“Come on, sister, I’m takin’ you in.”
Genie swung a full-handed slap that sent the gaudily dressed cop staggering back. “Chester, let’s run!” She seized his hand; he straightened painfully, scrambled after her. The crowd parted again, gaping.
“Give it to ’em, kiddo,” a drunk called cheerfully. The cop lunged, tripped over the drunk’s outstretched foot, hit with a crunch.
A narrow alleyway opened ahead; Chester and Genie sprinted down it, rounded a corner, dodged garbage cans, emerged into a sheltered court hung with faded washing.
“I don’t hear anyone chasing us,” Chester gasped. “I don’t know where you’ve landed us, Genie, but we’re a long way from home. It looks like a parody of a twentieth-century scene—except for that pink policeman.”
“I don’t understand it, Chester,” Genie wailed. “I was sure I used the proper angle of pi over rho squared . . . ”
“The mob acted normal enough. Lucky they’re spectator sports.” Chester plucked a long-armed shirt from the lowest line, draped it about Genie’s shoulders. “I’ve got to get you some clothes. Duck into a doorway and look inconspicuous. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Ten minutes later, Chester returned, arms laden. “I found a sporting-goods store,” he panted. “This is a strange place you’ve brought us to, Genie. I had to open something called a charge account.”
Genie wriggled into a pair of nylon panties, size 5, a 34B brassiere, a pair of whipcord riding breeches, a white linen shirt, a green tweed hacking jacket, and a pair of low-cut riding boots.
“You look charming, Genie,” Chester commented. “Like a picture in an old book. Now we can—”
“Oh dear, someone’s coming!” Genie exclaimed. “Shall we hide?”
“You take the doorway; I’ll get back of the garbage bin!” Chester dived for shelter as a cop with a bruised eye appeared at the alley mouth.
“There she is, boys!” he called. “I told youse . . . ”
Chester peered from hiding, saw a half a dozen cops fan out.
“Watch her, boys. She’s some kind of wild dame from the circus. Now, sister, are you going to come along peaceable?”
“Hey, Sarge, I thought you said she was nood.”
“So now she’s got clothes on. It’s the same broad.”
The cops approached warily. “She don’t look tough to me,” a fat cop stated. From shelter, Chester thrust out a foot. The cop, moving briskly for the pinch, hooked an ankle, leaped face first into a patch of spilled garbage. The others charged as Genie darted from the doorway. Hoarse yells rang; cops struggled. Chester sprang to the rescue, put a foot in the garbage slick . . .
A shower of fire shimmered, fading into darkness.
Chester’s head ached. He turned over, snuggled down to go back to sleep. He’d have to complain to the management about the mattress; and he was cold, too. He groped for a blanket, felt a rough wall, opened one eye and stared at iron bars and concrete. He sat up, fingering a large knot at the back of his head.
“Genie?” he called hopefully. There was no answer. He rose and went to the door. With his face against the bars, Chester peered along the corridor. The other cells in view were empty. Twenty feet distant, an unshaven man in blue overalls over tattletale-gray longjohns dozed at a desk under a bare sixty-watt light bulb. There was a curled calendar on the wall behind him, featuring a girl, stripped to a G string, hip boots and a deerstalker cap, holding a BB gun. Chester squinted, made out numerals: 1967. He groaned. Somehow, he thought, Genie had landed them in a grotesque parody of the simple halcyon days of a century before, when life had been leisurely and colorful. Chester called again, softly. Somewhere water dripped. There were faint street noises.
He went back to the gray-blanketed bunk, wincing at the throbbing in his head, and sorted through the objects in the seal-away pockets of his sports jacket. Apparently the local cops hadn’t managed to find them:
A permatch in a silver case.
A plastic credit card, showing a balance of twenty-one credits.
A half-used packet of Chanel dope sticks.
A buttonhole Tri-D pickup, with attached contact screens.
Not much there, Chester reflected sadly, that would be of help in forcing the steel door of the primitive cell. He twiddled the control of the Tri-D idly, winced at the sudden boom of cacophony, turned the volume low.
