Which positively infuriated me.
Do you blame me?
A few cussing, cussed minutes later I realized what Al Benson had apparently done: solved the torchship’s fuel problem.
Oh, I’d seen Klein bottles and Mobius strips and other things that twist in on themselves and into other dimensions, twisting into microcosms and macrocosms—into elsewhere, in any event. And here I had visual evidence that Benson had had something nearly six feet tall and certainly two feet in breadth enclosed in a nearly weightless carton less than eight inches on the side!
Sufficient fuel for a Marstrip? Just wrap it up!
The stereo’s audio was saying: “… from the Museum of Natural History. Curators are compiling a list of the missing exhibits which we will reveal to you on this channel as soon as it’s available. Now we switch to Dick Joy at City Hall with news of the latest exhibit found. Come in, Dick!”
On the steps of City Hall was a full size replica of a mastodon over whose massive back was draped a banner bearing the slogan: “The Universal Party is for you! Don’t return to prehistory with Cadigan! Re-elect President Ollie James and go to the stars!”
And there was a closeup of Mayor Cadigan standing pompous and wrathful—and looking very diminutive—behind the emblem of his opposition party.
Dick Joy was saying, “Eyewitnesses claim that this replica—obviously one of the items stolen from the Museum of Natural History—suddenly materialized here. Immediately prior to the alleged materialization a man—whose photograph we show now—ostensibly bent down to tie a shoelace, setting a shoebox beside him. He left the box, walking off into the gathering crowd, and this mastodon seemed to spring into being where the shoebox had been.
“The mastodon replica has been examined. A report just handed me says it is definitely that from the Museum and that it could not conceivably have been contained in a shoebox. It’s obviously a case of mass hypnotism. The replica must have been trucked here. There’s no other possible explanation. Excuse me!”