Part 3 (1/2)
”s.h.i.+t, Ed! Someday you're gonna get us both killed!”
It wasn't a marble. They didn't need their flashlights to tell it wasn't a magnetic mine. It was a rounded canister that glowed on its own, with swirling colors on it. It hid the man pus.h.i.+ng it.
”It looks like a rolled-up neon armadillo,” said Fred, who'd been out west.
The man behind the thing blinked at them, unable to see past their flashlights. He was tattered and dirty, with a tobacco-stained beard and wild, steel-wool hair.
They stepped closer.
”It's mine!” he said to them, stepping in front of the thing, holding his arms out across it.
”Easy, old-timer,” said Ed. ”What you got?”
”My ticket to easy street. You from the Air Corps?”
”h.e.l.l, no. Let's look at this.”
The man picked up a rock. ”Stay back! I found it where I found the plane crash. The Air Corps'll pay plenty to get this atomic bomb back!”
”That doesn't look like any atomic bomb I've ever seen,” said Fred. ”Look at the writing on the side. It ain't even English.”
”Course it's not! It must be a secret weapon. That's why they dressed it up to weird.”
”Who?”
”I told you more'n I meant to. Get outta my way.”
Fred looked at the old geezer. ”You've piqued my interest,” he said. ”Tell me more.”
”Outta my way, boy! I killed a man over a can of lye hominy once!”
Fred reached in his jacket. He came out with a pistol with a muzzle that looked like a drainpipe.
”It crashed last night,” said the old man, eyes wild. ”Woke me up. Lit up the whole sky. I looked for it all day today, figured the woods would be crawlin' with Air Corps people and state troopers, but n.o.body came.
”Found it just before dark tonight. Tore all h.e.l.l up, it did. Knocked the wings completely off the thing when it crashed. All these weird-dressed people all scattered around. Women too.” He lowered his head a minute, shame on his face. ”Anyway, they was all dead. Must have been a jet plane, didn't find no propellers or nothing. And this here atomic bomb was just lying there in the wreck. I figured the Air Corps would pay real good to get it back. Friend of mine found a weather balloon once and they gave him a dollar and a quarter. I figure this is about a million times as important as that!”
Fred laughed. ”A buck twenty-five, huh? I'll give you ten dollars for it.”
”I can get a million!”
Fred pulled the hammer back on the revolver.
”Fifty,” said the old man.
”Twenty.”
”It ain't fair. But I'll take it.”
”What are you going to do with that?” asked Ed.
”Take it to Dr. Tod,” said Fred. ”He'll know what to do with it. He's the scientific type.”
”What if it is an A-bomb?”
”Well, I don't think A-bombs have spray nozzles on them. And the old man was right. The woods would have been crawling with Air Force people if they'd lost an atomic bomb. h.e.l.l, only five of them have ever been exploded. They can't have more than a dozen, and you better believe they know where every one of them is, all the time.”
”Well, it ain't a mine,” said Ed. ”What do you think it is?”
”I don't care. If it's worth money, Doctor Tod'll split with us. He's a square guy.”
”For a crook,” said Ed.
They laughed and laughed, and the thing rattled around in the back of the dump truck.
The MPs brought the red-haired man into his office and introduced them.
”Please have a seat, Doctor,” said A.E. He lit his pipe.
The man seemed ill at ease, as he should have been after two days of questioning by Army Intelligence.
”They have told me what happened at White Sands, and that you won't talk to anyone but me,” said A.E. ”I understand they used sodium pentathol on you, and that it had no effect?”
”It made me drunk,” said the man, whose hair in this light seemed orange and yellow.
”But you didn't talk?”
”I said things, but not what they wanted to hear.”
”Very unusual.”
”Blood chemistry.”
A.E. sighed. He looked out the window of the Princeton office. ”Very well, then. I will listen to your story. I am not saying I will believe it, but I will will listen.” listen.”
”All right,” said the man, taking a deep breath. ”Here goes.”
He began to talk, slowly at first, forming his words carefully, gaining confidence as he spoke. As he began to talk faster, his accent crept back in, one A.E. could not place, something like a Fiji Islander who had learned English from a Swede. A.E. refilled his pipe twice, then left it unlit after filling it the third time. He sat slightly forward, occasionally nodding, his gray hair an aureole in the afternoon light.
The man finished.
A.E. remembered his pipe, found a match, lit it. He put his hands behind his head. There was a small hole in his sweater near the left elbow.
”They'll never believe any of that,” he said.