Parking Problem

DAN MORGAN

Humour in science fictionis, unfortunately, all too rare—it is a difficult subject-matter to incorporate successfully—but occasionally an author manages to combine near-credibility with a laughable aspect, as Dan Morgan does here with the congested traffic problems of the future.

* * * *

AT 12.45 hours on 25th May 1970, Professor Elwyn Thomas of Bangor University placed a white rabbit named Kruger in a black-painted box of four cubic feet capacity. The box was open at one end, but Kruger, a tractable rabbit, sat contentedly sniffing as Professor Thomas threw the switch which activated the coils surrounding the box. One and two-fifths of a second elapsed before Kruger disappeared. Six hours later, to the micro-second, Kruger reappeared in the box. He was quite unmarked, but dead.

Professor Elwyn Thomas, who was in search of the principle of anti-gravity, took the loss of Kruger very badly, and would have abandoned his experiments at that point had it not been for the encouragement and support of his assistant, Lemuel Snerd. Snerd proved a tower of strength in the harrowing weeks that followed. One after another, an assortment of fifteen laboratory animals were placed in the black box; and each, with the exception of a rat named Machiavelli, returned exactly six hours later—dead. Machiavelli was never seen again, alive or dead; a fact which can only be attributed to the power failure which affected the entire University building some ten minutes before he was due to reappear.

Sickening of the slaughter, Professor Elwyn Thomas resigned his post at the University and stood as Welsh Home Rule candidate for the constituency. This venture proved more successful than his anti-gravity experiments. He began a long and distinguished Parliamentary career, during which he was the main spokesman of the Anti-Vivisection League and an ardent champion of the rights of dumb animals.

His research laboratory and his work were taken over by Lemuel Snerd, his erstwhile assistant. Snerd placed a further twenty-five laboratory animals in the black box, with the same results as his predecessor. Then, being of an original turn of mind, Snerd began a series of experiments with inanimate objects. He found that, like the animals, these objects—which ranged from a glass eye to a second-hand army boot—reappeared exactly six hours after the coils had been activated. No change in the nature of the objects was apparent, even on the closest examination. Snerd continued his research enthusiastically.

At the end of his second year Snerd made an unfortunate error of judgment. He applied to the University Grants committee for an increased appropriation in order to build a larger version of the Thomas black-box apparatus. The committee turned down the application by an overwhelming vote of eight to two. (The two in favour were Colonel Bassett-Hoare, a rabid campaigner for the reintroduction of capital punishment, who saw in the black box a potentially foolproof execution chamber; and Sir Charles Dribble, an enthusiastic amateur conjuror.) To make matters worse, the committee recommended the termination of Snerd’s contract, on the grounds that too much was being spent on “pure science” research, rather than on technological projects which would pay greater dividends.

Deprived of University patronage, Snerd, a man of infinite resource and courage, worked on alone. Poor, often friendless; persecuted by neighbours who blamed him for the disappearance of any missing pet, Snerd built bigger and bigger black boxes. Finally, in 1979, he patented the Snerd Extra Dimensional Parking Locker. Only slightly larger than the average lockup garage, one of these lockers was capable of storing three hundred and sixty vehicles per six-hour period, thus providing a miraculous clearance of the vehicle-choked streets which were in danger of bringing city life to a grinding halt.

The Extra Dimensional Parking Locker earned Lemuel Snerd a billion credits in royalties during the next twenty years. Far from changing his way of life, this spurred him on to ever greater efforts in the cause of science. On 15th August 1999, wearing a spacesuit and driving a specially constructed pressurized vehicle which had air and water recovery plants and sufficient food for several months, Lemuel Snerd drove into one of his own Extra Dimensional Parking Lockers and ordered the doors closed behind him. He was never seen again.

HEROES OF SCIENCE : Ernest Gedge. Lid.

(Galatea Press, 2020. Cr.5.)

* * * *

Arthur Crunch was a short, fat man with hyper-acidity, who kept a used car lot on the outskirts of the city. He looked like a slug in trousers. Inside the fortress of his skull, Crunch was a dashing mastermind of crime, the head of a vast organization beside which Murder Incorporated was a mere tiddler. As some men dream of fair women, Crunch happily contemplated robbery with violence and chuckled with delight over mass murder. He was a past president of the Adolf Hitler Society, and a founder member of the Friends of Ghenghis Khan.

