Free Destiny Doll by Clifford D. Simak Page B

slack of his robe that hung about his chest and lifted him. He dangled and his scrawny legs kicked and kept on kicking as if he were trying to run, but couldn't, since his feet were in the air.
    "I've had enough of this," I told him. "I don't know what it is all about and I don't give a damn, but you're giving us what we need and without any quibbling. If you don't, I'll snap your filthy neck."
    "Look out!" screamed Sara and as I jerked my head around, I saw the hobbies charging us, rocking forward on their rear rockers and their front rockers lifted menacingly.
    I threw the gnome away. I didn't look where I was throwing him. I just heaved him out of there and brought up my gun, remembering, with a sinking feeling, the lack of impression the laser beam had made upon that crystal landing field.. If the hobbies were fabricated of the same material, and it looked as if they were, I'd do just as well by standing off and pegging rocks at them.
    But even as I brought the rifle up, Hoot scurried quickly forward and as he scurried forward, suddenly he blazed. That's an awkward way of saying it, but I can't think of any other way of describing it. There he was, scampering forward, his little feet clicking on the floor, then his body quivered with a bluish sort of haze, as if he were an electrical transformer that had gone haywire. The air seemed to shake and everything did a funny sort of jig, then it all was over and the way it was before. Except that all the hobbies were piled into a far corner of the room, all tangled up together, with their rockers waving in the air. I hadn't seen them move—they just suddenly were there. It was as if they had been moved without actually traveling through space. One instant they had been charging us, with their rockers lifted, the next instant they were jammed into the corner.
    "They be all right," said Hoot, apologetically. "They damaged not at all. They be discommoded for the moment only. They be of use again. Sorry for surprise, but need of moving rapidly."
    The gnome was picking himself up slowly from the tangle of barrels and boxes and baskets where I had thrown him and I could see, just by looking at him, he had no fight left in him. Neither had the hobbies.
    "Tuck," I said, "get moving. Get the stuff together. As soon as we can get the hobbies loaded, we are moving out."

FIVE

    The city pressed close. It towered on every side. Its walls were straight up into the sky and where they stopped (if they did stop, for down at their base one had the feeling he could not be sure) there existed only a narrow strip of blue, sky so far and faint that it faded out almost to the whiteness of the walls. The narrow street did not run straight; it jogged and twisted, a trickle of a street that ran between the boulders that were buildings. The buildings all were the same. There was slight difference among them. There was no such a concept as architecture, unless one could call straight lines and massiveness a kind of architecture.
    Everything was white, even the floor of the street we followed—and the floor could not be thought of as paving; it was, instead, a floor, a slab that extended between the buildings as if it were a part of them, and a slab that seemed to run on forever and forever, without a single joint or seam. There seemed no end to it, nor to the city either. One had the feeling that he would never leave the city, that he was caught and trapped and that there was no way out.
    "Captain," said Sara, walking along beside me, "I'm not entirely sure I approve of the manner in which you handle things."
    I didn't bother to answer her. I knew that dissatisfaction with me had been nibbling at her for days—on board the ship and after we had landed. Sooner or later, it was certain that she would get around to chewing on me about it and there was nothing I could have said that would have made a difference.
    I threw a glance over my shoulder and saw that the others were coming along behind us—Smith