Free Special Deliverance by Clifford D. Simak

Parson who came in and carried you out when you were injured. But the fact remains that he is a bigot.”
    “I’ll prove myself,” said Jurgens. “Even the Parson will come to accept me.”
    “Was that what you were doing when you rushed up to the wall? Trying to prove yourself?”
    “I didn’t think so at the time. I only thought there was something that needed to be done and I set out to do it. But I suppose I was trying to prove—”
    “Jurgens, it was a stupid thing to do. Promise me, no more stupidity.”
    “I’ll try. Tell me when I’m stupid.”
    “Next time,” said Lansing, “I’ll clobber you with whatever comes to hand.”
    The Brigadier shouted at Lansing. “Come in. Supper’s ready.”
    Lansing rose. “Won’t you come with me, join the others? You can lean on me. I’ll get you there.”
    “I think not,” said Jurgens. “I have thinking that must be done.”
     

 
    L ANSING WORKED AT THE forked sapling he had cut, forming a crutch for Jurgens.
    The Parson got up from where he was sitting and threw some more wood on the fire.
    “Where is the Brigadier?” he asked.
    “He went to help Jurgens in,” said Mary.
    “Why should he do that? Why not leave him where he is?”
    “Because it isn’t right,” said Mary. “Jurgens should be here with the rest of us.”
    The Parson said nothing, sat down again.
    Sandra walked around the fire to stand beside Mary. “There’s something nosing around out there in the dark,” she said. “I heard it sniffling.”
    “It’s probably the Brigadier. He went out to get Jurgens.”
    “It’s not the Brigadier. It goes on four feet. The Brigadier doesn’t sniffle.”
    “Some small animal,” said Lansing, looking up from his work. “Whenever a campfire’s built there are always some of them around. Drawn by curiosity—they have to see what is going on—or maybe snooping around on the chance they can pick up something to eat.”
    “It makes me nervous,” said Sandra.
    “All of our nerves are a bit on edge,” Mary told her. “The cube…”
    “Let’s all forget about the cube right now,” Lansing suggested. “With morning light we’ll have a better look at it.”
    “I, for one, will have no better look at it,” said the Parson. “It is a thing of evil.”
    The Brigadier came into the edge of the firelight, one arm around the lurching Jurgens.
    “What’s this I hear about a thing of evil?” he asked, his voice booming.
    The Parson said nothing. The Brigadier eased Jurgens to the ground between Mary and the Parson.
    “He can barely get along,” said the Brigadier. “That leg is almost worthless. There’s no way to fix it better?”
    Mary shook her head. “There is a broken component in the knee and no replacement for it. Some of the hip arrangement is twisted out of shape. I was able to restore some function to the leg, but that was all. Edward’s crutch will help him get around.”
    The Brigadier lowered himself to a place next to Lansing.
    “I could swear,” he said, “that when I was coming in I heard someone mention evil.”
    “Leave it be,” Lansing curtly told him. “Let it lie.”
    “No need, worthy pedagogue,” said the Parson, “to attempt to impose yourself between the man of cloth and the man at arms. We might as well have it out.”
    “All right, if you insist,” said Lansing, “but be gentlemen while you’re about it.”
    “I’m always a gentleman,” said the Brigadier. “It is instinctive with me. An officer and a gentleman. That’s the way it goes, the two of them together. This clownish friend of ours—”
    The Parson interrupted. “I simply said the cube was a thing of evil. Perhaps my opinion only, but I am trained to make such observations and the Brigadier is not.”
    “How do you make it evil?” asked the Brigadier.
    “Why, the very look of it to start with. And the warning strip of sand around it. Men of good will put in that warning strip and we should have honored it. The one of us