Convinced that he was touched with the stuff of greatness, Crunch chafed continually against the knowledge that the true range of his crimes was limited to nothing more epoch making than the respraying and general faking up of the odd hot car that came his way. There were other ventures, like giving short measure on gasoline and recutting already remoulded tyres, but these were performed more as a matter of principle than for profit. He was unable to rid himself of the gnawing awareness that they gave insufficient scope to his natural meanness.

Crunch was in the crummy little office at the back of his lot, talking to his lieutenant, a beanpole of a man with big ears named Leon Pulver. The office stank of the cheap cigars that formed a staple part of Crunch’s diet. Leon Pulver was fifty per cent of the Crunch organization. He spent most of his time in the workshop at the back of the lot, covering the ravages of time with hasty paint jobs and coaxing the last spurt of life out of ailing engines. Apart from his talents as an automobile gerontologist, Pulver had a certain malleability of character that made him invaluable to Crunch.

“All you do is put this in the key-card slot,” Crunch said. He held up a piece of thin white plastic, punched at seemingly random intervals with a pattern of small holes. He had obtained the piece of plastic that morning from a poor, but dishonest student of electronics, one Morris Guzman.

“This I do not understand, Mr. Crunch—you’ll pardon me,” said Leon, deferentially. “It has always been said that a Snerd Locker is more thiefproof than Fort Knox.”

“And with good reason,” agreed Crunch. “Because until this moment, no one has been able to forge a satisfactory replica of the standard key card. That is what makes this deal such a cast-iron certainty. The Law does not even bother to guard the Lockers, on the assumption that they are thiefproof.”

“Can I see that, Mr. Crunch?” Leon Pulver held out one workstained hand.

Crunch gave him the piece of plastic. “All you do is put it in the key-card slot—then drive whatever comes out of the Locker right back here.”

“But how do we know what is going to come out?” asked Leon, with unusual astuteness.

“We don’t—it’s like a lucky dip. But whatever it is, we can’t lose. Morrie can turn these out by the hundred, now that he’s broken the code.”

Leon considered for a moment. “So why is it that you want me to go right into the middle of the city? It will make a long drive back here.”

“Because a six-hour Locker right in the middle of the business district is sure to carry a bigger percentage of high-priced executive models—why else?” Crunch said. “Now don’t waste any more time talking, Leon—go and do just as I’ve told you.”

“Mr. Crunch, sometimes I think that I am working for a first-class, genuine genius,” Leon said. He bowed himself respectfully out of the crummy little office.

* * * *

“Could you tell me the time?”

Leon Pulver, who had been comfortably sure that he was merging inconspicuously with the landscape, jumped three inches into the air, blinking at the expensively dressed man who had asked the question.

“Ulp! It’s five minutes past one, you’ll pardon me,” Leon said.

“Hell and damnation!” The man, whom Leon guessed to be a company chairman at the very least, scuttled across the pavement to the second in the row of twelve parking lockers. Leon, his natural curiosity aroused, followed.

Fishing in the pocket of his elegant jacket, the man produced a key card, thrust it into the scanner of the locker, and stood back, waiting for the door to open. Nothing happened.

“I think maybe you missed the end of your cycle, you’ll pardon me,” Leon said, helpfully. “You’ll be able to get your car out at the end of another six-hour period.”

“Hell and damnation!” reiterated the company chairman. Retrieving his key card, he hurried away.

Leon glanced up and down the street. Nobody seemed to be particularly interested in what was going on around the parking lockers. His moment had come. He placed the white plastic card in the scanner and stood back in eager anticipation. Like Crunch had said—it was a kind of lucky dip.

The door of the locker opened and something that looked like a three-wheeled tricycle rolled off the conveyor belt. It was made of a pink, semi-translucent material, and it floated some four inches above ground level.

Leon, whose speciality was not quick thinking, blinked twice and looked again. The pink tricycle was still there. He guessed that it wasn’t really a tricycle; the wheel-like protuberances must, in fact, be propulsion units of some kind. He had never seen anything quite like it in his life before. In search of a point of reference, he thought back to the morning’s conversation with Crunch. There had been, so far as he recalled, no specific instructions with regard to pink tricycles. But Crunch had said quite clearly: “Drive whatever comes out of the Locker right back here”—which must surely be taken to include tricycles, whatever colour ?

