The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens Read Online Free Page A

speak to you alone for a moment?”
    Fitzgerald frowned and said: “Okay, Monster, but hurry it up. I got a date.” He followed the Sha’akhfa out, and the other brothers heard Hithafea hissing something to him in the corridor.
    Then Hithafea stuck his head in the doorway and said: “Mr. Lengyel, may I speak to you too, now?” And the same thing happened to Lengyel.
    The other brothers did not listen to the conversation between Lengyel and Hithafea because they were more interested in what was happening in the parlor. John Fitzgerald came through, all slicked up in his best clothes, and the lioness tackled him and tried to wrestle with him. The more he tried to get away the more vigorously she wrestled. He finally gave up and lay on his back while Tootsie sat on his chest and licked his face. As having your face licked by a lion is something like having it gone over with coarse sandpaper, Fitzgerald was somewhat the worse for wear by the time Hithafea came back into the room and pulled his pet off.
    “I am fery sorry,” he told them. “She is playful.”

    ###

    The night before the next pledge meeting, shadows moved in the shrubbery around the museum. The front door opened and a shadow came out—unmistakably that of a big, broad-shouldered man. The shadow looked about, then back into the darkness whence it had come. Sounds came from the darkness. The shadow trotted swiftly down the front steps and whispered: “Here!”
    Another shadow rose from among the shrubs; not that of a man, but of something out of the Mesozoic. The human shadow tossed a package to the reptilian shadow just as the museum’s watchman appeared in the doorway and shouted:
    “Hey, you!”
    The human shadow ran like the wind, while the reptilian shadow faded into the bushes. The watchman yelled again, blew on a police whistle, and ran after the human shadow, but gave up, puffing, after a while. The quarry had disappeared.
    “Be goddamned,” muttered the watchman. “Gotta get the cops on this one. Let’s see, who came in late this afternoon, just before closing?
    There was that little Italian-looking girl, and that red-haired professor, and that big football-type guy . . .”

    ###

    Frank Hodiak found his roommate packing his few simple belongings, and asked:
    “Where you going?”
    “I am gettink retty to leave for the Christmas vacation,” said Hithafea. “I got permission to leafe a few tays aheat of the rest.” He shut his small suitcase with a snap and said: “Goot-pye, Frank. It is nice to have known you.”
    “Good-bye? Are you going right now?”
    “Yes.”
    “You sound if you weren’t coming back!”
    “Perhaps. Some tay. Sahacikhthasèf, as we say on Osiris.”
    Hodiak said: “Say, what’s that funny-looking package you put in your—”
    But before he finished, Hithafea was gone.

    ###

    When the next pledge meeting was called, Hithafea, hitherto the outstanding eager-beaver among the pledges, was absent. They called the dormitory and got in touch with Frank Hodiak, who said that Hithafea had shoved off hours previously.
    The other curious fact was that John Fitzgerald had his right wrist bandaged. When the brothers asked him why, he said: “Damn’f I know. I just found myself in my room with a cut on my wrist, and no idea how it got there.”
    The meeting was well under way and the paddles were descending when the doorbell rang. Two men came in: one of the campus cops and a regular municipal policeman.
    The former said: “Is John Fitzgerald here?”
    “Yeah,” said Fitzgerald. “I’m him.”
    “Get your hat and coat and come with us.”
    “Whaffor?”
    “We wanna ask you a few questions about the disappearance of an exhibit from the museum.”
    “I don’t know anything about it. Run along and peddle your papers.”
    That was the wrong line to take, because the city cop brought out a piece of paper with a lot of fancy printing on it and said: “Okay, here’s a warrant. You’re pinched. Come—” and he