Chapter 3

"No," said Bill automatically.

It was an instinctive reply. Out of the welter of odd names and odder statements that the Hill Bluffer had just been throwing at him, the only thing that stood out clearly was that Bill was being asked to do something besides instruct Dilbians in how to use agricultural implements. Apparently Lafe Greentree had broken his leg and had been taken off-planet for medical treatment, leaving Anita Lyme in charge. And evidently she had interfered, where she should not, in native affairs, and been made a prisoner.

The Hill Bluffer roared, jerking Bill's attention back to the tall Dilbian.

"No!" exploded the Hill Bluffer incredulously. Bill with some relief—he had been ready to start running again—realized that the other was not expressing fury so much as he was expressing outrage. "No, he says! Here, a female Shorty's got herself captured, and you say you won't go after her! Why, if I'd known you weren't anything like the Half-Pint-Posted, I'd never had let myself in for this job! I'd never even have considered it!"

"Half-Pint-Posted?" echoed Bill, as the Dilbian paused for breath.

"Of course!" snorted the Bluffer. "He was just a Shorty too, but did he hesitate to take on the Streamside Terror? I ask you?"

"I don't know," answered Bill, half-deafened by the other's voice in this enclosed space. "Who's the Streamside Terror?"

"Why, just the toughest Upland hill-and-alley brawler between Humrog Village and Wildwood Peak!" said the Bluffer. "Just the roughest—why, the Terror'd chew this Bone Breaker outlaw up for breakfast—" The Bluffer's voice abruptly lowered, and became judicious, "not that Bone Breaker's an easy match, of course. It's just that he's used to fighting with that blade and shield of his in the sissy Lowland fashion. Barehanded, I'll bet the Terror could take him any day. And the Half-Pint-Posted took the Terror."

Bill's mind staggered under the impact of this additional, improbable information.

"You mean this Shorty—a human like me," said Bill, "fought this Streamside Terror you talk about, without weapons?"

"Didn't I say so?" demanded the Bluffer. "Bare-handed and man-to-man. Not only that, but beside a mountain creek—the Terror's favorite spot. And Half-Pint licked him."

"How do you know—" Bill was beginning, when the Bluffer interrupted him.

"How do I know?" shouted the Bluffer in fresh outrage. "Didn't I carry Half-Pint on my back until we caught up with the Terror? Didn't I stand by him and watch while they tangled? Are you questioning my word, Pick-and-Shovel—the word of the official postman between Humrog Village and Wildwood Peak?"

"No—no, of course not," said Bill, still bewildered. "It's just that I hadn't heard—about it before now." As he spoke, his mind was racing. There must be more to it than the Bluffer was telling. Probably there was some kind of gimmick that had kept the match from being the simple massacre of a human being that by rights it would have had to have been.

Also—a new thought struck him—if Greenleaf was actually gone and his assistant was honestly in trouble, then he did indeed have a responsibility to do whatever was necessary to get her out of it. At least, to begin with, he could go and talk to this Dilbian who had taken her, and who evidently was an individual of importance among the outlaws—if not their chief. If nothing else, he could stall until the Resident returned. An ordinary broken leg should not keep the man away from his job much more than the three or four days of the round trip required to take him to a hospital ship and bring him back here.

Bill scrambled about in his mind for words to explain his first refusal to go to Outlaw Valley to help Dirty Teeth. He was neither a quick nor easy liar and excuses did not come readily to him. Luckily, at that moment he remembered that underneath the wild improbabilities of the situation here on Dilbia, there still existed the prosaic organization of any off-world project. Project Spacepaw might be the most fouled-up human endeavor ever to take place beyond Earth's orbit around the Sun, but behind it there had to exist the ordinary official machinery of equipment and regulation.

"Now, listen to me!" he said to the Hill Bluffer. "I'm as good a Shorty as this Half-Pint-Posted or any other one of us you've met; and I'm not going to let one of my own people be held against her will if I can help it. But you've got to remember I'm not the head Shorty here. Before I go dashing off to Outlaw Valley, I've got to see if the Tricky Teacher left me any message telling me what to do. If he did, I've got to do what he said. If he didn't, then I can do things my own way. You're just going to have to wait until I see if he left that message."

