Kelly gave an imitation of a dog trying to think, registered pain, wagged his tail twice, woofed at a butterfly and sat down, panting. It had obviously always been his impression that he belonged to Chris, an impression Bob had wisely never tried to discourage. Explaining something that abstract to Kelly was (a) a long and complicated task, and (b) utterly hopeless anyhow. Kelly earned his own keep—he caught rabbits—which made up for the nuisance he was when he caught a porcupine; so nobody in the family but Chris much cared whom he thought he belonged to.
There was at last some activity around the parching city. Small groups of men, made so tiny by distance that they were almost invisible except for their bright yellow steelworkers’ helmets, were patrolling the bare perimeter. There was probably a law about that, Chris reflected. Equally probably it would be the last Earth law Scranton would ever be
He imagined it so vividly that for a moment he had the illusion of hearing their voices. Then he realized with a start that it was not an illusion. A flash of yellow hard hats revealed another group of patrollers working their way through the shacks at the foot of the embankment and coming in his direction.
With the ingrained prudence of the lifelong poacher, he took at once to the bushes on the other side of the roadbed. Not only would he be invisible from there, but, of course, he could no longer see the patrol; however, he could still hear it.
“… anybody in these shacks. Ask me, it’s a waste of time.”
“The boss says look, so we look, that’s all. Myself, I think we’d make out better in Nixonville.”
“Them tramps? They can smell work ten miles away. People on this side of town, they used to
Chris cautiously parted the shrubbery and peered out. The gang was still out of sight, but there was another group coming toward him from the other direction, walking along the old roadbed. He let the bushes swing closed hastily, wishing that he had retreated farther up the mountainside. It was too late for that now, though. The new patrol was close enough to hear the brush rustle, and would probably see him too if he was in motion.
Down in the valley there was a sudden, slight hum, like bee-buzz, but infinitely gentler, and deeper in tone. Chris had never heard anything exactly like it before, but there could be no doubt in his mind about what it was: Scranton’s spindizzies were being tuned. Was he going to have to hide right through the take-off, and miss seeing it? But surely the city wouldn’t leave until its patrols were back on board!
The voices came closer, and beside him Kelly growled softly. The boy grasped the dog firmly by the scruff and shook him gently, not daring to speak. Kelly shut up but all his muscles were tensed.
“Hey! Look what we got here!”
Chris froze as completely as a rabbit smelling fox; but another voice struck in at once.
“You guys get outa here. This here’s my place. You got no business with me.”
“Yeah? You didn’t hear anything about getting out of the valley by noon today? There’s a poster on your own front door that says so. Can’t read, huh, Jack?”
“I don’t do everything any piece of paper says. I live here, see? It’s a lousy dump, but it’s mine, and I’m staying, that’s all. Now blow, will you?”
“Well, now, I don’t know if that’s all, Jack. It’s the law that you’re supposed to be vacated.
“It’s the law that I got a right to my own property, too.”
A new voice chimed in from the embankment, not fifteen feet from where Chris and Kelly crouched. “Trouble down there, Barney?”
“Squatter. Won’t move. Says he owns the place.”
“That’s a laugh. Get him to show you his deed.”
“Ah, why bother with that? We ain’t got the time. Let’s impress him and get moving.”
There was the meaty sound of a blow landing, and a grunt of surprise. “Hey, he wants to play rough! All right, mister—”
More impacts, and then the sound of something smashing—glass or crockery, Chris guessed, but it might have been furniture. Before Chris could do more than grab at him convulsively, Kelly burst into a volley of high, howling yelps, broke free, crashed out of the bushes and went charging across the embankment toward the fracas.
“Look out! Hey—Where’d that mutt come from?”
“Out of the bushes there. Somebody’s in there still. Red hair, I can see it. All right, Red, out in the open—on the double!”
Chris rose slowly, ready to run or fight at the drop of a hard hat. Kelly, on the far side of the embankment, gave up his idiot barking for a moment, his attention divided between the struggle in the shack and the group now surrounding Chris.
“Well, Red, you’re a husky customer. I suppose you didn’t hear about any vacate order, either.”
“No, I didn’t,” Chris said defiantly. “I live in Lakebranch. I only came over to watch.”
“Lakebranch?” the leader said, looking at another of his leathery-faced patrolmates.
“Hick town, way out back some place. Used to be a resort. Nothing out there now but poachers and scratchers.”
“That’s nice,” the other man said, tipping back his yellow helmet and grinning. “Nobody’ll miss you, I guess, Red. Come along.”
“What do you mean, come along?” Chris said, his fists clenching. “I have to be home by five.”
“Watch it—the kid’s got some beef on him.”
The other man, now clearly in charge, laughed scornfully. “You scared? He’s a kid, isn’t he? Come on, Red, I got no time to argue. You’re here past noon, we got a legal right to impress you.”
“I told you, I’m due home.”
“You should have thought of that before you came here. Move along. You give us a hard time, we give you one, get it?”
Below, three men came out of the shack, holding hard to the gardener Chris had seen earlier. All looked considerably battered, but the sullen red-neck was secured all the same.
“We got this one—no thanks to you guys. Thought you was going to be right down. Big help you was!”
“Got another one, Barney. Let’s go, Red.”
The press-gang leader took Chris by the elbow. He was not unnecessarily violent about it, but the movement was sudden enough to settle matters in Kelly’s slow brain. Kelly was unusually stupid, even for a dog, but he now knew which fight interested him most. With a snarl which made even Chris’s hackles rise—he had never in his life before heard a dog make such a noise, let alone Kelly—the animal streaked back across the embankment and leaped for the big man’s legs.
In the next thirty seconds of confusion Chris might easily have gotten away—there were a hundred paths through the undergrowth that he might have taken that these steel puddlers would have found it impossible to follow—but he couldn’t abandon Kelly. And with an instinct a hundred thousand years old, the patrol fell on the animal enemy first, turning their backs on the boy without even stopping to think.
Chris was anything but a trained in-fighter, but he had instincts of his own. The man with Kelly’s teeth in him was obviously busy enough. Chris lobbed a knob-kerrie fist at the man next to him. When the target looked stunned but failed to fall, Chris threw the other fist. It didn’t land where Chris had meant it to land, exactly, but the man staggered away anyhow, which was good enough. Then Chris was in the middle of the melee and no longer had any chance even to try to call his shots.
After a while, he was on the broken granite of the old roadbed, and no longer cared about Scranton, Kelly or even himself. His head was ringing. Over him, considerable swearing was going on.
“—more trouble than he’s worth. Give him a shoe in the head and let’s get back!”
“No. No killing. We can impress ’em, but we can’t bump ’em off. One of you guys see if you can slap Huggins awake.”
“What are you—chicken all of a sudden?”
The press-gang leader was breathing hard, and as Chris’s sight cleared, he saw that the big man was sitting on the ground wrapping a bloody leg in a length of torn shirt. Nevertheless he said evenly: “You want to kill a kid
