Chapter 5

The long drawn-out cry from the valley gate had barely died away, before the Hill Bluffer was in motion, heading toward the short table in front of the fireplace. Bill opened his mouth to protest, then quickly shut it again. Now he saw that the room was crowded with Dilbians of all sizes, and probably of both sexes, both standing about and seated at the various benches. At first this crowd had not noticed the Bluffer and Bill, standing just inside the doorway. But as they began to move toward the small, square table at the head of the room, before the fireplace, they drew all eyes upon them, and silence spread out through the room like ripples from a stone flung into a pond. By the time the Bluffer reached the table where the Hemnoid and the black-furred Dilbian sat, that silence was absolute.

The Bluffer stopped. He looked down at the seated Hemnoid and the seated Dilbian.

"Evening, Bone Breaker," he said to the Dilbian, and transferred his gaze to the Hemnoid. "Evening, Barrel Belly."

"Evening to you, Postman," replied Bone Breaker. His unbelievably deep, bass voice had an echoing, resonant quality that made it seem to ring all around them. The outlaw chief was, Bill saw, almost as outsize for a Dilbian as was the Hill Bluffer. Probably not quite as tall as the Bluffer, judged Bill, as he tried to estimate from the seated figure of the outlaw, but heavier in the body, and certainly wider in the shoulders. A shiver trickled coldly down Bill's back. There was an air of competence and authority about this one Dilbian that was strangely at odds with the appearance of other members of that same race that Bill had met so far. The eyes looking at him now out of the midnight black of the furry face had a brilliant, penetrating quality. Could someone like this be holding prisoner a human being for such emotional and obvious reasons as Sweet Thing had attributed to him?

But he had no chance to ponder the question. Because the Hemnoid was, he found, already talking to him, gazing up at him over the Bluffer's furry shoulder, and speaking in a voice which, while not so deep as those of the Dilbians, had the ponderous, liquid quality of some heavy oil, pouring out of an enormous jug.

"Mula-ay, at your service," gurgled the Hemnoid with a darkly sinister sort of cheerfulness. He was speaking Dilbian, and the fact he did so, alerted Bill to answer in the same language—and not fall into the social mistake of speaking out in either human or Hemnoid, of which latter alien tongue he also owned a hypnoed knowledge.

"Or, `Barrel Belly,' as our friends here call me," went on Mula-ay. "I'm a journalist, here to do a series of articles on these delightful people. What brings you among them, my young, human friend?"

"Bill Waltham," answered Bill cautiously. "I'm here as part of our agricultural project at Muddy Nose." Mula-ay might indeed be a journalist, but it was almost certain he was also a Hemnoid secret agent—that was the Hemnoid way.

"Just part of it?" Mula-ay gave a syrupy chuckle as he answered, like a hogshead of molasses being emptied into a deep tank. There was a note of derision in his chuckling. A note that seemed to invite everyone else to join him in laughing over some joke at Bill's expense. This in itself might mean something—or it might not. A love of cruelty was part of the Hemnoid character, as Bill knew. It was a racial characteristic which the Hemnoid culture praised, rather than condemned. Nonetheless, it was not pleasant to be the butt of Mula-ay's joke, whatever it was. Feeling suddenly ridiculous, Bill took his feet out of the back straps of the Bluffer's harness and slid down to stand on the floor.

Now on his feet and facing both the seated Mula-ay and Bone Breaker, Bill found he could look slightly down into the face of the Hemnoid, although his eyes glanced level with the eyes of Bone Breaker.

"Have a place at my table, Pick-and-Shovel," rumbled the outlaw chief. His tone was formal, so that the words came out very like a command. "You too, Postman."

Without hesitation, the Bluffer dropped down on one of the unoccupied stools. Bill walked around and hoisted himself up on the other empty seat. He found himself with Bone Breaker close at his right elbow; while at his left elbow, with only a few feet between them, sat the gross form of Mula-ay, his Buddha-like face still creased in a derisive smile. Opposite, Bill's single ally, the Hill Bluffer, seemed far away and removed from the action.

