"Well all right," said Jon with dignity. "Squad dismissed." He turned away to continue his tramp, and stopped with a startled gasp. There were spheres all about him. Ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty—there must be at least fifty of them, he calculated.
"Well, this is cozy," he said. "If I'd known I was working before an audience, I'd shown you some real drilling. Some audience, sitting on your hands."
He walked through the throng of them, giving them plenty of leeway in case one of them decided to roll his way. One, he thought it must be the one he had named Booger, followed him slowly. He got a good close-up look at several of them.
Smooth sleek balls they were, with shiny metallic surfaces, unbroken by any mark. No eyes, no feeding orifices, just smooth spheres.
What a bunch of bowling balls you'd make, he thought, if we just had some pins. Then he gasped.
At least six of them had extruded necks and were huge bowling pins!
"Now wait a minute," he gasped. "Do that again." They did. It seemed to be contagious. Within a few seconds he was surrounded by a veritable gallery of bowling pins, ten meters high!
He closed his eyes and counted to twenty—slowly. Then he snapped his eyes open quickly. They were still there.
"Doc was right," he groaned. "The heat's getting me." Then his whimsical humor made him think, Booger, come here!
One of the anonymous pins sprang back into a sphere and trundled to him. Jon made a sweeping gesture.