The locker door rolled shut again. Leon cleared his throat and looked around him in some embarrassment. A couple walked past, wrapped in the preoccupied indifference common to city dwellers. He could have saved his blushes. If the pink tricycle had been a pink elephant they wouldn’t have noticed. Still Leon hesitated, wondering if it might not be a good idea to call up Crunch and get some definite ruling about pink tricycles.

“Move over!” A worried-looking citizen elbowed Leon out of the way and placed a key card in the scanner of the locker.

His mind thus made up for him, Leon clambered into the saddle of the pink tricycle and examined the control panel. The only clue to the function of the buttons on the panel was an odd-looking series of arrows and dashes.

“Do you mind?” called the worried-looking citizen, who was waiting to drive his car away.

Startled, Leon jabbed at the first button, which was marked with an upright arrow. The pink tricycle began to move upwards, gathering speed. Panicky, Leon pushed the button which had a dash beside it. The tricycle stopped its upward rush and hung steady, about fifteen feet from the pavement. The worried citizen gave him an odd look, and drove away.

Leon studied the panel. The upright arrow for up, the dash for stop—then it logically followed that the downward pointing arrow was for down. He pressed it. The tricycle swooped downwards. When it was about a foot above the ground, he punched the stop button. The machine slowed to a gentle halt; but not before the “wheels” had buried themselves several inches in the concrete pavement. Having accepted the pink tricycle, Leon took this in his stride. Giving the UP button a brief push, and following it immediately by the STOP, the tricycle ended up near enough to the surface not to attract too much attention.

Or was it ? With a spurt of alarm, Leon saw that a knot of curious people had gathered on the other side of the road during his aerobatics, and were awaiting further developments with interest. Glancing to the right, he saw a blue uniform approaching. It was time to go.

There were only two more buttons on the control panel —each of them had an arrow; one with a dash above and the other with one beneath. He pressed the one with the dash above, and the tricycle surged forward. Turning to the left, he headed for the main street.

Back in the workshop of the used car lot, Arthur Crunch glowered at his lieutenant.

“But, Mr. Crunch, you said the first vehicle that came out of the locker, you’ll pardon me,” protested Leon unhappily.

“Maybe I did—but who expects a thing like that?” The roll of fat at the back of Crunch’s collar was a deep purple as he gazed at the tricycle. “What in Hell is it, anyway?”

“This I don’t know—but it is a first-class machine,” Leon said.

“With three wheels …” Crunch grunted cynically.

“Not wheels, Mr. Crunch, you’ll pardon me. There are no wheels.”

“No wheels?” Crunch bent to look closer at the tricycle, straining his expansive waistline. A moment later he straightened up and eyed Leon suspiciously. “What is this— some kind of gag?”

“No gag, Mr. Crunch … honest.”

“Then how does it move along?”

“This I can’t tell you—but maybe I should show?” During his ride through the city Leon had become familiar with the controls of the pink tricycle, and he was eager for an opportunity of displaying his aptitude. He hopped into the saddle and began to put the machine through its paces; demonstrating its capability of moving in any direction at the touch of a button.

Crunch watched as the pink tricycle hovered one minute near the ceiling, then swooped down to and partly through the oil-soaked concrete of the floor. Careful not to show too much surprise in front of Leon, he prodded gingerly with his foot around the base of the machine. It was apparently welded into the solid concrete.

Noticing his error, Leon touched the control lightly and the machine rose, to hang some three inches above the floor, humming faintly. “Who needs wheels, you’ll pardon me?” he said, getting off the tricycle. “Maybe you’d like to try it, Mr. Crunch?”

“Yeah … some other time,” said Crunch, who was a devout coward. He considered the situation at length. Leon had apparently stumbled onto the prototype of some revolutionary type of vehicle. But who would be careless enough to leave such a machine in a public parking locker? It didn’t make sense—any more than the method of propulsion of the vehicle itself made sense. More important, at the present moment Crunch could not see any clear way of making a profit on the deal. An ordinary hot car could be resprayed, fitted with new registration plates and sold—but what did you do with something as outlandish as this ? If it was the only one of its kind and the cops were out searching already…

“Bonehead!” snarled Crunch.