With the fire lashing its red flames into the air at one side of them, throwing ruddy gleams among the sooty shadows of the bare rafters above them and the outsize figures surrounding him, there came on Bill suddenly a feeling of having somehow stumbled into a nether world, peopled by dark giants and strange monsters. A momentary feeling of helplessness washed through him. All around him, the situation seemed too big for him—physically, emotionally, and even professionally. He broke out rashly and directly to Bone Breaker, speaking across a corner of the table.

"I understand you've got a Shorty here—a Shorty named Dirty Teeth!"

For a long second, the outlaw merely looked at him.

"Why, yes," answered Bone Breaker. Then, with strange mildness, "She did wander in here the other day and I believe she's still around. Seems I remember she told me yesterday she didn't plan to leave for a while—whether I liked it or not."

He continued to gaze at Bill, as Bill sat, momentarily shaken both by his own lack of caution and by Bone Breaker's astonishing answer. Now, while Bill was still trying to collect his scattered wits, Bone Breaker spoke again.

"But let's not get into that now, Pick-and-Shovel," said the outlaw chief, still in that tone of surprising mildness. "It's just time for the food and drink. Sit back and make yourself comfortable. We'll have dinner first. Then we can talk."

Mula-ay, Bill saw, was still grinning at him, evidently hugely enjoying Bill's confusion and discomfiture.

"Well . . . thanks," said Bill to Bone Breaker.

A couple of Dilbian females were just at this moment coming to the table with huge platters of what appeared to be either boiled or roasted meat, enormous irregular chunks of brown material that seemed to be some kind of bread, and large wooden drinking containers.

"What's the matter, Pick-and-Shovel?" Bone Breaker inquired mildly, as the wooden vessels were being poured full of a dark brown liquid, which Bill's nose told him was probably some form of native beer. "Nothing wrong with the food and drink, is there? Dig in."

"Quite right," Mula-ay echoed the Dilbian with an oily chuckle, cramming his own large mouth full of bread and meat and lifting the wooden tankard to wash the mouthful down. "Best food for miles around."

"Not quite, Barrel Belly," replied Bone Breaker, turning his deceptive mildness this time upon the Hemnoid. "I thought I told you. Sweet Thing is the best cook in these parts."

"Oh yes—yes," agreed the Hemnoid hastily, swallowing with a gulp, and beaming hugely at the outlaw, "of course. How could it have slipped my mind? Good as this is, it isn't a patch on what Sweet Thing could cook. Why, sure!"

Bone Breaker, Bill thought, must possess an iron fist within the velvet glove of this apparent mildness of his, judging by the reaction of the Hemnoid. Now the black-furred outlaw's eyes were coming back to Bill. Bill hastily picked up a chunk of meat and began gnawing on it. Oh well, he thought, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Conversation in general had ceased, not merely at their own head table, but about the hall, as the Dilbians present settled down to the serious business of eating. Their industry in performing that task was awesome enough from a human's point of view. Bill had never thought of himself as a particularly light eater—in fact, at Survival School, he had been accused of just the opposite. But compared to these Dilbians, and to the Hemnoid at his left elbow, his performance as a trencherman was so insignificant as to seem ridiculous.

To begin with, somewhere between six and eight pounds of boiled meat had been dumped upon his wooden plate, along with what looked like about the equivalent of two loaves of bread. The wooden flagon alongside his plate looked as if it could hold at least a quart or two of liquid, and it had been generously filled.

After a first attempt at trying to keep up with the oversized appetites and capacities of those around him, Bill gave up. He scattered the food around on his plate as much as possible to make it look as if he had eaten, and resigned himself to pretending to be busy with the drinking flagon, which, as it became more and more empty, got easier to handle.

