"Today, eh? What happened today that makes you able to eat so much?"
"I just feel hungry."
"I can see that. Look, how about going over to the hospital so we can
really examine you?"
"No, sir," said Ollie. "You ain't pokin' no needles into me."
"No needles," agreed the doctor hastily. If there was no other way to
get blood samples, they could always drug him with morphine and he'd
never know what had happened. "We'll just look at you. And we'll feed
you all you can eat."
"All I can eat? It's a deal!"
* * * * *
The humor was crude, but it put the point across--the photographer
assigned to the contest had snapped a picture of Ollie in the middle of
gulping two eggs. One was traveling down his gullet, causing a lump in
his throat, and the other was being stuffed into his mouth at the same
time. The caption writer had entitled the shot: THE MAN WHO BROKE
THE ICEBOX AT MONTE'S, and the column alongside was headed, Eats
Three Hundred and Forty-three Eggs. "I'm Hungry!" He Says.
Zolto put the paper down. "This is the one," he said to his wife.
"There can be no doubt that this person has found it."
"I knew it was no longer in the alley," said Pojim. Ordinarily a comely
female, she was now deep in thought, and succeeded in looking beautiful
and pensive at the same time. "How are we to get it back without
exciting unwelcome attention?"
"Frankly," said Zolto, "I don't know. But we'd better think of a way.
He must have mistaken it for a nut and swallowed it. Undoubtedly the
hospital attendants will take X-rays of him and discover it."
"They won't know what it is."
"They will operate to remove it, and then they will find out."
Pojim nodded. "What I don't understand," she said, "is why it had this
effect. When we lost it, it was locked."
"He must have opened it by accident. Some of these creatures, I have
noticed, have a habit of trying to crack nuts with their teeth. He must
have bitten on the proper switch."
"The one for inanimate matter? I think, Zolto, that you're right. The
stomach contents are collapsed and passed into our universe through
the transfer. But the stomach itself, being part of a living creature,
cannot pass through the same switch. And the poor creature continually
loses weight because of metabolism. Especially, of course, when he
eats."
"Poor creature, you call him? You're too soft-hearted, Pojim. What do
you think we'll be if we don't get the transfer back?"
He hunched up his shoulders and laughed.
Pojim said, "Control yourself, Zolto. When you laugh, you don't look
human, and you certainly don't sound it."
"What difference does it make? We're alone."
"You can never tell when we'll be overheard."
"Don't change the subject. What are we supposed to do about the
transfer?"
"We'll think of a way," said Pojim, but he could see she was worried.
* * * * *
In the hospital, they had put Ollie into a bed. They had wanted a nurse
to bathe him, but he had objected violently to this indignity, and
finally they had sent in a male orderly to do the job. Now, bathed,
shaven and wearing a silly little nightgown that made him ashamed to
look at himself, he was lying in bed, slowly starving to death.
A dozen empty plates, the remains of assorted specialties of the
hospital, filled with vitamins and other good things, lay around him.
Everything had tasted fine while going down, but nothing seemed to have
stuck to him.
All he could do was brood about the puzzled and anxious looks on the
doctors' faces when they examined him.
The attack came without warning. One moment Ollie was lying there
unhappily, suffering hunger pangs, and the next moment somebody had
punched him in the stomach. The shock made him start and then look
down. But there was nobody near him. The doctors had left him alone
while they looked up articles in textbooks and argued with each other.
He felt another punch, and then another and another. He yelled in
fright and pain.
After five minutes, a nurse looked in and asked casually, "Did you
call?"
"My stomach!" groaned Ollie. "Somebody's hittin' me in my stomach!"
"It's a tummyache," she said with a cheerful smile. "It should teach
you not to wolf your food."
Then she caught a glimpse of his stomach, from which Ollie, in his
agony, had cast off the sheet, and she gulped. It was swollen like a
watermelon--or, rather, like a watermelon with great warts. Lumps stuck
out all over it.