Free The Avenger 16 - The Hate Master by Kenneth Robeson Page B

blimp’s no atom. It’s as big as all outdoors. It would take a tremendous barn, or some such building, to hold one.”
    Smitty nodded, and they started inquiring around. They had to seem not to be inquiring about anything in particular, however, because the headquarters of the acid-ruined blimp might also be the headquarters of a large gang.
    It was about noon, and they were hungry; so they started with the biggest lunchroom in town.
    Knightstown only had two lunchrooms, so the biggest was no Waldorf. It was a twenty-foot square room next to the town poolroom, with a few tables and a counter in it. Three or four men were at the counter when Smitty and Josh strode in.
    “Hamburgers,” said Smitty.
    A sad-looking man in a soiled apron took the order. He looked speculatively at Smitty’s vast size.
    “How many?” the man said.
    “How many would you say?” shrugged Smitty.
    The man took in Smitty’s bulk again.
    “I’d say about ten for you and two for your friend.”
    “We’ll start with that,” said Smitty.
    “Hey!” Josh said, injured at the difference in numbers.
    Then both shut up as a few words from one of the men at the counter caught their ears. They seemed to have drawn something. It looked as if their luck was in.
    “—bricks from that old car barn,” the man was saying angrily. “We used to get bricks there. Now, they chase us off the place.”
    “Why don’t you try buyin’ bricks,” laughed one of the others.
    “Bricks’re expensive. And there’s a great, big, falling-down building with all the brick you need, and nobody to stop you taking some. Anyway, there didn’t use to be. Now, some watchman or somebody is out there. He pulled a gun on me when I went around last week!”
    The talk veered, since none of the men save the one talking seemed interested in bricks. Smitty looked at Josh, and then grinned at the counter man as he bit into his fourth hamburger.
    “Car barn?” he said. “You still got streetcars around here?”
    “Not for thirty years,” said the man behind the counter sadly. All his words, looks and actions were sad. The two couldn’t figure why, unless he’d been born that way. “We used to have interurban service all through these parts. Then they took the rails up and sold the cars, long before the cities began trading streetcars for buses.”
    “Is the car barn in town?” said Smitty, making his voice sound disinterested.
    “Nope. Out in open country. Along Sheep’s Nose River. Middle of no place.”
    Smitty looked mildly surprised. The man said:
    “Knightstown didn’t have no brains, forty years back. The interurban service wanted to put a car barn and power plant here because it’s a halfway point. The town council said, ‘No, sir! Not and spoil their beautiful town!’ So the car company put the buildings out on the river, miles away from anything. The power plant’s all dismantled and half falling down. The car barn’ll be the same way soon, the way everybody helps themselves to bricks when they need ’em.”
    Smitty let the matter drop. But only till he and Josh were outside the lunchroom.
    “That’s our baby,” said Josh.
    Smitty nodded and they went to their car.
    A car barn, unexpectedly out in the middle of no place because of an ancient feud with village elders! Car barns are big. Plenty big enough for a small blimp.
    It took them well over an hour to find it because they didn’t want to ask any more questions of anybody, and because they went the wrong way along the river on their first attempt.
    The car barn, it seemed, was in the opposite direction.
    It was well along in the afternoon when Smitty stopped the car under a tree.
    They had been following, not a regular road, but the old grass-grown twin roadbed where ties and rails had once been. The roadbed went on ahead of them, to end at the river—and something else.
    “There she is,” said Smitty.
    The huge old red-brick structure was on a leveled area among small hills along the