly reached it. One was an armored creature mincing on six legs like a three-foot blue crab. The other appeared to be a seven-foot column of translucent yellow jelly.
“Here, you can’t go in there,” the crablike one barked. “Ik urikik opsrock, you know that!”
“Wait a minute, Sol,” the gelatinous one burbled in a shaky voice like a failing tape recorder. “Can’t you see he’s just in from location? Look at the costume.”
“A lousy job. Wouldn’t fool anybody.”
“What you got, Mac? Make it fast. Balvovats is ready to roll ’em.”
“Ip orikip slunk,” Waverly said desperately.
“Sorry, I don’t savvy Glimp. Better talk local like the style boss said.”
“It’s the rotiple underplump!” Waverly barked. “Out of the way, before all is lost!”
“I got to have a word with Mel about his runners, they’re a little too uppity to suit me.” Waverly caught the words as the two exchanged glances and moved from the doorway. He stepped through into a room dazzling with light and activity. Opposite him, a fifty-foot wall glittered with moving points of light. Before it, on high stools, half a dozen small orange-furred creatures bristling with multi-elbowed arms manipulated levers. On a raised dais to the left, a circular being with what appeared to be four heads shouted commands in all directions at once, through four megaphones.
“Okay!” Waverly heard the call. “We’re all ready on one, three and four! What’s the matter with two and five?”
“Here, you!” A scaled figure in a flowing pageboy bob thrust a sheaf of papers into his hand. “Take this to Balvovats; he’s got holes in his head!” Waverly gaped after the donor as it turned away. The noise around him made his ears ring. Everything was rushing toward a climax at an accelerating pace, and if he didn’t do something fast . . .
“Stop!” he yelled at the room at large. “You can’t do this thing!”
“It’s a heart-breaker, ain’t it, kid?” a bulging being on his left chirruped in his ear. “If I would have been directing this fiasco, I’d of went for a real effect by blasting the ice caps. Now, there’s a spectacle for you! Floods, storms—”
“Here, take these to Balvovats!” Waverly shoved the papers toward a passing creature resembling a fallen pudding. The bulgy being nictitated a membrane at him, snorted, said, “Okay, okay, I’m going, ain’t I?” and pushed off through the press. At a discreet distance, Waverly followed.
6
The room the impressed messenger led him to was a circular arena crowded with screens, dials, levers, flashing lights, amid a cacophony of electronic hums and buzzes, all oriented toward a central podium on which was mounted a red and white, zebra-striped swivel chair, wide enough to accommodate triplets.
“Where’s Balvovats?” The unwitting guide collared a jittery organism consisting of a cluster of bristly blue legs below a striped polo shirt.
“He stepped over to Esthetic Editing for a last-minute check,” a piping voice snapped. “Now leggo my shirt before I call the shop steward!”
“Give him these!” The bulbous intruder handed over the papers and departed. Waverly faded back behind the column-mounted chair, looked around hastily, put a foot on a rung—
“Two minutes,” a PA voice rang. “All recorder units on station and grinding.”
“Hey, you, back outside on Set Nine! You heard the two-minute call!” Waverly looked down at a foot-high composition of varicolored warts mounted on two legs like coat-hanger wire.
“Mind your tone, my man,” Waverly said. “Balvovats sent me. I’m sitting in for him. Is the, er, power on?”
“Cripey, what a time for an OJT! Okay, sir, better get on up there. About a minute and a half to M millisecond.”
Waverly clambered to the seat, slid into it, looked over an array of levers, pedals, orifices, toggle switches and paired buttons with varicolored idiot lights. “Don’t monkey with the board, it’s all set up,” the warty one whined at his elbow. “I balanced her out personal. All you got to do is throw the load to her when you get the flash and push-field is up to full Q.”
“Naturally,” Waverly said. “It wouldn’t do at all to push, say, this little green button here . . . ?”