* * * * *
It was the time when you could argue about whether it was twilight or
night. In the deep dusk, the Rolls looked to be a horror-flicker giant
bug. I fumbled for the keys. Then the old man made me break stride by
digging narrow fingers into my bicep.
Marshal Thompson and the bulky quarry foreman, Kelvin, stepped out of
the shadow of the car.
"First, throw away that gun of yours, Mr. Madison," the marshal said.
I looked at his old pistol that must have used old powder cartridges,
instead of liquid propellants, and forked out my Smith & Wesson with
two fingers, letting it plop at my feet.
"I'm afraid we can't let you spread the professor's lies, Mr. Madison,"
Thompson said.
"You planning on killing me?" I asked with admirable restraint.
"I hope not. You can have the run of the town, like the professor.
I'll tell your company you are making a _thorough_ investigation. Then
maybe in a few weeks or months I can arrange so it looks like you were
killed--someplace outside."
"We don't aim to let any crazy fanatic like Parnell ruin our business,
our whole town," Kelvin interjected bitterly.
I took a pause to make abstractions on the situation. I glanced at the
little man at my right. "Parnell, my car is our only chance of getting
out of here. If they stop us from getting in that car, we'll be bums
here on town charity for the rest of our lives."
"_No!_" Parnell gave a terrier yell and charged the gun in the old
marshal's hand.
It seemed as if it would take me too long to recover my gun from the
dirt, but almost instinctively I felt the rock in the pocket of my
pants.
I scooped out the sample of granite and heaved it at the head of the
old cop. But my control seemed completely shot. It missed the old man's
head with an appalling gap and hit the roof of the Rolls.
Fortunately, the granite radiations didn't influence non-human-oriented
factors of chance. The stone bounced off the car and struck the
marshal's gun hand.
Thompson dropped his gun and I reached for mine in the dust, vaguely
aware of Kelvin pumping toward me.
I straightened up. He led with his right, of all damn things. I blocked
it with my gun hand and let him have my left in the midst of his solar
plexus. He crumpled prettier than a paper doll.
When the dust cleared, Professor Parnell was sitting on Thompson's
chest.
"Hooray," I said, "for our side."
* * * * *
The people had made one mistake. They thought people would believe us.
Parnell and I broke the story to some newspaper friends of mine. They
gave it a play in the mistaken belief the professor and I were starting
our own cult, and the equal-time law is firm. But nobody paid any more
attention to us than to the Hedonists, the Klan, the Soft-shelled
Baptists or the Reformed Agnostics.
I tried to get Thad McCain to realize all the money this cursed
granite was costing us in accident claims, but it wasn't easy.
Manhattan-Universal owned stock in Granite City Products, Inc. And we
had spent a quarter of a megabuck modernizing our offices with granite
only months before.
"McCain," I said earnestly, "will you just let me feed the new data
we've got from Parnell into the Actuarvac? It's infallible. See what it
says."
"Very well," McCain said with a sigh. He let me feed the big brain the
hypothesis I had got from Parnell. It chattered to itself for some
minutes and at last flipped a card into the slot.