A Gun for Dinosaur and Other Imaginative Tales

"So what? My old man would pay my fine. I'd just scream I was being frustrated. Some day we gotta give Longpants a visit."

"Yeah," said Snow. "Look at his buggy pants. And walking, in this weather. He's buggy, all right."

"Guess he's got to walk," said Kraus. "He couldn't get the lizard in his car. That lizard must be eight feet high."

"Playing around with off-earthers proves he's buggy," said Fisher.

Assistant Professor of Astromagnetics Norman Riegel was now within earshot, accompanied by Uzhegh of Kich. Uzhegh was the delegate to the Interplanetary Conference from the planet called by Terrans after its human discoverer, Captain Hjalmar AM. The Ahlians called their own world Hwrajar-Pchum. For obvious reasons, Earthmen preferred "Ahlia."

Riegel, dwarfed by his reptilian friend, had a few mildly eccentric habits. For instance, he wore long trousers through the summer, instead of shorts, because he was conscious of his scrawny legs and varicose veins. He shaved the sides of his face in a decade when burnsides were universal.

As he neared, the five began muttering like ventriloquists without moving their lips:

"Look at the mad scientist!"

"Watch out, he'll bite."

"Look at his buggy pants."

"Lizard-lover!"

"Oh, Professor! Whee-Whee-eew!" (Whistle.)

Riegel marched ahead, his face set. He had to shoulder his way between Meehan and Carmichael to enter the post office.

"Look how mad he looks."

"Bet he'd like to kill us."

"Aw, he won't do nothing."

"He's too buggy to do anything."

Uzhegh remained outside because the door was small for him. As Riegel came out with a handful of mail, the muttering rose again. Uzhegh leaned over and yawned suddenly in Fisher's face, showing his teeth and flicking out his long yellow tongue.

Fisher gave a little shriek, tried to leap back, tripped, and sat down. The other four youths laughed. While their attention was on Fisher, Riegel went into Patchik's Drug Store. Here he picked up an afternoon paper and bought a gallon of ice cream. Then he and Uzhegh set off towards the Scarron mansion, where Riegel and his wife lived while they ran the estate as a kind of camp or boarding school for the young of the delegates to the Conference.

"Will thith not melt on ze way home?" asked Uzhegh, carrying the container.

"No; that's a new super-insulating plastic," said Riegel. "It'll keep for a week, even in this heat."

"Zat — that will be long enough for this party. Tell me, why did zose young Terrans treating you so disrespectful? Are they members of some hostile clan?"

Riegel shrugged. "No. They just don't like me."

"Why?"

"I suppose I know too much."

"That is a peculiar reason."

"Well, there's always been some hostility between the thinking fraction of my species and the unthinking majority. It becomes aggravated as science advances and becomes less comprehensible to the layman."

"Why do you thubmit?"

"What could I do? I'm not allowed to shoot them. If I punched one, the rest would spatter me. At least two are bigger than I, and I'm three times their age. And if I did beat up one I'd go to jail."

"It is not the way we do sings," said Uzhegh. "Now, tell me, this is a working day, and zey look old enough to work. Why are they doing nossing?"

"Don't you know about our educational and child-labor laws? They're not allowed to work till they're twenty-five."

"Why? They looking adult."

"The unions want 'em out of the labor market. There's not enough work to go round even with our eighteen-hour work week. So, the state makes all the young stay in school till they're twenty-five. It's summer vacation now, but thank God that'll soon be over."

"I should sink all that education would make them more courteous and cultured-acting."

"Oh, most of them passed the academic saturation-point years ago, at thirteen or fourteen."

"The academic what?"

"I mean, they're incapable of absorbing any more book-learning. They can't be taught trades because their parents all want them to belong to the business and professional classes and are outraged if they're made to use their hands. So they're given courses in things like basketry and square dancing. Between times they hang around, bored and spoiled, and think up deviltry."

"I am not sinking we should find this custom thuitable."

"You stick to your own customs. If any missionaries for Terran ideas come to Ahlia, I hope you kill them."

Uzhegh shook his crested head. "Yet you have an elaborate apparatus for enforcement of law. Why is it not operating?"

"Because of our theories of juvenile psychology. These hold that all misbehavior is the result of frustration or insecurity and therefore the parents' fault."

"I am glad all Terrans are not like zose. It is partly knowing some like you and Doctor Lofting that made me recommend that our delegation be empowered to sign the constitution. You have done marvelous to keeping ze young of all those different thpecies playing together."

"It hasn't been easy," said Riegel. "Some are worse than human children. The young Akhran is careless about its respirator, and twice we've found it after it had taken it off and passed out. The Moorians, being arboreal, are almost impossible to housebreak. And I had to refuse admission to the young Ghazaq for fear it would eat some of our smaller off-earthers."