Clifford Simak - The Big Front Yard and Other Stories

Oliver Meek fought manfully to get back his composure as the Prowled pranced down the main street of Asteroid City.

The sidewalks were lined with hundreds of staring faces, faces that dropped in astonishment and disbelief.

Stiffy was yelling at someone. “Now, doggone you, will you believe there is a Prowler?”

And the man he yelled at didn’t have a word to say, just stood and stared.

In the swarm of faces, Meek saw those of the Reverend Harold Brown and Andrew Smith and, almost as if in a dream, he waved jauntily to them. At least, he hoped the wave was jaunty. Wouldn’t do to let them know his knees were too weak to hold him up.

Smith waved back and shouted something, but the Reverend Brown’s jaw hung open and he seemed too wonder-struck to move.

This, thought Meek, is the kind of thing you read about. The conquering hero coming home astride his mighty charger. Only the conquering hero, he remembered with a sudden twinge, usually was a young lad who sat straight in the saddle instead of an old man with shoulders hunched from thirty years of poring over dusty ledgers.

A man was stepping out into the street, a man who carried a gun in hand and suddenly Meek realized they were abreast of the Silver Moon.

The armed man was Blacky Hoffman.

Here, thought Meek, is where I get it. This is what I get for playing the big shot … for being a smart alec, for remembering how cards shouldn’t be dealt and for shooting a man’s gun out of his hand and letting myself be talked into being a marshal.

But he sat stiff and as straight as he could on the Prowler and kept his eyes on Hoffman. That was the only way to do. That was the way all the heroes did in the stories he had read. And doggone, he was a hero. Whether he liked it or not, he was one.

The street was hushed with sudden tension and the very air seemed to be crackling with the threat of direful happenings.

Hoffman’s voice rang crisply through the stillness.

“Go for your blasters, Meek!”

“I have no blasters,” Meek told him calmly. “Your hoodlums took them from me.”

“Borrow Stiffy’s,” snapped Hoffman, and added, with a nasty laugh: “You won’t need them long.”

Meek nodded, watching Hoffman narrowly. Slowly he reached back for Stiffy’s gun. He felt it in his hand, wrapped his fingers tightly around it.

Funny, he thought, how calm he was. Like he had been in the Silver Moon that night. There was something about a gun. It changed him, turned him into another man.

He didn’t have a chance, he knew. Hoffman would shoot before he could ever get the gun around. But despite that, he felt foolishly sure. …

Hoffman’s gun flashed in the weak sunlight, blooming with blue brilliance.

For an instant, a single fraction of a second, Meek saw the flash of the beam straight in his eyes, but even before he could involuntarily flinch, the beam had bent. True to its mark, it would have drilled Meek straight between the eyes … but it didn’t go straight to its mark. Instead, it bent and slapped itself straight between the Prowler’s eyes.

And the Prowler danced a little jig of happiness as the blue spear of energy knifed into its metal body.

“Cripes,” gasped Stiffy, “he draws it! He ain’t satisfied with just taking it when you give it to him. He reaches out and gets it. Just like a lightning rod reaching up and grabbing lightning.”

Puzzlement flashed across Hoffman’s face, then incredulity and finally something that came close to fear. The gun’s beam snapped off and his hands sagged. The gun dropped in the dust. The Prowler stood stock still.

“Well, Hoffman?” Meek asked quietly, and his voice seemed to run all along the street.

Hoffman’s face twitched.

“Get down and fight like a man,” he rasped.

“No,” said Meek, “I don’t do that. Because it wouldn’t be man to man. It would be me against your entire gang.”

Hoffman started to back away, slowly, step by furtive step. Step by step the Prowler stalked him there in the silent street.

Then Hoffman, with a scream of terror, broke and ran.

“Get him!” Meek roared at the Prowler.

The Prowler, with one lightning lunge, one flip of its whip-like neck, got him. Got him, gently, as Meek had meant he should.

Howling in mingled rage and terror, Hoffman dangled by the seat of his pants from the Prowler’s beak. Neatly as any circus horse, the Prowler wheeled and trotted back to the Silver Moon, carrying Hoffman with a certain gentle grace that was not lost upon the crowd.

Hoffman quieted and the crowd’s jeers rang against the dome. The Prowler pranced a bit, jiggled Hoffman up and down.

Meek raised a hand for silence, spoke to Hoffman. “O.K., Mr. Hoffman, call out your men. All of them. Out into the middle of the street. Where we can see them.”

Hoffman swore at him.

“Jiggle him some,” Meek told the Prowler. The Prowler jiggled him and Hoffman bawled and clawed at empty air.

“Damn you,” shrieked Hoffman, “get out into the street. All of you. Just like he said.”

No one stirred.

“Blaine,” yelled Hoffman. “Get out there! You, too, Smithers. Loomis. Blake!”

They came slowly, shame-faced. At a command from Meek they unholstered their blasters and heaved them in a pile.

The Prowler deposited Hoffman with them.

Meek saw Andrew Smith standing at the edge of the sidewalk and nodded to him.

“There you are, Mr. Smith. Rounded up, just like you wanted them.”

“Neat,” said Stiffy, “but not gaudy.”

Slowly, carefully, bones aching, Meek slid from the Prowler’s back, was surprised his legs would hold him up.

“Come in and have a drink,” yelled a dozen voices all at once.

“Bet your life,” agreed Stiffy, licking his chops.

Men were slapping Meek on the back, yelling at him. Yelling friendly things, calling him an old he-wolf.

He tried to thrust out his chest but didn’t succeed too well. He hoped they wouldn’t insist on his drinking a lot of bocca.

A hand tugged at Meek’s elbow. It was the Reverend Brown.

“You aren’t going to leave that beast out here all alone?” he asked. “No telling what he might do.”

“Ah, shucks,” protested Stiffy, “he’s gentle as a kitten. Stands without hitching.”

But even as he spoke, the Prowler lifted his head, almost as if he were sniffing, started down the street at a swinging trot.

“Hey,” yelled Stiffy, “come back here, you cross-eyed crow-bait!”

The Prowler didn’t falter in his stride. He went even faster.

Cold fear gripped Meek by the throat. He tried to speak and gulped instead. He’d just thought of something. The power plant that supplied Asteroid City with its power and light, the very oxygen it breathed, was down that way.

A power plant and an alien robot that was starved for energy!

“My stars!” gasped Meek.

He shook off the minister’s hand and galloped down the street, shrieking at the Prowler. But the Prowler had no thought of stopping.

Panting, Meek slowed from a gallop to a trot, then to a labored walk. Behind him, he heard Stiffy puffing along. Behind Stiffy trailed practically the entire population of Asteroid City.

Far ahead came the sound of rending steel and crashing structure as the Prowler ripped the plant apart to get at the juice.

Stiffy gained Meek’s side and panted at him. “Cripes, they’ll crucify us for this. We got to get him out of there.”

“How?” asked Meek.

“Danged if I know,” said Stiffy.

One side of the plant was a mass of tangled wreckage, surrounding a hole out of which protruded the Prowler’s hind quarters. Terrified workers and maintenance men were running for their lives. Live wires spat and crackled with flaming energy.