Tuning William - Fuzzy Bones

He sat back on his haunches and re-lighted his pipe. "Well-medic'll be here in a minute."

"Where's Ingermann?" Jack asked through gritted teeth.

Stagwell put the knife back in his hip pocket. "When they started to charge, he disappeared in the crowd," he said. "They just enveloped him."

Holloway made several unsavory remarks of along the lines of hoping Ingermann was among the people in the front who had been shot.

A medic came to a sliding stop on his knees. He was festooned with pouches and packs of supplies and equipment.

"Take a look at the Commissioner, Corey," Miller said. "He copped one."

Corey got out an osteo-sono-scan and jacked one end of a wire into it. He ran the sensor head up and down Jack's upper arm. "Bullet's not in him," he said in a businesslike way, "but I get an interruption in the pattern. I think it broke the bone and ricocheted back out. Let's see." He put the sono-scan away, then dug a wrap-scope out of his musette bag. He fixed the lensatic cuff around Jack's arm at the wound site and energized the field. In the direct view the flesh appeared to melt away from the bone, showing a ragged break much like a greenstick fracture, with little chips floating around it.

Corey made some adjustments that weakened the field of the device, and a network of blood vessels and nerves appeared in a web around the bone. He sat back at watched it for a few seconds, then turned off the field. "You got a busted humerus, Mr. Commissioner," he said as he began re-stowing the wrap-scope. "The fracture's kinda nasty, because of the shattering, but it's not completely separated- and none of your big vessels or nerves got clipped."

He wiped down the wound with an antiseptic/anasthetic solution and sprayed the entry and exit wounds with a fibrous aerosol that would make the blood cells web together and stop the bleeding. He put a cuff around Jack's wrist and stapled it to the front of his shirt. "Come on," he said, standing up and helping Jack to his feet. "We'll get you over to the aid station and start to work on you."

Jack stood, weaving slightly on his feet. "Wait a minute," he said. "Where's m'rifle?"

Stagwell got to his feet and looked out to where Jack and himself had been standing. "I see it, "he said. "Stand fast a minute." He walked out into the open, puffing his pipe, and picked up Jack's 6-mm Sleeker. He blew the dust away from the bolt as he returned and handed the weapon to Jack. "I'll be around and see you in a while," he said. "Right now, I gotta mind the store."

The firing had died down to an occasional rattle of shots an hour later when it started to rain.

The Marines had the mob pinned down among their vehicles . They made no attempt to flush them out, sleep gas them, or mount any kind of attack.

Stagwell's orders were to render assistance-if requested by Commissioner

Holloway-make no offensive moves, use the minimum force necessary to protect his own men and keep the mob from the hypership wreck and the cavern, and, should the mob fail to disperse peaceably, keep it bottled up so no one got away. He had a canopy of combat cars overhead to see to the latter point.

Occasionally, one of the mob's vehicles nervously attempted to lift off; it was systematically disabled on the ground. Things were getting downright quiet.

Stagwell looked up at the sky, letting the first big drops strike his face.

"Wouldn't you know it," he said. "The whole damned place is drying up and blowing away for want of rainfall-but let us get into a little action and right away somebody sends us some mud. I swear, mud follows Marines around like fleas follow a dog."

The rain started coming down harder, steadily. Then, with his face still upturned, Stagwell saw the spherical shape settling toward them. Well, it was about time. He had begun to think the Navy had lost the bus schedule. That's the way it was; the Marines get their work done while they're waiting for the Navy. Stagwell turned his pipe upside down so it wouldn't get put out with a wild raindrop.

They couldn't make headway against the Marines and they couldn't escape from where they were. And now it was raining.

Thump. Thump. Thump. "Ingermann never told us about this part," Harris said as he occupied himself with sticking his pocket knife into the wooden deck of the work scow- over and over again.

"I wish to Nif flheim they 'd just do something," Joey said. Joey was Harris'

partner. "This waitin' is gettin' on my nerves something awful."

"Well, stick your head out and see if it's still raining," Harris said.

'That'll give you somethin' to do."

Joey heaved a big, moist sigh and opened the side hatch of the scow.

Miraculously, the rain seemed to have stopped. "Hey, Harris," he said, "it ain't rainin' no more, but I can't see any stars."

Harris came over to the hatch and stood beside him, looking upward. He held out his hand. "You're right, Joey," he said. "It's stopped."

Suddenly, they were both blinded by an intense light.

A two-thousand-foot diameter light cruiser hovering at one hundred feet will shed the rain from a rather large patch of ground, and that was exactly what the San Pablo was doing. She kicked on all her bottom lights at once, illuminating the scene as brightly as high noon on a sunny day. The loudhailer sounded like the crack of doom as the click of the pickup switch was transmitted over speakers powerful enough to carry sound for a mile.

"CEASE FIRING-OR WE'LL VAPORIZE ALL OF YOU WHERE YOU STAND!"

In the claimjumpers' camp everyone was wet and nervous.

Chapter 44

"Vee-dahl, dammit! You're gettin'to be an old woman." Helton stood with his feet apart and his arms folded across his chest.

Sergeant Beltran re-located his cigar in the exact mathematical center of his

mouth. "Now, you listen here, Gunnie. My boys just swabbed down the deck of this mess tent, an' now that we got this wet weather, there's only two ways anybody comes in here-with clean boots or in their sock feet; an' that goes for you, the Colonel, the Captain, an' the corporal of the guard. So, you either go over to the water-point, there, and clean 'em up with a stiff brush or you peel 'em off and put 'em back on when you leave." He pointed to the pile of muddy boots under the tent fly in front of the inflatable dining tent.

The rain was still drizzling on Hugo Ingermann. Mud and water had gotten inside his shoes and it gooshed rhythmically through his socks as he trotted into the deep woods. He was certain that he had contracted at least double pneumonia, from the way his lungs wheezed each time he took a breath, but he kept moving-because the only way to get away from the fiasco at Fuzzy Valley was to take off on foot and hope for the best, whatever it might be.

He was momentarily frozen with fear when he saw the aircar hovering over him.

But then he realized that it had no police markings-and there was no way to escape from it in any case. He stood there, dumbfounded, with his face turned toward the sky and the rain falling on him as the vehicle settled down toward him.

Rain beaded on all the surfaces of the aircar as it hovered a few inches off the ground, so mat Hugo Ingermann could not see who was inside at the controls, but the side hatch opened from the inside control and a friendly voice said, "Come in, sir, and out of the rain."

Hugo Ingermann would have climbed into that aircar with the devil himself, just to get in out of the rain-the rain that had been beating on his skull ever since he left Fuzzy Valley. In the dim light he could not make out the face of his benefactor, but the friendly voice said,"Climb over in back, there, and get out of those wet clothes. You'll find some blankets in the locker."

Hugo Ingermann did just that, wringing the water out of his sopping clothes and he took them off and arranged them over the warm air inlet to dry. He curled up in a warm cocoon of blankets and slept.