"Well, why didn't you say so?" demanded the Hill Bluffer, obviously relieved. "You don't have to explain things twice to an official postman, where something like a message is concerned. If the Tricky Teacher left you a piece of mail to read before you started out, that comes before anything. Though what he should've done was give it to me to deliver to you. It wouldn't have cost him anything extra, and that way he'd be sure you got it right off. Of course," said the Hill Bluffer, suddenly interrupting himself, "come to think of it, he couldn't. Because I just got here yesterday and he was already gone; and probably he didn't want to trust it to any of these Lowlanders. Why, one of them's just as liable to lose it down a well, or go off and leave it lying someplace—"

He checked himself again.

"Anyway, you go read your message, Pick-and-Shovel," he said, "and I'll go dig up Sweet Thing and bring her back here."

He headed toward the door.

"Just a minute," Bill called after him. "Who's Sweet Thing, anyway?"

"Thought you knew," replied the Bluffer, surprised, opening the door. "More Jam's daughter, of course—More Jam's the innkeeper here in town. Passable enough female, I suppose, but like any Lowland woman, talk your head off, even if she hadn't been listening to those crazy notions of Dirty Teeth. Well, see you in a few minutes—"

Out he went. Bill spun around and headed back through the halfway open door into the living quarters of the Residency.

He knew what he was looking for first, whether Greenleaf or Anita Lyme had actually left him a message or not. Somewhere in this building there would be the official daily log of the project—and the odds were strongest he would find it in the room holding the off-plant communications equipment and project records.

It took him four or five minutes of opening doors before he discovered the room for which he searched. It was a square, white-walled room with office equipment and the two banks of consoles which severally operated the Residency computing equipment and the off-planet communications equipment. On one of the room's two desks, he saw the heavy, black-bound book which would be the project log. He sat down hastily at the desk and flipped it open, searching for the latest entries.

He found them within seconds, but they proved to be unusually uninformative, merely listing equipment loaned to the farmers and the times and subjects of conferences between either Greenleaf or Anita Lyme and the local natives. There was none of the diary-like chattiness that isolated project members usually added to the log entries in situations like this on Dilbia, and which might have told Bill a great deal more than he now knew about Greenleaf and the girl. Three days ago, there was a brief entry in Greenleaf's upright, hard-stroked hand:

. . . fell from ladder climbing to replace blown-away roofing shakes on Residency roof above north wall. Broke leg. Have called for medical assistance. 

The next entry, the following day, was in a sloping, more feminine hand.

0800 hours, local time. Resident Greenleaf evacuated by shuttle from nearby courier ship, for transportation to closest available hospital ship, for treatment of broken leg. 

1030 hours. Leaving for conference with Bone Breaker at Outlaw Valley. 

Anita Lyme, Trainee Assistant 

That was the last entry in the log, two days ago. There was no message for Bill from either Greenleaf or Anita, though it was highly irregular of the girl to go off without leaving one. Unless, that is, she had honestly expected to be back the same day.

Bill closed the log, got to his feet, and stepped over to the communications equipment. It was a standard console, arranged to put whoever used the equipment in touch with a relay station orbiting the planet, which would in turn re-broadcast the message at multilight velocity to its interstellar destination. Bill had been checked out on its use, as he had been checked out on most general equipment in use on off-world projects. He flipped the power switch and pressed the microphone button.

Nothing happened. The power light on the console did not go on. The microphone did not give out the signal hum that announced it as being in operating condition.

The set was dead.

For a second, Bill stared at it. Then, quickly, he ran over the console, flipping check switches and trying to locate the malfunction. But nothing responded. His hands flew to the toggle-nuts holding the face of the panel in place. Somewhere in the building there would be test equipment and with it, given time, even he ought to be able to trace down what was keeping the set from operating.

"PICK-AND-SHOVEL!"

It was the voice of the Hill Bluffer, roaring for him from the reception room. A second later, it was reinforced by a lighter toned, female Dilbian voice, also calling him. Grimly, Bill dropped his hands and turned away from the console. Fixing the communications equipment would have to wait.

He went rapidly out of the room and down the hall toward the front of the building. A moment later, he stepped into the reception room and found the Bluffer there with his female companion, who was the first to break off shouting for Bill as he came through the door.

"Well, there you are, Pick-and-Shovel!" said Sweet Thing—for this short, compact newcomer could only be that Dilbian female whom the Bluffer had gone to get, thought Bill. "It's high time you got here to Muddy Nose!"

