ULTIMATUM
By ROGER DEE
In a dingy little Indiana hotel room the fate of
three worlds suddenly hung in precarious balance!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1950.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Winant followed the lanky sheriff down the jail corridor past rows of empty, plank-walled cells and drew a sharp breath of relief when they found the last cubicle still tenanted.
"That's Uncle Ivor, all right," Winant said. "Sorry he caused you so much trouble, sheriff, but I'll be glad to pay his fine. What's the charge against him?"
The sheriff rubbed a palm across his drooping mustaches and looked doubtfully at the old man who sat on the edge of the cell bunk, the bald dome of his head cradled dejectedly in his hands.
"You couldn't rightly say there is a charge, mister," he admitted. "Your uncle popped into Ben Stuart's Drop Inn restaurant night before last with a little black box under his arm, naked as a jaybird and talking like a crazy man.
"'I'm a visitor from Mars,' he says. 'Take me to your president, and quick!' Ben thought he was crazy, or drunk, and ran him out with a meat cleaver, and the old duck went down to the Warner Hotel and pulled the same goofy act. Pop Warner called me, and I went down and threw the old coot into the cooler. I knew right off that he was cracked, because I even had to show him how to put on the clothes I brought him. And the wingding he pitched when I took that black box away from him—wow!"