In a dingy little Indiana hotel room the fate of
three worlds suddenly hung in precarious balance!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1950.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Winant followed the lanky sheriff down the jail corridor past rows ofempty, plank-walled cells and drew a sharp breath of relief when theyfound the last cubicle still tenanted.
"That's Uncle Ivor, all right," Winant said. "Sorry he caused you somuch trouble, sheriff, but I'll be glad to pay his fine. What's thecharge against him?"
The sheriff rubbed a palm across his drooping mustaches and lookeddoubtfully at the old man who sat on the edge of the cell bunk, thebald dome of his head cradled dejectedly in his hands.
"You couldn't rightly say there is a charge, mister," he admitted."Your uncle popped into Ben Stuart's Drop Inn restaurant night beforelast with a little black box under his arm, naked as a jaybird andtalking like a crazy man.
"'I'm a visitor from Mars,' he says. 'Take me to your president, andquick!' Ben thought he was crazy, or drunk, and ran him out with a meatcleaver, and the old duck went down to the Warner Hotel and pulled thesame goofy act. Pop Warner called me, and I went down and threw the oldcoot into the cooler. I knew right off that he was cracked, because Ieven had to show him how to put on the clothes I brought him. And thewingding he pitched when I took that black box away from him—wow!"
Winant shook his head. "Poor Uncle Ivor," he said commiseratingly. "Thelast time he got away from us he thought he was Mahatma Ghandi, andtried to buy a bus ticket from Cincinnati to New Delhi, India. I foundhim, finally, in Evansville, Indiana. It's amazing how he got this farsouth, but then a mentally-unbalanced person can do surprising things,sometimes."
The sheriff snorted. "Unbalanced, hell," he said. "The old coot'scrazy as a bed-bug. Just got in from Mars, he says, and he wants thepresident of the United States—on the double!"
He unlocked the door and Winant went inside.
"It's all right now, Uncle Ivor," he said gently. The old man raiseda wrinkled, leathery face and stared at him uncomprehendingly. "Let'sgo over to my hotel and get a good meal and a hot bath," Winant urged."Then we'll go home again. Ready, now?"
A few minutes later in the jail office the sheriff pocketed the billWinant gave him and handed over a small lacquered metal box that wassurprisingly heavy for its size.
"Here's your uncle's radio," he said. "New-fangled model, I reckon. Icouldn't make head nor tail of it, so I just left it alone."
Winant lifted the hinged cover and looked inside the box at the neatarray of tiny meters and knobs that covered the control panel.
"A wise decision, sheriff," he said dryly. "Wiser, perhaps, than you'llever know."
The old man stood in the center of Winant's hotel room, the sheriff'sill-fitting denims hanging on his slight frame like the castoffclothing of a scare-crow.
"The box," he said. His voice, after talking for so long, was a hoarse,rasping croak. "Give me the box."
Winant sat in a decrepit wicker chair, holding the box in his lap, hiseyes missing no detail of the old man's shrunken figure with its balddome-like head and wrinkled parchment face.
"I'll give you the box when you tell me something that makes sense," hesaid. "What you've just told me is nothing but a rehash of the storyyou told the sheriff—that your name is Yardana and that you are anenvoy from Mars, sent to Earth to help scientific authorities develop