"You knew I was coming?" asked Bill, in the sudden silence as the Bluffer stopped his shouting in turn and nodded genially at Bill.

"Why, of course we knew you were coming!" said Sweet Thing sharply. "Didn't She say She was sending for you? Of course She did. She knew how to handle the situation even if no one else did. As She said, the time had come to strike a blow for our rights. What She said was—"

"Let him get a word in edgewise, will you?" roared the Bluffer, for Bill had valiantly been trying to speak in the face of this torrent of talk.

"Who's She?" asked Bill hurriedly into the moment of silence that followed Sweet Thing's snort.

"She?" answered Sweet Thing, on a rising note. "Why Dirty Teeth, of course! She who has roused us at last to strike for our rights against men who have been telling us what to do all the time!"

The Hill Bluffer snorted.

Sweet Thing snorted.

"Wait—" said Bill hastily, before the situation could degenerate into a private argument between the two Dilbians. "What I want to know is, why is Dirty Teeth being held by Bone Breaker, in the first place?"

"Why, because She's the champion of us women!" said Sweet Thing swiftly. "It comes from listening to Fatties, that's what it does! Bone Breaker wants to force me to go live in that robber's roost of his. Well I won't do it! You can tell him so. Not if he should chop Dirty Teeth up for fish bait. I've got my principles!"

Once more, Sweet Thing's nose elevated itself toward the ceiling.

Bill had felt his heart lurch a little bit at the mention of Dirty Teeth being chopped up for fish bait. The matter seemed to be more serious than he had thought at first. What listening to "Fatties"—the Dilbian name for Hemnoids—had to do with it, was another mystery. Ignoring that for the moment, however, Bill decided to stick to his main line of questioning.

"You mean the only thing that will save Dirty Teeth is if you go live in Outlaw Valley?" Bill demanded.

"Of course not!" retorted Sweet Thing. "All you have to do is go and take Dirty Teeth back from him. Why do you think She sent for you?"

"Well, as a matter of fact . . ." Bill's voice trailed off. He had been about to protest that it had not been Dirty Teeth at all who was responsible for his being here. Just in time, it had occurred to him that the situation was complicated enough already. There was no telling what harm he might do if he revealed that he was not specially appointed by this girl, who appeared to have become something of a local heroine to Sweet Thing, if not to the other females of Muddy Nose. "You say I just go in and get her?"

"Well, I'd certainly teach him a lesson while you're about it—Bone Breaker, I mean," said Sweet Thing. "Imagine the idea of holding prisoner someone like Dirty Teeth! It's just what you'd expect of some scruffy outlaw. Tell him you'll hit him one for me, too!"

"Hit him one—I don't understand—" Bill was beginning, when Sweet Thing exploded.

"Well, I don't see what there is not to understand!" she cried angrily. "I've been explaining and explaining until even a Shorty like you ought to be able to follow it. I won't marry that Bone Breaker unless he gives up his outlaw ways and settles down to being a farmer here in Muddy Nose, like you Shorties say everybody in the Lowlands should do. It's all nonsense about a girl having to go where her husband says. It's only women like Thing-or-Two that pretend to believe the world's coming to an end if any of the old customs get changed. Hah! Why she's really all for the old customs is that if she can get me out of the Inn, she'd have a right as female relative next-of-kin to move into it as inn-keepress in my place. She'd drive my poor old daddy crazy in a week! No, no—Dirty Teeth explained it all to us! We've just as much right to say where we're going to settle down as the men have! Bone Breaker's as bad as the rest, but he really made a mistake when he decided to make Dirty Teeth a prisoner out in the valley. I wish I could see his face when you do it!"

"Do what?" demanded Bill, baffled.

"Challenge him, of course!" snapped Sweet Thing, turning on her heel and opening the street door. "Naturally, he's not going to give Dirty Teeth back to you unless you fight him for her and win, like the Half-Pint-Posted did with that mountain man who ran off with a Shorty female. So you better get out there to the valley and do it. I've waited long enough for Bone Breaker as it is, and it's a cinch there's no one else around Muddy Nose with nerve enough to take him on!"

She went out, slamming the door behind her.

A second later, it opened again, and she stuck her nose back in.

"Don't worry about having to get him all riled up before you challenge him," Sweet Thing added. "He knows what you're coming out there for. I sent word to him to expect you a couple of days ago."