"What?"
"I've got to go to the john."
"Yes," said Calvin stiffly. "I suggest we retire to the farther end from
the sand box, while one by one--"
"We could rig a screen or something, but there isn't anything to do it
with," said Watkins. He walked away; despite his outspoken manner, he
seemed to have the proper instincts.
Adam followed him. Summersby turned his back. Calvin looked at the
Mexican. "Come along."
"Why?" asked Villa, raising his black brows. "What is there in a simple
relieving of--"
Calvin strode to him, catching him by the nape, lifted him bodily from
the floor, and sent him reeling after the others. He half-turned, then
walked on, muttering, "Crazy _gringos_!" Calvin went and stood a little
behind the others, his back to her.
[Illustration]
The minutes following were interminable, horribly embarrassing. At last
she touched his shoulder. "All right, Calvin," she whispered.
One by one the others used the sand box. By the time they were through
with the unspeakably primitive ritual, she had become almost inured to
it, and considered herself to be admirably calm. There were unsuspected
resources in her nature, she thought.
"When do you suppose they feed us?" asked Watkins. He was holding his
tan briefcase under his left arm; he hadn't once laid it down. "I'm so
empty I rattle."
"Soon," said Calvin firmly, and she felt reassured.
Summersby was standing by the door-wall, his great hands working along
the seams of his trouser legs. A violent temper, held in check, thought
Mrs. Full. He was the worst of the problems facing them, except for the
unknown animals.
Even as she looked at him, the wall opened again. This time no one
jumped or shrieked, though she felt her breath hiss back over her
tongue. Watkins said, "Well, Viva, here's your pal again."
The Mexican glared. Evidently the joke was a stale one to him. "My name
is Villa, not Viva. I hope you get a good taste of that green stick, you
little man!"
"Viva Villa," said Watkins. "Lead on. You know the way."
The awful arm came in like a hairy python, groping blindly with the rod.
Summersby, standing near the opening, was the first to be touched. It
tapped him lightly, and he walked out of the room, really very bravely,
she thought. The rod discovered Adam. The boy backed up, too frightened
to put on a show of boldness. The rod slapped him impatiently, and he
yelled and darted forward into the other room. He and Summersby stood
together, staring up at something that could not be seen from inside the
prison box.
"It's electrical," said Calvin. "Like a bull prod."
"Yes, dear," she said automatically.
"We may as well go out. I don't want you shocked."
"All right, Calvin." She took his arm. Watkins had been caught and
herded out. As they stepped forward after him, she glanced sideways at
her husband. She would have liked to tell him she loved him, but it
would have been too melodramatic. She pressed his arm tightly,
affectionately. They walked out into the great hall.
* * * * *
Villa's cursory description had not prepared Calvin Full for the reality
of the huge beings.
There were three of them. They stood absolutely motionless, grotesquely
humanoid figures with smallish, sunken eyes fixed rigidly on the people
some yards away. Then, as Calvin watched, two of them thrust out their
hands holding the ball-tipped rods. The gestures were almost too swift
to follow.
He stared at the central figure, and it gazed back with its withdrawn,
pupilless, rust-red eyes. Its head was, as Villa had told them, the
shape of a watermelon, with the eyes wide-set on either side of a gently
agitating orifice that was probably a nostril. The mouth, very human in
shape, with full lips the color of the eyeballs, was quite low in the
face. There was a rough growth of gray-black hair on the crown of the
big head and a fuzz of it, less dark, on the face itself. There seemed
to be no ears.
Its body, long and thick, was dwarfed by the tremendous arms. Its feet
were large, toeless, and flat; its legs joined smoothly to the trunk
about halfway up. It wore clothing of a sort, which surprised Calvin
Full, perhaps more than anything else about the being. There was a kind
of short sleeveless jacket of amber color caught at the front by a long
silver bar, and a white skirt worn under the legs, reaching from just
below the hip joints to the bottom of the torso.
Its companions were almost identical with it, except for clothing of
different hues and varying cut.
The thing in the middle now opened its mouth and made a noise that
reminded Full of an off-key clarinet.
"Gpwk?" it said, with a rising inflection. "Hummr gpwk?"
Abruptly it came forward, its motions flowing and yet a bit jerky, its
long legs carrying it rhythmically, but with a hint of gawkiness; Calvin
thought of a galloping giraffe he and his wife had seen in a travelogue
some nights before. It towered over them, bending at the hip joints.
"Steady, dear," he said.
"I'm all right," his wife said shakily, seeming just on the verge of
screaming.
"Wish I could say the same," said Adam Pierce, the Negro boy. "What a
specimen!"
"Look like anything to you?" asked Watkins.
"Hell, no. Unless it's something from Mars."
"Maybe we're on Mars," said Watkins conversationally, but no one
responded.
* * * * *
It's as sensible a suggestion as the East Indian one, thought Calvin. He
had not the slightest idea where they were, and he saw no sense in
worrying over it until they had more information to build theories on.
The beast making no further move, his wife at last leaned toward him and
said in his ear, "Calvin, can you tell what--I mean whether it's male or
female?"
He studied it carefully. He couldn't even make a guess. He shook his
head.
Then it reached forward its stick and thrust it directly at Calvin's
face. He backed off, startled and somewhat frightened. At once the thing
touched Mrs. Full with the ivory ball, as if to separate her from the
knot of men.
She cried out in pain, and Calvin leaped forward; he had a flash of the
great paw coming at him with the prod aimed for his face again. It
touched his forehead, he felt an intense shock, and then he was
powerless to move.
His mind screamed, he could feel tiny muscles try sluggishly to crawl
deep under his skin, but he was paralyzed where he stood in an attitude
of charging; he knew his face must be twisted in horror and rage, but he
could feel nothing. Only his mind and eyesight seemed wholly clear.
He saw his wife taken off, stumbling unwillingly and looking back at him
over her shoulder. Watkins said, (Calvin could hear plainly, he found),
"Watch it, he's falling!" Then the paralysis left him and he slumped as
though all his bones had been extracted. Someone caught him under the
arms, holding him up. He tried to move, but aside from rolling his eyes
and lolling his tongue out, he was helpless.