'Really, Major Chester,' exclaimed Tut from the back of the wagon as the engine turned over, 'how can we simply leave like this? They might do anything with the artifact after we're gone.' He nodded toward the ranch house.
'They could bury it somewhere in one of these endless fields. If it doesn't generate sufficient radiation of a type we can detect, we might never locate it. Or he could be overcome by a bumpkin's curiosity and try to take it apart. He might ruin it completely. The importance, the knowledge at stake here . . .' He shook his head in disbelief.
'This situation is absolutely insane. This would never happen in Massachusetts.'
'That's right, Mr. Tut,' admitted Chester, turning to look back over the seat as they backed up and the sergeant sent the car toward the highway. 'This isn't Massachusetts. And if you don't believe me-' He pointed toward the house receding to one side and behind them. '-look over there, toward the front door. You'll see a very big teenage boy standing there with a rifle about as big as he is. He's been there ever since we started toward the barn.
'You don't go around threatening people out here, Mr. Tut. They don't look kindly on it, and they have a strong sense of right and wrong. If you and Miss Goldberg could have been a little more polite and acted less like barons of the fief, we might have been spared all this. It's too late now, though. You challenged that man, and he reacted.'
'More polite, he says,' Goldberg finally sputtered violently. 'In the face of that, he asks us to be polite!'
Chester sighed and settled himself back in his seat alongside the driver. 'Now we're going to have to get proper legal confirmation of our claim. That means telling at least one new person about the craft's landing. And this was supposed to be kept quiet.' He glanced sharply over his left shoulder. 'Or have you all forgotten that in your haste to get at the thing?'
'All right, sir, so it's supposed to be kept quiet, sir,' fumed 'hit. 'So let's do this quietly . . . quietly contact Fort Hood and have a couple of truckloads of troops brought in. Show the locals a bit of force. We'll show them that-'
Chester cut him off, shaking his head steadily. 'You don't seem to understand, Mr. Tut. Not only isn't this Massachusetts, it's not Cam Ranh Bay or Saigon-or Moscow, either. We don't want these people talking to the media, now or later.
'Calm down and relax, and we'll salvage this business. Oh, I don't think you have to worry about this Shattuck burying or breaking into your precious UFO, either. Believe me, I'm just as anxious to get at its insides as you are.'
'Why aren't you worried?' Goldberg asked challengingly.
'Because they like the craft –up there in the hayloft, lighting up their little 'Noel' sign and showing off the rest of their Christmas decorations. They didn't chase us off because they're planning anything underhanded. They did it because they think they're in the right.'
Chester would have been interested in the family meeting the Shattucks were conducting as the station wagon skidded and bumped and bounced its frigid way toward distant Breckenridge. The result of that meeting was a long-distance phone call that Mrs. Shattuck placed to San Francisco.
Sheriff Biggers of Breckenridge was built like a tarnished fireplug. Enormous arms stuck out of his long white shirt, currently rolled up to his elbows. They were coated with a healthy crop of red curls, as was his head. He had the look of a man who'd worked hard all his life and would continue to do so until his body finally betrayed him.
His voice, however; was a surprise, as gentle and smooth as processed cheese. 'You say this thing landed on Shattuck's property, hmm? I know J.W. and his missus.' Biggers chuckled at a private thought. 'The wrong people to get riled, Major.'
'But surely you can see the importance to us of this discovery, Sheriff,' Goldberg broke in ingratiatingly from the back of the office. 'This represents our first contact with another intelligent civilization. We must be allowed to examine it.'
'Yes, I can see all that, ma'am,' admitted Biggers, scratching a thick ear. 'Trouble is, as near as I can see, the Shattucks have a right to it, since it came down on their land.' He spread his hands in an expansive gesture of helplessness.
'If J.W. wants to lay a claim to it, I don't see as how I can legally go in and take it away from them.'
'This is ridiculous,' snorted Tut, turning away in mounting frustration. 'Utterly ridiculous!'
'That it may be,' conceded the sheriff, 'but I've heard that about plenty of laws. Ridiculous or not, they all seem to stand up in court. Now, if you want me to go out to J.W.'s and take that spaceship or whatever it is away from him, you'd better find me some legal grounds to do it with.'
'There is, naturally, no precedent for such a matter,' mused Calumet thoughtfully. 'If we could obtain a writ from a high authority giving you permission, from the capital, say. An order from the governor of the state of Texas ought to suffice, don't you think?'
Biggers nodded very slowly, impressed. 'If you can get me that, I'd certainly be bound to go in and enforce it, son.'
Chester looked at the younger scientist with fresh respect. 'Can you do that?'
'I think so.' The Cajun physicist smiled shyly. 'May I use your telephone, Sheriff?'
'I'd like to let you, Mr. Calumet, but,' he said apologetically, 'the county budget's been kind of tight lately. They keep a tight watch on how we spend our money. There's a pay phone just outside the station.'
Calumet grinned. 'That will do.' The three scientists left the office, leaving Chester and the sheriff seated across from each other. The driver sat impassively nearby.
'I don't think I've ever seen three people quite as excited as that bunch of yours,' Biggers said conversationally.
'They have reason to be excited, Sheriff. If I didn't have so many other things to worry about, I'd be just as excited and anxious as they are.'
A moment's silence, then Biggers leaned forward suddenly and spoke in a fashion new to Chester. 'You know, I've been a sheriff, deputy and chief, in this county for close on thirty-five years now, and not once in those thirty- five years did I have occasion to think I might be making the wrong decision.' He looked across at the major.
'What do you think? Should I go take that thing from J.W. without waiting for proper authority?'
The honesty and forthrightness that would keep Joe Chester from ever making brigadier replied, 'I wouldn't go against thirty-five years' judgment, Chief.'
Biggers leaned back in his frayed swivel chair, pleased and relieved. 'That's what I was hoping you'd say, Major.' He drew a plug of tobacco from his shirt pocket, bit a hunk off, and offered the same to Chester.
The major waved it away with a smile. 'No thanks, never tried the stuff. '
'You should,' Biggers told him, his mouth full of juice. 'Helped me give up cigarettes thirty years ago.' He smiled a wide, brown-stained smile. 'Also helped me get rid of my first wife.' And he leaned over and spit delicately into a cuspidor hidden behind the old desk.
Calumet hadn't been bragging. He knew the right people in Austin, but even so, the wheels of government creaked instead of spinning. It was several days before the formal document, dutifully signed by the governor, arrived at the post office in Breckenridge.
Thus armed, the little group set out again for the Shattuck ranch, accompanied by a second car that held a deputy and a reluctant Sheriff Biggers.
It also held Josiah Chester. The second car provided him with away of avoiding the company of the three complaining scientists. They'd had him crawling the walls of the country motel the past few days while they waited for the state order to arrive. He enjoyed the chance to ride instead with the soft-spoken sheriff for a change.
'Do you think we'll have any trouble?' Chester was asking him.
Biggers didn't have to consider the question. 'Naw. J.W.'s a good man. Stubborn, sure, and at that only half as stubborn as his missus, but they're good law-abiding folks. J.W. will read every word of that writ'-he gestured at the formal-looking envelope resting on the patrol car's dash-'and then his wife'll read it, and then he'll shrug and say, 'What's got to be will be.' And then he'll do his damnedest to help you get that thing out of his barn and loaded for you.
'A shame I have to do this. You folks shouldn't have tried to push them around.'
'Not me,' corrected Chester quickly. 'My charges let their excitement runaway with them.'