Leon who had been expecting at least a kind word, was deflated. “But Mr. Crunch …”

“What am I going to do with the thing? But that wouldn’t occur to you, would it?”

“Like you always say, Mr. Crunch—you are the brains of this outfit. I just do as I’m told. Only thing, you’ll pardon me, is that there can’t be another machine like this in the whole world, maybe … so it must be worth something.”

In the whole world…. Crunch’s rubbery nose tilted upwards with the reflex of a hungry jackal who smells carrion.

“Get Morrie Guzman—get him right away,” Crunch ordered.

* * * *

Jack Daly, Area Maintenance Engineer for the Snerd Locker Corporation, arrived at the Marron Street lockers at 14.15 hours on a routine check. Maintenance, as everyone knows, is one of those jobs that goes on day after day, week after week, being boring as Hell—then suddenly the sky falls in and there you are with your thumb in the dyke. Daly was in the middle of a boring period, but he cheered himself with thoughts of his new girl, Sophie, as he worked away steadily checking the generator circuits of the line of lockers.

As he plugged his test meter into the control panel of Locker YH786, Daly was on the point of inventing the foolproof phrase that would lure Sophie up to his apartment. The grand seduction scene did a quick dissolve as a red light on the panel began to flash intermittently, indicating that a vehicle was in process through the locker. The green light, which should have gone on at the insertion of a key card, remained dead. Daly cursed. It looked as though he had arrived just at the right time to catch the sky. Lockers just didn’t disgorge their contents without the use of a key card.

Leaving his test kit plugged in, Daly rushed round to the front of the locker. The door was still shut, whereas if the locker was making a delivery it should already be rolling upwards. The door was still shut, but … Daly gulped and rubbed his eyes as a pink, semi-translucent tricycle emerged, flowing apparently through the solid metal of the door. The rider of the machine was a vaguely reptilian humanoid, clothed from top to toe in a suit of the same pinkish colour. Ignoring Daly, the reptilian humanoid consulted his instrument panel briefly, then at the height of some six inches above the pavement headed swiftly for the building opposite … and disappeared through the blank wall.

Daly, a phlegmatic type, not given to self doubt in any form, stood for a moment looking at the wall, then hurried to the nearest phone and called his supervisor, Fred Ebworth.

“I don’t want to bother you, Fred,” Daly said. “But a pink lizard man just came out of Locker YH786 …”

Fred Ebworth, a balding man in his mid-fifties who anticipated his forthcoming retirement with some satisfaction, looked Daly straight in the eye and pointedly said nothing.

“No fooling, Fred. The thing came through the closed door of the locker, and …”

“Look, Daly—we all got our troubles, right?” said Ebworth. “Now why don’t you go somewhere and sleep it off and we’ll forget the whole thing?”

“I’m telling you, Fred. This is serious. That creature is loose in the city—and it came out of one of our lockers. I never saw anything like it in my life before—we ought to do something, Fred.”

Fred Ebworth sucked his gums for a. moment. A man didn’t reach supervisor grade in the Snerd Locker Corporation if he was the type to be stampeded into rash decisions. “So how do you figure the situation, Daly?” he asked, at length.

“There’s only one possible explanation,” Daly said. “Some intelligent life-form from another dimension must have found its way through the locker.”

“Daly, we’ve been using these lockers for thirty years, and nothing like that ever happened,” said Ebworth soberly.

“Maybe so, but I’ll tell you something, Fred—this character was here for a purpose, and he knew where he was going!”

Ebworth sighed mightily. “And it had to happen in my section. All right, Daly—I’ll pass your report on to headquarters. In the meantime, stay right where you are and post Locker YH786 Out Of Order.”

* * * *

Morris Guzman scratched his coal-black beard and blinked enigmatically at Arthur Crunch through pebble-thick glasses.

“Well?” said Crunch, who had been chewing impatiently on a cigar butt all through a lengthy examination of the pink tricycle.

“Interesting … very interesting,” murmured Guzman. “Where did you steal it?”

