'We never have learned that,' Tesserax said. 'Currently, the most popular theory is that the solar and gravitational fields of our home world were in some way peculiarly deadly to this single alien race. As you've seen, many other races come and go, and are not bothered by the invisible killer. Something in the physiology of those centaurs made them highly susceptible to our geography, perhaps.'
'They lost the war, in the end?' Brutus asked.
'Of course,' Tesserax said. 'We exterminated them.'
The Protector stood on its four powerful legs and began to jump up and down on the invisible shield, screaming, spitting, flailing at the air with its barbed tongue.
'Does he attack everyone who comes to your world?' the detective asked, watching for a crack in a barrier he couldn't see to begin with.
'Well, it doesn't have much choice,' Tesserax said. 'It has to fulfill its mythical role, after all. It must attempt to destroy any alien which sets foot on maseni soil, since the myth doesn't specify that it should attack only hostile aliens. There are three hundred Protectors, one in every spaceport on the planet, relentlessly bashing their brains out on these power shields that we've had to erect to contain them.'
'Don't they ever learn that it's no use? Don't they understand that the barrier's there all the time?' Helena asked.
'Oh, I suppose they learned that scores of years ago. But they can't help themselves. The myth says attack: they attack.'
'Poor dears,' Helena said.
'Dumb sons of bitches,' Brutus said.
Tesserax said, 'Oh, I wouldn't feel any pity for them. The myth doesn't specify any intelligence in a Protector, merely an ability to spot and destroy an alien. They really can't think; they're rather mindless constructs. No need to be sorry for their lot.' He looked away from the monster overhead and said, 'Shall we go through customs and get out of here, so it can go back to its roost? It's not harmful, but it does make a fearful screeching sound that gets on the nerves of the terminal employees.'
Five minutes later, having passed through customs without opening their luggage, they boarded a fluttercar limousine which was waiting for them outside the terminal. The passenger compartment of the car consisted of two extremely comfortable bench seats which faced each other across a good two yards of leg room. Tesserax and the hell hound sat at opposite ends of the front-facing bench, while Jessie and Helena sat close together on the rear- facing seat.
A maseni robot, efficient and well maintained, loaded their bags into the spacious trunk, slipped into the driver's niche where a front seat would have been in a manually steered vehicle, and connected itself to the control leads which dangled from the instrumentless dashboard: acceleration, brakes, steering, turn signals, and systems monitors. He pulled them away into a heavy flow of traffic and quickly accelerated above two hundred miles an hour….
'We're all very pleased that you've chosen to participate, my friend,' the maseni said. 'We believe that your refreshingly alien viewpoint may tear this case wide open.'
Jessie said, 'Where are we going — into those mountains?' He indicated a range of snow-capped peaks that flanked the rushing fluttercar, needling the leaden sky a great distance west of them, beyond the flat grass plains that now lay all around.
'That's correct, my friend,' Tesserax said. He was speaking in his own language now; and whereas his form of address in English was 'sir', now it had become 'my friend' in translation. Jessie, Brutus and Helena had all taken speed-teach hypno lessons in the maseni tongue on the way from Earth and, in two short days, had absorbed enough to speak it well. 'Those mountains are among the highest on our world and are called the
'That's where the beast has been marauding?' Helena asked. She leaned toward the window and stared at the rugged slopes, and she thought that was just the sort of place for some invisible gargantuan to play havoc with an unsuspecting populace. The mountains looked remote, more alien than anything she had yet seen on this world though, in actual fact, they did not look that much different from mountain ranges back on Earth.
'Yes, up there, my friend,' Tesserax said. 'The beast has slaughtered nearly five hundred flesh-and-blooders and more than four hundred maseni supernaturals, all residents of the
The robot chauffeur made several turns onto smaller freeways and, in time, took them close to the foothills that lay around the greater peaks. They started the climb on a two-lane road that was closely framed by black- boled, white-leafed trees that swayed in the wind like fragile dancers, now and then bending to canopy the road with a frothy lace of snowy leaves.
They were more than an hour into the foothills when a car passed them doing quite a bit more than their sedate hundred miles an hour. It forced them toward the burm, horn blaring, then whipped over a rise and was out of sight.
'You have highway crazies here, too,' Jessie said.
When they topped the hill over which the car had gone, they found that it had turned and was barreling back at them, on the wrong side of the highway.
The robot wheeled the car into the other lane.
The unknown driver countered, turned back to his proper lane and came at them at full speed.
'He'll kill us all!' Helena cried.
The robot jerked their limousine violently back into their own lane and narrowly avoided a collision.
As the other car flashed by, Jessie thought he saw a middle-aged, bald, red-faced man looking over at them and laughing. 'Was that an Earthman?' he asked Galiotor Tesserax.
'I think—' the maseni began.
The red-faced man in the car roared past them again, slued back and forth on the road in front of them, disappeared over another hillock.
'It
When they crested the next rise, the stranger, as before, had turned and was roaring back at them, blowing his horn and weaving from side to side of the narrow road.
'I can't watch,' Helena said.
'I wish I had a dish of bourbon,' the hell hound moaned. The stranger weaved past them, somehow avoiding a collision, was gone, his horn fading, gradually, until they could no longer hear it at all.
'I think that wasn't a real Earthman,' Tesserax said. 'I believe that was one of our more recent myth figures.'
'You maseni have a myth figure that looks like an Earthman?' Jessie asked, watching pebbly gray lids slide down and lift off the deepset yellow eyes.
'Yes, my friend,' Tesserax said. He fluffed his orange robes. 'We maseni are incapable of becoming intoxicated, as you may know. Indeed, your own race is somewhat unique in that respect, compared to all the races we have thus far encountered. Certainly, we have drugs that make us — as you might say 'high'. But we are always in command of our senses, perfectly rational and able to exercise as good judgment as before taking drugs. It fascinates our people that your race can become so mindlessly drunk. The fact that tens of thousands are killed every year on your highways by drunken drivers has sparked the imagination of the maseni people. A Drunken Driver is a rather mysterious, inexplicable creature to us. And, in the past few years, a new myth has arisen to explain accidents on our own highways.'
'The myth of the Drunken Driver?' Jessie asked, not quite able to get that one down.
'Yes,' Tesserax said. 'Enough superstitious people have taken up belief in the marauding Drunken Driver who haunts our home world highways that, in fact, he has come to exist. Fortunately, though he's a recent supernatural, laws have been passed to keep him from killing anyone. He may only careen around, frightening people — as you just saw.'
For a while, everyone was silent, digesting this. Then the detective said, 'I didn't realize that diplomatic and social relations between our two races could give rise to new superstitions.'
'Oh, yes, my friend. It's surprising there are no new Earth-born myths based on things your people have picked up from our culture.'
