Part 8 (2/2)

The long procession of busses rolled through the night. Outside was dark desert. Overhead were many stars. Inside the jammed bus were swaying figures crowded in the aisle, and every seat was filled. There was the smell of sweat, and oil, and tobacco. Somebody still had garlic on his breath from lunch. There was the noise of many voices. There was an argument two seats up the aisle. There was the rumble of the motor, and the peculiar whine of spinning tires. Men had to raise their voices to be heard above the din.

A swaying among the crowded figures more p.r.o.nounced than that caused by the motion of the bus caught Joe's eye. Somebody was crowding his way from the back toward the front. The aisle was narrow. Joe clung to his strap, thinking hard and happily about the rebalancing of the gyros.

There could be no tolerance. It had to be exact. There had to be no vibration at all....

Figures swayed away from him. A hand on his shoulder.

”Hiya.”

He swung around. It was the lean man, Haney, whom he'd kept from being knocked off the level place two hundred feet up.

Joe said: ”h.e.l.lo.”

”I thought you were big bra.s.s,” said Haney, rumbling in his ear. ”But big bra.s.s don't ride the busses.”

”I'm going in to try to hunt up the Chief,” said Joe.

Haney grunted. He looked estimatingly at Joe. His glance fell to Joe's hands. Joe had been digging further into the crates, and afterward he'd washed up, but packing grease is hard to get off. When mixed with soot and charcoal it leaves signs. Haney relaxed.

”We mostly eat together,” he observed, satisfied that Joe was regular because his hands weren't soft and because mechanic's soap had done an incomplete job on them. ”The Chief's a good guy. Join us?”

”Sure!” said Joe. ”And thanks.”

A brittle voice sounded somewhere around Haney's knees. Joe looked down, startled. The midget he'd seen up on the Platform nodded up at him. He'd squirmed through the press in Haney's wake. He seemed to bristle a little out of pure habit. Joe made room for him.

”I'm okay,” said the midget pugnaciously.

Haney made a formal introduction.

”Mike Scandia.” He thumbed at Joe. ”Joe Kenmore. He's eating with us.

Wants to find the Chief.”

There had been no reference to the risk Joe had run in keeping Haney from a two-hundred-foot fall. But now Haney said approvingly: ”I wanted to say thanks anyhow for keeping your mouth shut. New here?”

Joe nodded. The noise in the bus made any sort of talk difficult. Haney appeared used to it.

”Saw you with--uh--Major Holt's daughter,” he observed again. ”That's why I thought you were bra.s.s. Figured one or the other'd tell on Braun.

You didn't, or somebody'd've raised Cain. But I'll handle it.”

Braun would be the man Haney had been fighting. If Haney wanted to handle it his way, it was naturally none of Joe's business. He said nothing.

”Braun's a good guy,” said Haney. ”Crazy, that's all. He picked that fight. Picked it! Up there! Coulda been him knocked off--and I'd ha'

been in a mess! I'll see him tonight.”

The midget said something biting in his peculiarly cracked and brittle voice.

The bus rolled and rolled and rolled. It was a long twenty miles to Bootstrap. The desert outside the bus windows was utterly black and featureless, but once a convoy of trucks pa.s.sed, going to the Shed.

Presently, though, lights twinkled in the night. Again the bus slowed, in column with the others. Then there were barrackslike buildings, succeeding each other, and then there was a corner and suddenly the outside was ablaze with light. The busses drew up to the curb and stopped, and everybody was immediately in a great hurry to get out, shoving unnecessarily, and Joe let himself be carried along by the crowd.

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