“Leon got it out of a downtown parking locker, using that plastic key card of yours.”

“Hmm…Now the question is whether I made a slight error in the design of the key card, or is this just a lucky accident?”

Lucky! Crunch stamped his cigar butt into the workshop floor. The question as far as he was concerned was the usual one: “What’s in this deal for Arthur Crunch?” But he knew better than to expect any interest in such worldly matters from Guzman.

“I think we can safely say that the machine doesn’t originate on this planet,” Guzman continued. “This being so, it must have somehow slipped through from another dimension into the parking locker—probably due to a distortion of the locker’s field through the use of the plastic card. The drive units appear to be some kind of force-field generator with a built-in nuclear power device. Certainly nothing of the kind exists on Earth, to my knowledge.”

“So what’s it worth ?” Crunch was able to contain himself no longer.

Guzman chewed his beard pensively. “Let me put it to you this way, Mr. Crunch. The principle involved in these units could be as big a leap forward in human technology as the invention of the wheel.”

“Like how?” asked Crunch.

“A larger model of this power unit would undoubtedly be superior to any spaceship drive yet invented,” suggested Guzman.

“And you could make such a unit?” Crunch asked eagerly.

Guzman shrugged. “Given time and the proper facilities. The drive units are sealed—I would first have to find a way of dismantling them without damaging their components. Then, a certain amount of research and experimentation would be necessary before attempting to build a larger unit.”

“And this would be worth while?”

“How many billions do the government spend on such projects each year? Here we have the principle for which they are searching without success.”

“We’ll turn this whole darned place into a laboratory for you,” Crunch said eagerly. “I’ll get you all the apparatus you need.”

“The side effects are very interesting also,” Guzman said thoughtfully.

“Side effects?”

Guzman nodded. “You must have noticed the way the machine appears to sink into the solid ground if the downward movement isn’t checked in time. This would suggest to me that a further effect of the force-field generators is a realignment of the atoms in the molecular structure.”

“Uh-huh …” said Crunch.

“It seems to me more than probable that this machine would be capable of passing through so-called solid objects, without damage to itself or the object penetrated,” said Guzman. “Such an interpenetration was suggested as a theoretical possibility as far back as the nineteenth century. I can show you the equations, if you wish….”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Crunch, in his own way, was just as much of a specialist as Guzman, and somewhere in the back of his mind an idea was stirring. “You mean to tell me that this machine could go through a solid wall… ?”

Crunch stopped talking as Leon Pulver, who had been standing near by, respectfully listening to the conversation of his betters, emitted a gulping yell of considerable weirdness. He stood, one hand raised defensively, eyes bulging, as he stared at the wall behind Crunch and Guzman.

Crunch turned abruptly, in time to see a humanoid lizard on a pink tricycle flow through the wall and come to a halt about ten feet away.

“In just such a manner,” Guzman said, backing away cautiously. “Have a care. We may well be dealing with a very advanced civilization here…”

The humanoid lizard dismounted from his machine and walked with an oddly rolling gait towards the original pink tricycle, completely ignoring the presence of the three human beings.

It didn’t take a great deal of imagination on Crunch’s part to realize that, as of the arrival of the humanoid lizard, his possession of the pink tricycle was in some jeopardy— and as a consequence, the attainment of his dreams of wealth and power. Not normally a man of violence, save by proxy, he was moved to extreme action. Picking up a heavy wrench from a nearby workbench, he hurriedly approached the humanoid lizard from the rear and bopped him firmly. The alien slumped to the ground and lay there, out cold.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” said Morris Guzman.

“Shouldn’t have done it—Hell!” said Crunch. “Do you think I was going to stand by and let him take that machine away ? Anyway—now we’ve got two of them.”

“Maybe…” Guzman was dubious, and more than a little nervous. “But have you stopped to think that a race with their kind of technology would have some rather special weapons?”

* * * *

“Look, Colonel—we’ve been through this a dozen times already. It was man-shaped, with a lizard-like head and it came out of that locker. I didn’t notice whether or not it was carrying any weapons, and I have no idea of its intentions.” Daly had been in the Colonel’s office of the Mobile Command post for the past two and a half hours. He was impatient and tired of all the fuss.

