It stopped and the elderly stripe-wearer opened the door for them. Ross looked on the busy street for anything resembling a station house and found none.
The cop said, “Okay, you people. Get going. An’ let’s don’t have no trouble or I’ll run you in.”
Ross yelled in outrage, “This is a frame-up! You have no right to turn us loose. We demand to be arrested and tried!”
“Wise guy,” sneered the cop, climbed into the wagon and drove off.
They stood forlornly as the crowd eddied and swirled around them. “There was a plate of sandwiches at that party,” Helena recalled wistfully. “And a ladies’ room.” She began to cry. “If only you hadn’t acted so darn superior, Ross! I’ll bet they would have let us have all the sandwiches we wanted.”
Bernie said unexpectedly, “She’s right. Watch me.”
He buttonholed a pedestrian and said, “Duh.”
“Yeah?” asked the pedestrian with kindly interest.
Bernie concentrated and said, “Duh. I yam losted. I yam broke. I losted all my money. Gimme some money, mister, please?”
The pedestrian beamed and said, “That is real tough luck, buddy. If I give you some money will you send it to me when you get some more? Here is my name wrote on a card.”
Bernie said, “Sure, mister. I will send the money to you.”
“Then,” said the pedestrian, “I will give you some money because you will send it back to me. Good luck, buddy.”
Bernie, with quiet pride, showed them a piece of paper that bore the interesting legend Twenty Dollars.
“Let’s eat,” Ross said, awed.
A machine on a restaurant door changed the bill for a surprising heap of coins and they swaggered in, making beelines for the modest twin doors at the rear of the place. Close up the doors were not very modest, but after the initial shock Ross realized that there must be many on this planet who could not read at all. The washroom attendant, for instance, who collected the “dimes” and unlocked the booths. “Dime” seemed to be his total vocabulary.
By comparison the machines in the restaurant proper were intelligent. The three of them ate and ate and ate. Only after coffee did they spare a thought for Dr. Sam Jones, who should about then be awakening with a murderous hangover aboard the starship.
Thinking about him did not mean they could think of anything to do.
“He’s in trouble,” Bernie said. “We’re in trouble. First things first.”
“What trouble?” asked Helena brightly. “You got twenty dollars by asking for it and I suppose you can get plenty more. And I think we wouldn’t have got thrown out of that party if—ah—we hadn’t gone swaggering around talking as if we knew everything. Maybe these people here aren’t very bright—”
Ross snorted.
Helena went on doggedly, “—not very bright, but they certainly can tell when somebody’s brighter than they are. And naturally they don’t like it. Would you like it? It’s like a really old person talking to a really young person about nothing but age. But here when you’re bright you make everybody feel bad every time you open your mouth.”
“So,” Ross said impatiently, “we can go on begging and drifting. But that’s not what we’re here for. The answer is supposed to be on Earth. Obviously none of the people we’ve seen could possibly know anything about genetics. Obviously they can’t keep this machine civilization going without guidance. There must be people of normal intelligence around. In the government, is my guess.”
“No,” said Helena, but she wouldn’t say why. She just thought not.
The inconclusive debate ended with them on the street again. Bernie, who seemed to enjoy it, begged a hundred dollars. Ross, who didn’t, got eleven dollars in singles and a few threats of violence for acting like a wise guy. Helena got no money and three indecent proposals before Ross indignantly took her out of circulation.
They found a completely automatic hotel at nightfall. Ross tried to inspect Helena’s room for comfort and safety, but was turned back at the threshold by a staggering jolt of electricity. “Mechanical house dick,” he muttered, picking himself up from the floor. “Well,” he said to her sourly, “it’s safe. Good night.”
And later in the gents’ room, to Bernie: “You’d think the damn-fool machine could be adjusted so that a person with perfectly innocent intentions could visit a lady—”
“Sure,” said Bernie soothingly, “sure. Say, Ross, frankly, is this Earth exactly what you expected it to be?”
The attendant moved creakily across the floor and said hopefully, “Dime?”
XIII
Their second day on the bum they accumulated a great deal of change and crowded into a telephone booth. The plan was to try to locate their starship and find out what, if anything, could be done for Sam Jones.
An automatic Central conferred with an automatic Information and decided that they wanted the Captain of the Port, Baltimore Rocket Field.
They got the Port Captain on the wire and Ross asked after the starship. The captain asked, “Who wan’sta know, huh?”
Ross realized he had overdone it and shoved Bernie at the phone. Bernie snorted and guggled and finally got out that he jus’ wannit ta know. The captain warmed up immediately and said oh, sure, the funny-lookin’ ship, it was still there all right.
“How about the fella that’s in it?”
“You mean the funny-lookin’ fella? He went someplace.”
“He went someplace? What place?”
“Someplace. He went away, like. I din’t see him go, mister. I got plenty to do without I should watch out for every dummy that comes along.”
“T’anks,” said Bernie hopelessly at Ross’s signal.
They walked the street, deep in thought. Helena sobbed, “Let’s leave him here, Ross. I don’t like this place.”
“No.”
Bernie growled, “What’s the difference, Ross? He can get a snootful just as easy here as anywhere else—”
“No! It isn’t the Doc, don’t you see? But this is the place we’re looking for. All the answers we need are here; we’ve got to get them.”
Bernie stepped around two tussling men
