mainsprings in your watches andmaybe pocket knives in your pockets. The dinies have a longin' foriron, and they go after it. They'll eat anything in the world that'sgot the barest bit of a taste of iron in it! Oh, it's perfectly allright, of course, but ye'll have to throw stones at them till the boatcomes back. Better, find a good stout stick to whack them with. Onlydon't let 'em get behind ye!"
"Ye will?" roared the solicitor general, vengefully. "Take that!"_Whack!_ "Tryin' to take somethin' out of the gentleman's hip pocketan' aimin' to grab the rump beyond it just to make sure!"
_Whack!_ A large head moved plaintively away. But another reachedhopefully forward, and another. The dinies were not bright. The threecommitteemen and two members of the cabinet were thigh-deep in waterwhen the boat came back. They still whacked valorously if wearily atintrusive diny heads. They still had made no progress in implanting theidea that the dinies should go away.
The men from the mainland hauled them into the boat. They admitted thatthe president had returned to Tara. Sean O'Donohue concluded that hehad gone back to supervise some shenanigans. He had. On the way to themainland Sean O'Donohue ground his teeth. On arrival he learned thatthe president had taken Moira with him. He ground his teeth."Shenanigans!" he cried hoarsely. "After him!" He stamped his feet. Hisfury was awe-inspiring. When the ground-car drivers started back toTara, Sean O'Donohue was a small, rigid embodiment of raging death anddestruction held only temporarily in leash.
On the way, even his companions of the committee were uneasy. But oneof them, now and again, brought out a small piece of whitish rock andregarded it incredulously. It was not an unusual kind of rock. It wasordinary milky quartz. But it had tooth marks on it. Some diny, at sometime, had gnawed casually upon it as if it were soft as cheese.
* * * * *
Faint cheering could be heard in the distance as the ground-carscarrying the committee neared the city of Tara. To those in thevehicles, it seemed incredible that anybody should dare to rejoicewithin at least two light-years of Sean O'Donohue as he was at thismoment. But the cheering continued. It grew louder as the cars entereda street where houses stood side by side. But there came a change inthe chairman of the Dail Committee, too.
The cars slowed because the pavement was bad to nonexistent. Treeslined the way. An overhanging branch passed within two yards of Moira'sgrandfather. Something hung on it in a sort of graceful drapery. It wasa black snake. On Eire! Sean O'Donohue saw it. It took no notice ofhim. It hung comfortably in the tree and looked with great interesttoward the sounds of enthusiasm.
The deathly pallor of Sean O'Donohue changed to pale lavender. He sawanother black snake. It was climbing down a tree trunk with apurposeful air, as if intending to look into the distant uproar. Theground-cars went on, and the driver of the lead car swervedautomatically to avoid two black snakes moving companionably alongtogether toward the cheering. One of them politely gave the ground-carextra room, but paid no other attention to it. Sean O'Donohue turnedpurple.
Yet another burst of cheering. The chairman of the Dail Committeealmost, but not quite, detonated like a fission bomb. The way ahead wasblocked by people lining the way on a cross street. The cars beeped,and nobody heard them. With stiff, jerky motions Sean O'Donohue got outof the enforcedly stopped car. It had seemed that he could be no moreincensed, but he was. Within ten feet of him a matronly black snakemoved along the sidewalk with a manner of such assurance and suchimpeccable respectability that it would have seemed natural for her tobe carrying a purse.
Sean O'Donohue gasped once. His face was then a dark purple. He marchedblindly into the mob of people before him. Somehow, the people of Taragave way. But the sides of this cross street were crowded. Not only wasall the population out and waiting to cheer, but the trees wereoccupied. By black snakes. They hung in tasteful draperies among thebranches, sometimes two or three together. They gazed with intenseinterest at the scene below them. The solicitor general, following SeanO'Donohue, saw a black snake wriggling deftly between the legs of thepacked populace--packed as if to observe a parade--to get a view fromthe very edge of the curb. The Chancellor of the Exchequer cameapprehensively behind the solicitor general.