“Well, Jim,” a tiny voice said. “Here we are in a spaceship, on our way to Venus.”
“Yes, Bob,” an even tinier voice replied. “We barely escaped capture by the corrupt Space Patrol, which fears we will reveal what we’ve learned of their illegal operations.”
“Yes, Jim. However, if we can only reach the safety of Venus ahead of them, we can enlist the help of Professor Zorch, famed for his researches into abstruse scientific matters, and like that . . . ”
Chester flipped the set off. Canned entertainment hadn’t changed. On Tri-D, people were always able to adapt ball-point pens into Mark I blasters and fight their way out of any situation—but what could one do with a high-polymer credit card? Or a dope stick? The Tri-D was no better. As for the permatch . . .
Hmmm. Chester fingered the case, opened it and took out the slender two-inch tube of fused quartz with its cluster of components in a quarter-inch bulb at one end. Hadn’t he read somewhere that it was dangerous to tamper with a permatch, since it was easy to throw the delicate lens alignment out of adjustment?
Carefully, Chester pried off the tiny protective cap, exposing the factory-set adjusting screw. Now he needed a tool.
The stiff corner of the credit card served nicely. Chester thumbed the permatch alight, then minutely turned the screw. The flame darted out in a thin blue streamer. He turned it farther; the flame winked out. He stared at it unhappily. A two-inch flame wasn’t going to help. A faint acrid odor made Chester snort. Someone was burning dog hair. The odor grew stronger. Across the room, a tiny brown dot appeared on the scaled paint of the wall, grew larger, turning black at the periphery. A lazy coil of smoke ascended. Chester gaped, then flicked off the match; the smoke faded.
Back at the barred door, Chester squinted along the tiny tube, pressed the stud. The man in the chair slept on peacefully. A half-inch spot on the desk near his elbow bubbled, smoked. Chester moved the beam cautiously across until the long hairs over the dreamer’s ear curled suddenly. The man’s nose twitched. He slapped at his temple, sat up snorting, looked around. Chester jumped back, dived for the bunk, scrambled under it and huddled in a deep shadow against the wall. The unshaven face appeared at the door, blinking into the gloom. There was a muttered exclamation, then a clash of keys. The door opened. Chester took aim, focused on the callused heel of a large bare foot. The man yelped and hopped, grabbing for the singed member. Chester leveled his fire on the other. The man danced, staring wildly around, then made for the door.
“A poltergeist!” he shouted. “Hey, Harney!”
Chester wriggled out from concealment, ducked through the open door, and slid into the shelter of a gray-painted wall locker as heavy feet pounded in the hall.
“Don’t tell me,” the barefoot cop was shouting. “I seen ’em before, plenty times. They got a kind of attraction fer me. This here one is a bad one. First it picked up m’ desk, then it started throwin’ things, then it give me two hotfoots.”
“Hotfeet,” someone snarled. “See if he’s got a bottle, Lem.”
“Looky here,” the barefoot one started. “I guess you boys never heard the time I seen the saucer . . . ”
“Don’t see no bottle.”
Three large backs loomed a yard from Chester’s concealment. He aimed through a narrow opening between them, focused on a blanket dangling from a bunk in the cell across the corridor. Smoke rose promptly.
“Hey!” one of the cops barked. “They’s su’thin in there!” He backed from view. “I’ll go fer help!”
Chester listened as the three men competed for position; three sets of footsteps receded along the hall. Chester pocketed the permatch and headed for a side entrance.
* * *
Half an hour later, a shabby brown tweed jacket filched from the station covering his modishly cut but conspicuous plastic-appliqué sports jacket, Chester strolled past the stretch of street where he and Genie had first arrived, now obstructed by large wooden signs lettered detour. Police squad cars were parked three deep at the curb. The area around the rug with its two chairs was blocked off by yellow-painted sawhorses hung with red obstruction lights. A crowd of idlers gaped.
“All right, move along,” a cop bawled. “The bomb squad is goin’ in now. You folks wanta get blown up?”