The profile took the fish and poked it. “Real enough, Joe. You done great. Now if the rocket flyers here are okay you’re okay. Then you got twenny points and the prize.
“You’re a rocket flyer, ain’t you, Buster?”
Ross realized he was being addressed. He croaked: “Men of Earth, we come from a far-distant star in search of—”
The profile said, “Just a minute, Buster. Just a minute. You ain’t from Earth?”
“We come from a far-distant star in search of—”
“Stick to the point, Buster. You ain’t a rocket flyer from Earth? None of you?”
“No,” Ross said. He furtively pinched himself. It hurt. Therefore he must be awake. Or crazy.
The profile was sorrowfully addressing a downcast Joe. “You should of asked them, Joe. You really should of. Now you don’t even get the three points for the swordfish, because you went an’ tried for the combo. It reely is a pity. Din’t you ask them at all?”
Joe blustered, “He did say sump’m, but I figured a rocket flyer was a rocket flyer, and they come out of a rocket.” His lower lip was trembling. Both of the ladies of his party were crying openly. “We tried,” Joe said, and began to blubber. Ross moved away from him in horrified disgust.
The profile shook its head, turned and announced: “Owing to a unfortunate mistake, the search group of Dr. Joseph Mulcahy, Sc. D., Ph. D., got disqualified for the combination. They on’y got three points. So that’s all the groups in an’ who got the highest?”
“I got fifteen! I got fifteen!” screamed a gorgeous brunette in a transport of joy. “A manhole cover from the museum an’ a las’ month Lipreaders Digest an’ a steering wheel from a police car! I got fifteen!”
The others clustered about her, chattering. Ross said to the profile mechanically: “Man of Earth, we come from a far-distant star in search of—”
“Sure, Buster,” said the profile. “Sure. Too bad. But you should of told Joe. You don’t have to go. You an’ your friends have a drink. Mix. Have fun. I gotta go give the prize now.” He hurried off.
A passing blonde, stacked, said to Ross: “Hel‑looo, baldy. Wanna see my operation?” He began to shake his head and felt Helena’s fingers close like steel on his arm. The blonde sniffed and passed on.
“I’ll operate her,” Helena said, and then: “Ross, what’s wrong with everybody? They act so young, even the old people!”
“Follow me,” he said, and began to circulate through the party, trailing Bernie and a frankly terrified Helena, buttonholing and confronting and demanding and cajoling. Nothing worked. He was greeted with amused tolerance and invited to have a drink and asked what he thought of the latest commersh with its tepid trumpets. Nobody gave a damn that he was from a far-distant star except Joe, who sullenly watched them wander and finally swaggered up to Ross.
“I figured something out,” he said grimly. “You made me lose.” He brought up a roundhouse right, and Ross saw the stars and heard the birdies.
Bernie and Helena brought him to on the street. He found he had been walking for some five minutes with a blanked-out mind. They told him he had been saying over and over again, “Men of Earth, I come from a far-distant star.” It had got them ejected from the party.
Helena was crying with anger and frustration; she had also got a nasty scare when one of the vehicles had swerved up onto the sidewalk and almost crushed the three of them against the building wall.
“And,” she wailed, “I’m hungry and we don’t know where the ship is and I’ve got to sit down and—and go someplace.”
“So do I,” Bernie said weakly.
So did Ross. He said, “Let’s just go into this restaurant. I know we have no money—don’t nag me please, Helena. We’ll order, eat, not pay, and get arrested.” He held up his hand at the protests. “I said, get arrested. The smartest thing we could do. Obviously somebody’s running this place—and it’s not the stoops we’ve seen. The quickest way I know of to get to whoever’s in charge is to get in trouble. And once they see us we can explain everything.”
It made sense to them. Unfortunately the first restaurant they tried was coin-operated—from the front door on. So were the second to seventh. Ross tried to talk Bernie into slugging a pedestrian so they could all be jugged for disturbing the peace, but failed.
Helena noted at last that the women’s wear shops had live attendants who, presumably, would object to trouble. They marched into one of the gaudy places, each took a dress from a rack and methodically tore them to pieces.
A saleslady approached them dithering and asked tremulously: “What for did you do that? Din’t you like the dresses?”
“Well yes, very much,” Helena began apologetically. “But you see, the fact is—”
“Shuddup!” Ross told her. He said to the saleslady: “No. We hated them. We hate every dress here. We’re going to tear up every dress in the place. Why don’t you call the police?”
“Oh,” she said vaguely. “All right,” and vanished into the rear of the store. She returned after a minute and said, “He wants to know your names.”
“Just say ‘three desperate strangers,’ ” Ross told her.
“Oh. Thank you.” She vanished again.
The police arrived in five minutes or so. An excited elder man with many stripes on his arms strode up to them excitedly as they stood among the shredded ruins of the dresses. “Where’d they go?” he demanded. “Didja see what they looked like?”
“We’re them. We three. We tore these dresses up. You’d better take them along for evidence.”
“Oh,” the cop said. “Okay. Go on into the wagon. And no funny business, hear me?”
They offered no funny business. In the wagon Ross expounded on his theme that there must be directing intelligences and that they must be at the top. Helena was horribly depressed because she had never been arrested before and