Sean O'Donohue burst through the ranks of onlookers. He stalked outonto the empty center of the street. He looked neither to right norleft. He was headed for the presidential mansion, there to stranglePresident O'Hanrahan in the most lingering possible manner.
But there came a roar of rejoicing which penetrated even hissingle-tracked, murder-obsessed brain. He turned, purple-face andexplosive, to see what the obscene sound could mean.
He saw. The lean and lanky figure of the chief justice of the supremecourt of the Planet Eire came running down the street toward him. Hebore a large slab of sheet-iron.
As he ran, he played upon it the blue flame of a welding torch. Thesmell of hot metal diffused behind him. The chief justice ran like adeer. But he wasn't leaving anything behind but the smell. Everythingelse was close on his heels.
A multicolored, multitudinous, swarming tide of dinies filled thehighway from gutter to gutter. From the two-inch dwarfs to thepurple-striped variety which grew to eight inches and sometimes foughtcats, the dinies were in motion. They ran in the wake of the chiefjustice, enthralled and entranced by the smell of hot sheet iron. Theywere fascinated. They were bemused. They were aware of nothing but thatineffable fragrance. They hopped, ran, leaped, trotted and galloped infull cry after the head of the planet's supreme court.
He almost bumped into the stunned Sean O'Donohue. As he passed, hecried: "Duck, man! The dinies are comin' tra-la, tra-la!"
But Sean O'Donohue did not duck. He was fixed, stuck, paralyzed in histracks. And the dinies arrived. They ran into him. He was an obstacle.They played leapfrog over each other to surmount him. He went down andwas merely a bump in the flowing river of prismatic colorings whichswarmed after the racing chief justice.
But there was a limit to things. This was not the first such event inTara, this day. The dinies, this time, filled no more than a block ofthe street. They swarmed past him, they raced on into the distance, andSean O'Donohue struggled to a sitting position.
His shoes were shreds. Dinies had torn them swiftly apart for the nailsin them. His garters were gone. Dinies had operated on his pants to getat the metal parts. His pockets were ripped. The bright metal buttonsof his coat were gone. His zippers had vanished. His suspenders dangledwithout any metal parts to hold them together, nor were there any pantsbuttons for them to hold onto. He opened his mouth, and closed it, andopened it again and closed it. His expression was that of a man indelirium.
And, even before the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the solicitorgeneral could lift him gently and bear him away, there came a finalcatastrophe, for the O'Donohue. The snakes who had watched events fromthe curbs, as well as those which had gazed interestedly from aloft,now began to realize that this was an affair which affected them. Theycame out and began to follow the vanishing procession, very much assmall dogs and little boys pursue a circus parade. But they seemed totalk uneasily to each other as they flowed past Sean O'Donohue, sittingin the dust of the street, all his illusions vanished and all his hopesdestroyed.
But the people of Tara did not notice. They cheered themselves hoarse.
* * * * *
President O'Hanrahan held himself with some dignity in the tumble-downreception hall of the presidential mansion. Moira gazed proudly at him.The two still-active members of the Dail Committee looked uncomfortablyaround them. The cabinet of Eire was assembled.
"It's sorry I am," said the President of Eire, "to have to issue adefiance to the Eire on Earth we owe so much to. But it can't behelped. We had to have the black creatures to keep the dinies fromeating us out of house and home altogether. We've been fightin' arear-guard battle, and we needed them. In time we'd have won with theirhelp, but time we did not have. So this mornin' Moira told me whatshe'd done yesterday. The darlin' had u
sed the brains God gave her, andmaybe holy St. Patrick put a flea in her ear. She figured out thatdinies must find metal by its smell, and if its smell was made strongerby simple heatin' they'd be unable to resist it. And it was so. Ye sawthe chief justice runnin' down the street with all the dinies afterhim."
The two members of the committee nodded.
"He was headin," said the president, "for the cold-storage plant thatSean O'Donohue had twitted me was empty of the provisions we'd had toeat up because of the dinies. It's no matter that it's empty nowthough. We can grow victuals in the fields from now on, because now thecold rooms are packed solid with dinies that ran heedless into aclimate they are not used to an' fell--what was the word,