He had just, somewhat to his own surprise, managed at last to drain the final mouthful of liquid from this oversized utensil and set it back down on the table, when to his dismay he saw Bone Breaker turn and lift a pawlike hand. One of the serving Dilbians came over and refilled the flagon.

Bill gulped.

"Very good. Very good," gurgled Mula-ay, tossing off at a gulp his own refilled flagon, which if anything was a little bit bigger than Bill's. "Our Shorty is quite an eater and drinker"—he added in a deprecating tone—"for a Shorty."

"Man don't lick the world by filling his belly," growled the Hill Bluffer.

An instinct warned Bill against glancing appreciatively in the Bluffer's direction. Nonetheless, he warmed inside, at this evidence of support by the lanky Dilbian.

"But a man's got to lick the world sometime," said the Hemnoid, chuckling richly as if this was some rare kind of joke. "Isn't that so, Pick-and-Shovel?"

Bill checked himself on the verge of answering, and picked up his heavy drinking utensil in order to gain time.

"Well . . ." he said, and put the vessel to his lips.

As he pretended to swallow, over the circular wooden rim of the container, he unexpectedly caught sight of a small slim, non-Dilbian figure moving along next to a far wall, until it reached the big double doors which still stood open to the twilight without. It passed through those doors and was gone. But not before Bill, staring after it over the rim of his drinking vessel, had identified the figure as human—and female, at that.

Hastily, he replaced the drinking container on the table, turning to Bone Breaker.

"Wasn't that—" he had to think a moment to remember the Dilbian name for her, "Dirty Teeth, I just saw going out the door?"

The huge Dilbian outlaw chief stared back down at Bill with dark, unreadable eyes.

"Why, I don't know, Pick-and-Shovel," answered Bone Breaker. "Did you say you saw her?"

"That's right," replied Bill, a little grimly, "she just went out the doors there. You didn't see her? You're facing that way."

"Why," said Bone Breaker mildly, "I don't remember seeing her. But as I said, she's around here some place. It could have been her. Why don't you take a look for yourself, if you want?"

"I think I'll do just that," replied Bill. He swung around on the stool and dropped to the floor. To his discomfort and dismay, he discovered that the dangling of his legs in midair over the sharp edge of the stool had put the right leg to sleep. A sensation of pins and needles was shooting through it now, and it felt numb and unreliable. Trying not to hobble, he turned and headed toward the big, open, double door.

Finally he reached the wide-open doors and stepped thankfully into the twilight outside. Looking first right and then left he saw that even the guards who had been lounging there were gone now. For a moment, as his gaze swept the gloaming that was settling down over the barricaded valley, a feeling of annoyance began to kindle in him. He could not discover anywhere that slim, girlish figure he had seen passing within the hall. Then abruptly his eyes located her—hardly more than a dark shadow against the darkening loom of the wall of an outbuilding some fifty feet away.

He went down the steps at a bound and headed toward her at a run, just as she turned the corner of the outbuilding and disappeared.

The soft turf all but absorbed the sound of his thudding boots as he ran. He reached the corner of the building and came swiftly around it. Suddenly, he was almost on top of her, for she had been merely idling on her way, it appeared, her head down as if she was deep in thought.

What do you say in a situation like this, wondered Bill, as he hastily put on the brakes; and she, still deep in thought, continued to wander on, evidently without having heard him. He searched his mind for her real name, but all that would come up from his memory in this winded moment was the nickname of Dirty Teeth that the Dilbians had given her. Finally, in desperation, he compromised.

"Hey!" he said, moving up behind her.

She jumped, and turned. From a distance of only a few feet away, in the growing dimness of the twilight, he was able to make out that her face was oval and fine-boned, her hair was brown and smooth, fitting her head almost like a helmet, and her eyes were startling green and wide. They widened still further at the sight of him.

"Oh, here you are!" she cried in English. "For heaven's sake, what do you mean by coming here, of all places? Didn't you know any better than to charge into a delicate situation like this, the moment you landed, like a bull into a china shop?"