Sounds of scuffling came from the front of the place. Carol and Maxwell turned around in their chairs to look in the direction from which the scuffling came, but there wasn’t much that one could see.
A man suddenly loomed on top of the table and began to sing:
Hurrah for Old Bill Shakespeare;
He never wrote them plays;
He stayed at home, and chasing girls, Sang dirty rondelays
Jeers and catcalls broke out from over the room and someone threw something that went sailing past the singer. Part of the crowd took up the song:
Hurrah for Old Bill Shakespeare;
He never wrote them…
Someone with a bull voice howled: “To hell with Old Bill Shakespeare!”
The room exploded into action. Chairs went over. There were other people on top of tables. Shouts reverberated and there was shoving and pushing. Fists began to fly. Various items went sailing through the air.
Maxwell sprang to his feet, reached out an arm and swept it back, shoving Carol behind him. Oop came charging across the tabletop with a wild war whoop. His foot caught the bucket and sent the ice cubes flying.
“I’ll mow ’em down,” he yelled at Maxwell. “You pile ’em to one side!”
Maxwell saw a fist coming at him out of nowhere and ducked to one side, bringing his own fist up in a vicious jab, hitting out at nothing, but aiming in the direction from which the fist had come. Over his shoulder came Oop’s brawny arm, with a massive fist attached. It smacked into a face with a splattering sound and out beyond the table a figure went slumping to the floor.
Something heavy and traveling fast caught Maxwell behind the ear and he went down. Feet surged all around him. Someone stepped on his hand. Someone fell on top of him. Above him, seemingly from a long ways off, he heard Oop’s wild whooping.
Twisting around, he shoved off the body that had fallen across him and staggered to his feet.
A hand grabbed him by the elbow and twisted him around.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Oop. “Someone will get hurt.”
Carol was backed against the table, bent over, with her hands clutching the scruff of Sylvester’s neck. Sylvester was standing on his hind legs and pawing the air with his forelegs. Snarls were rumbling in his throat and his long fangs gleamed.
“If we don’t get him out of here,” said Oop “that cat will get his steak.”
He swooped down and wrapped an arm around the cat, lifting him by the middle, hugging him tight against his chest.
“Take care of the girl,” Oop told Maxwell. “There’s a back door around here somewhere. And don’t leave that bottle behind. We’ll need it later on.”
Maxwell reached out and grabbed the bottle.
There was no sign of Ghost.
“I’m a coward,” Ghost confessed. “I admit that I turn chicken at the sight of violence.”
“And you,” said Oop, “the one guy in the world no one can lay a mitt on.”
They sat at the rude, square, rickety table that Oop once, in a moment of housekeeping energy, had knocked together from rough boards. Carol pushed away her plate. “I was starved,” she said, “but not any more.”
“You’re not the only one,” said Oop. “Look at our putty cat.”
Sylvester was curled up in front of the fireplace, his bobbed tail clamped down tight against his rump, his furry paws covering his nose. His whiskers stirred gently as his breath went in and out.
“That’s the first time in my life,” said Oop, “I ever saw a saber-toother have more than he could eat.”
He reached out for the bottle and shook it. It had an empty sound. He lumbered to his feet and went across the floor, knelt and raised a small door set into the floor, reaching down with his arm and searching in the space underneath the door. He brought up a glass fruit jar and set it to one side. He brought up a second fruit jar and set it beside the first. Finally he came up triumphantly with a bottle.
He put the fruit jars back and closed the door. Back at the table, he snapped the sealer off the bottle and reached out to pour drinks.
“You guys don’t want ice,” he said. “It just dilutes the booze. Besides, I haven’t any.”
He jerked a thumb back toward the door hidden in the floor. “My cache,” he said. “I keep a jug or two hid out. Some day I might break a leg or something and the doc would say I couldn’t drink…”
“Not with a broken leg,” said Ghost. “No one would object to your drinking with a broken leg.”
“Well, then, something else,” said Oop.
They sat contentedly with their drinks, Ghost staring at the fire. Outside a rising wind worried at the shack.
“I’ve never had a better meal,” said Carol. “First time I ever cooked my own steak stuck on a stick above an open fire.”
Oop belched contentedly. “That’s the way we did it back in the Old Stone Age. That, or eat it raw, like the saber-toother. We didn’t have no stoves or ovens or fancy things like that.”
“I have the feeling,” said Maxwell, “that it would be better not to ask, but where did you get that rack of ribs? I imagine all the butcher shops were closed.”
“Well, they were,” admitted Oop, “but there was this one and on the back door it had this itty bitty padlock. …”
“Someday,” said Ghost, “you’ll get into trouble.”
Oop shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not this time. Primal necessity-no, I guess that’s not the phrase. When a man is hungry he has a right to food anywhere he finds it. That was the law back in prehistoric days. I imagine you still might make a case of it in a court of law. Besides, tomorrow I’ll go back and explain what happened. By the way,” he said to Maxwell, “have you any money?”
“I’m loaded,” Maxwell told him. “I carried expense money for the Coonskin trip and I never spent a cent of it.”
“On this other planet you were a guest,” said Carol. “I suppose I was,” said Maxwell. “I never did figure out our exact relationship.”
“They were nice people?”
“Well, yes, nice-but people, I don’t know.”
He turned to Oop. “How much will you need?”
“I figure a hundred ought to settle it. There is the meat and the busted door, not to mention the bruised feelings of our friend, the butcher.”
Maxwell took his billfold from his pocket and, counting out some bills, handed them to Oop.
“Thanks,” said Oop. “Someday I’ll pay you back.”
“No,” said Maxwell. “The party is on me. I started out to take Carol to dinner and things got somewhat upset.”
On the hearth, Sylvester stretched and yawned, then went back to sleep, lying on his back now, with his legs sticking in the air. Ghost asked, “You’re on a visit here, Miss Hampton?”
“No,” said Carol, surprised. “I work here. What gave you that idea?”
“The tiger,” said Ghost. “A bio-mech, you said. I thought, naturally, you were with Bio-mech.”
“I see,” said Carol. “ Vienna or New York.”
“There is a center also,” said Ghost, “somewhere in Asia. Ulan Bator, if my memory is. correct.”
“You’ve been there?”
“No,” said Ghost. “I only heard of it.”
“But he could,” said Oop. “He can go anywhere. In the blinking of an eyelash. That’s why the folks at Supernatural continue to put up with him. They hope that someday they can come up with whatever he has got. But Old Ghost is cagey. He’s not telling them.”
“The real reason for his silence,” said Maxwell, “is that he’s on Transport’s payroll. It’s worth their while to keep him quiet. If he revealed his traveling techniques, Transport would go broke. No more need of them. People could just up and go anywhere they wished, on their own-a mile or a million light-years.”
“And he’s the soul of tact,” said Oop. “What he was getting at back there was that unless you are in Bio-mech
