Clifford D. Simak

Mr. O’Toole bounded up and down in wrath. “And the bugs!” he shouted. “What about the bugs? Exclude them from the ale I know you would when it was brewing. All nasty sanitary. To make October ale, bugs you must have falling into it and all other matters of great uncleanliness or the flavor you will miss.”

“We’ll put in bugs,” said Oop. “We’ll go out and catch a bucket full of them and dump them into it.”

The O’Toole was beside himself with anger, his face a flaming purple. “Understand you do not,” he screamed at them. “Bugs you do not go dumping into it. Bugs fall into it with wondrous selectivity and-”

His words cut off in a gurgling shriek and Carol called out sharply, “Sylvester, cut that out!”

The O’Toole dangled, wailing and flailing his arms, from Sylvester’s mouth. Sylvester held his head high so that Mr. O’Toole’s feet could not reach the ground.

Oop was rolling on the ground in laughter, beating his hands upon the earth. “He thinks O’Toole’s a mouse!” Oop yelled. “Look at that putty cat! He caught hisself a mouse!”

Sylvester was being gentle about it. He was not hurting O’Toole, except his dignity. He was holding him lightly in his mouth, with the two fangs in his upper jaw closing neatly about his middle.

Sharp hauled off to kick the cat.

“No,” Carol yelled, “don’t you dare do that!”

Sharp hesitated.

“It’s all right, Harlow,” Maxwell said. “Let him keep O’Toole. Surely he deserves something for what he did for us back there in the office.”

“We’ll do it,” O’Toole yelled frantically. “We’ll make them their cask of ale. We’ll make two casks of it.”

“Three,” said the squeaky voice coming from the bridge.

“All right, three,” agreed the goblin.

“No weaseling out of it later on?” asked Maxwell.

“Us goblins never weasel,” said O’Toole.

“All right, Harlow,” said Maxwell. “Go ahead and belt him.”

Sharp squared off to kick. Sylvester dropped O’Toole and slunk off a pace or two.

The trolls came pouring from the bridge and went scurrying up the hillside, yelping with excitement.

The humans began scrambling up the slope, following the trolls.

Ahead of Maxwell, Carol tripped and fell. Maxwell stopped and lifted her. She jerked away from him and turned to him a face flaming with anger. “Don’t you ever touch me!” she said. “Don’t even speak to me. You told Harlow to go ahead and kick Sylvester. You yelled at me. You told me to shut up.”

She turned then and went scrambling up the hill, moving quickly out of sight.

Maxwell stood befuddled for a moment, then began the climb, skirting boulders, grabbing at bushes to pull himself along.

Up on the top of the hill he heard wild cheering and off to his right a great black globe, with its wheels spinning madly, plummeted out of the sky and crashed into the woods. He stopped and looked up and saw, through the treetops, two globes streaking through the sky on collision courses. They did not swerve or slacken speed. They came together and exploded on impact. He stood and watched the shattered pieces flying. In a few seconds there were pattering sounds among the leaves as the debris came raining down.

The cheering still was going on atop the bluff and far off, near the top of the hill that rose beyond the ravine, something that he heard, but did not see, came plunging to the earth.

There was no one else in sight as he began the climb again.

It was all over now, he told himself. The trolls had done their work and now the dragon could come down. He grinned wryly to himself. For years he’d hunted dragons and here finally was the dragon, but something more, perhaps, than he had imagined. What could the dragon be, he wondered, and why had it been enclosed within the Artifact, or made into the Artifact, or whatever might have been done with it?

Funny thing about the Artifact, he thought-resisting everything, rejecting everything until that moment when he had fastened the interpreting mechanism on his head to examine it. What had happened to release the dragon from the Artifact? Clearly the mechanism had had a part to play in the doing of it, but there still was no way of knowing what might have happened. Although the people on the crystal planet certainly would know, one of the many things they knew, one of the many arts they held which still lay outside the knowledge of others in the galaxy. Had the interpreter turned up in his luggage by design rather than by accident? Had it been planted there for the very purpose for which it had been used? Was it an interpreter, at all, or was it something else fashioned in a manner that resembled an interpreter?

He recalled that at one time he had wondered if the Artifact might not once have served as a god for the Little Folk, or for those strange creatures which early in the history of the Earth had been associated with the Little Folk? And had he been right, he wondered. Was the dragon a god from some olden time?