Alan Foster - The Metrognome and Other Stories

"If J.W. wants to lay a claim to it, I don't see as how I can legally go in and take it away from them."

"This is ridiculous," snorted Tut, turning away in mounting frustration. "Utterly ridiculous!"

"That it may be," conceded the sheriff, "but I've heard that about plenty of laws. Ridiculous or not, they all seem to stand up in court. Now, if you want me to go out to J.W.'s and take that spaceship or whatever it is away from him, you'd better find me some legal grounds to do it with."

"There is, naturally, no precedent for such a matter," mused Calumet thoughtfully. "If we could obtain a writ from a high authority giving you permission, from the capital, say. An order from the governor of the state of Texas ought to suffice, don't you think?"

Biggers nodded very slowly, impressed. "If you can get me that, I'd certainly be bound to go in and enforce it, son."

Chester looked at the younger scientist with fresh respect. "Can you do that?"

"I think so." The Cajun physicist smiled shyly. "May I use your telephone, Sheriff?"

"I'd like to let you, Mr. Calumet, but," he said apologetically, "the county budget's been kind of tight lately. They keep a tight watch on how we spend our money. There's a pay phone just outside the station."

Calumet grinned. "That will do." The three scientists left the office, leaving Chester and the sheriff seated across from each other. The driver sat impassively nearby.

"I don't think I've ever seen three people quite as excited as that bunch of yours," Biggers said conversationally.

"They have reason to be excited, Sheriff. If I didn't have so many other things to worry about, I'd be just as excited and anxious as they are."

A moment's silence, then Biggers leaned forward suddenly and spoke in a fashion new to Chester. "You know, I've been a sheriff, deputy and chief, in this county for close on thirty-five years now, and not once in those thirty-five years did I have occasion to think I might be making the wrong decision." He looked across at the major.

"What do you think? Should I go take that thing from J.W. without waiting for proper authority?"

The honesty and forthrightness that would keep Joe Chester from ever making brigadier replied, "I wouldn't go against thirty-five years' judgment, Chief."

Biggers leaned back in his frayed swivel chair, pleased and relieved. "That's what I was hoping you'd say, Major." He drew a plug of tobacco from his shirt pocket, bit a hunk off, and offered the same to Chester.

The major waved it away with a smile. "No thanks, never tried the stuff. "

"You should," Biggers told him, his mouth full of juice. "Helped me give up cigarettes thirty years ago." He smiled a wide, brown-stained smile. "Also helped me get rid of my first wife." And he leaned over and spit delicately into a cuspidor hidden behind the old desk.

Calumet hadn't been bragging. He knew the right people in Austin, but even so, the wheels of government creaked instead of spinning. It was several days before the formal document, dutifully signed by the governor, arrived at the post office in Breckenridge.

Thus armed, the little group set out again for the Shattuck ranch, accompanied by a second car that held a deputy and a reluctant Sheriff Biggers.

It also held Josiah Chester. The second car provided him with away of avoiding the company of the three complaining scientists. They'd had him crawling the walls of the country motel the past few days while they waited for the state order to arrive. He enjoyed the chance to ride instead with the soft-spoken sheriff for a change.

"Do you think we'll have any trouble?" Chester was asking him.

Biggers didn't have to consider the question. "Naw. J.W.'s a good man. Stubborn, sure, and at that only half as stubborn as his missus, but they're good law-abiding folks. J.W. will read every word of that writ"-he gestured at the formal-looking envelope resting on the patrol car's dash-"and then his wife'll read it, and then he'll shrug and say, 'What's got to be will be.' And then he'll do his damnedest to help you get that thing out of his barn and loaded for you.

"A shame I have to do this. You folks shouldn't have tried to push them around."

"Not me," corrected Chester quickly. "My charges let their excitement runaway with them."

"I guess I can understand that," declared the sheriff sympathetically. "I'm looking forward to seeing this visitor from Mars myself."

"Not Mars," Chester corrected gently. "We're fairly sure it's from much farther out than Mars."

"Is that God's truth?" Biggers murmured. "Me, I still can't believe in radio."

It was late afternoon hurrying toward evening when the two cars pulled into the open area before the sprawling Shattuck home. This time it was Mrs. Shattuck who was first out to greet them, wiping dirty hands on the seat of her jeans. They were surely the same ones, Chester reflected, that she'd been wearing days ago, only they'd been washed in the interval.

"Expected to see you back sooner than this," she said by way of hello.

"We moved as fast as we could," Goldberg assured her, the touch of frost in her voice nicely matching that in the air.

"I'll bet you did;" said the younger woman. She turned, roared toward the house. "David! Go find your father. Tell him the eggheads from Houston are back!"

Chester repressed a smile even as Tut and Calumet winced, while Goldberg grew more superior than before.

"Hello, Amos," Mrs. Shattuck said to the sheriff.

He tapped the brim of his hat as he replied. "Afternoon, Beth. I'm sorry about this."

"Damn silly of you. We told these folks to look you up. Now, don't you worry about a thing, Amos. You just do what you have to do."

"I thought you'd say something like that, Beth."

She looked impatiently behind her, standing on tiptoe to see over a fence. "Now, where's J.W.-that tank inlet filter ought to be fixed by now."

"Is that it?" the sheriff asked Chester, pointing toward the barn. His voice was touched with awe.

The multiple-faced craft sat as before on the lip of the hayloft, still shining as brightly as before. Its multiple patterns of inlaid lights continued their steady, exotic blinking. Even this far away Chester could hear the faint mechanical beat from within.

Hmm-hmm-hmm . . . buzz-hmm-buzz . . . tick! Hmmhmm-hmm . . . buzz-hmm-buzz . . . tick!

"Sure is pretty," was the sheriff's first and only comment.

"Ain't it, though?" agreed Beth Shattuck. "Fits in right nice with the rest of the lights." Sarah Goldberg gave her a venomous glare..

"That J.W.?" asked the sheriff.

Beth Shattuck turned and looked. "That's him." Her extraordinary voice rent the air again. "Hurry up, dammit!"

Chester recognized the tall, lanky figure of Jesse Shattuck but not the man accompanying him. Both were dressed alike in flannel shirts, dirt-encrusted jeans, and well-used work shoes, although those worn by the stranger were not nearly as scuffed and battered as the rancher's. Something else didn't fit. The man's long white sideburns were too neatly clipped, his demeanor different even at a distance. His face was pink instead of earthenware-red like Shattuck's.

"Howdy," the rancher said, greeting Chester. He ignored the scientists, nodded once at the sheriff. "Hello, Amos."

"J.W.," the sheriff murmured. "Who's your friend?"

"Oh, this is an old acquaintance of the missus, Amos., Mr. Wheaton, meet Sheriff Biggers."

"I'm pleased," the smaller, softer man said, shakin hands. He had a voice like an off-tune organ, cracked butt powerful. He shook hands with Chester, stepped back.

"Would your first name by any chance be Cable?" asked Jean Calumet uncertainly.

"By any chance I am unable to deny it," the mad replied.

Chester revised his initial appraisal of the newcomer again. He was not, he decided firmly, a handyman.