Marron Street had been a quiet city backwater. Now it was transformed into something like an invasion beachhead. All buildings within a mile radius had been evacuated of civilians and the whole area was now a seething mass of military activity. Tanks and atomic cannon were stationed at every street corner and formed a solid ring round the parking lockers; squads of heavily armoured ground troops searched every building, weapons at the ready. Overhead, fighters and bombers, hastily assembled from the mothball squadrons, roared armed to the teeth with destruction.

In a world at peace for the last thirty years the role of a soldier had lacked both glory and action, but a career of parades and simulated battles had done nothing to dim the martial enthusiasm of Colonel Stephen Miller. A spare whippet of a man, with bony features and close-cropped grey hair, he fixed Daly with the stare that had made strong men quail on parade grounds all over the planet.

“You fail to realize the seriousness of the situation, Mr. Daly. For the first time in history Earth has been invaded by an alien life-form.”

“One odd-looking, but probably harmless creature hardly constitutes an invasion, Colonel,” said Jack Daly.

“Reconnaissance!” snapped Miller. “The enemy would hardly risk a landing in force without sending a scout in advance.”

“And on that basis you’re assuming that this creature is hostile?”

Colonel Miller rattled his bony fingers on the desk top. Civilians! No wonder the defence estimates dwindled year by year, pared down by complacent politicians. “We are dealing with the unknown, Mr. Daly. At any moment Parking Lockers all over the planet may start to disgorge hordes of these creatures, armed with what weapons we can only guess. As far as we know at the moment this is the one beachhead, but…”

“I think you’re making too much of an isolated incident,” Daly said. “There’s no sense in going off half cocked.”

“Half cocked!” Colonel Miller’s bony features were very pale. “Let me tell you …” He broke off as there was a rap on the door and a worried-looking staff captain entered. “Yes, Hynam?” barked the Colonel.

“We’ve just had a message that the civilian police have traced the alien to a used car lot on the north-west side of the city,” said the captain. He moved over and indicated a position on a wall map. “Somewhere in this area.”

“Good! Tell them to hold everything and send two squadrons of tanks immediately. I want that scout alive, but if he puts up any resistance, blast him!”

“The civilian police say they’re closing in now,” said the captain unhappily.

“They what?” Colonel Miller rose to his feet roaring. “What do they think this is, a blasted traffic ticket? Tell communications I want to talk to the officer in charge of the civilian police operation immediately.” He stormed out of the room, shepherding the apologetic captain ahead of him.

* * * *

“Maybe, but if this one’s any sample, I don’t think they’re so smart,” said Arthur Crunch, indicating the prostrate form of the humanoid lizard. His successful use of violence had brought the Ghenghis Khan side of his personality to the fore.

Guzman tugged at his beard nervously. “I don’t like it, Crunch. If you want me to work on that drive …”

“Nuts to the drive!” Crunch said. “I never did like that idea. Too close to the legitimate and too slow. I don’t care how the thing works, just so long as it does.”

“What do you mean?” Guzman asked.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Crunch said, easing his ample bulk onto the alien’s pink machine. “One of these vehicles can go right through anything solid and take its rider with it, right? So who wants to waste time and money experimenting and trying to build more ? We’ve got two machines now, so Leon and I can ride into any bank vault in the world and help ourselves. We don’t need you, Guzman.”

“Mr. Crunch, you are a genius, you’ll pardon me,” Leon said admiringly.

“Just practical thinking, Leon,” Crunch said modestly. “We’re in business like never before. But first we have to get rid of the evidence.” He touched the prostrate lizard man with his foot. There was no response.

“You can’t do that!” protested Guzman, as Crunch produced a blaster from the inside pocket of his jacket and levelled it at the prone figure.

“Can’t I?” Crunch eyed Guzman craftily. “Leon, take care of this witness, will you? We don’t want him lousing things up.”

“Yes, Mr. Crunch.” Leon pulled his own blaster and moved in on Guzman.

A massively amplified voice boomed through the workshop. “THIS IS A POLICE WARNING. COME OUTSIDE WITH YOUR HANDS UP. WE SHALL BE USING TEAR GAS IN SIXTY SECONDS FROM NOW.”

“The police!” Leon rushed to the window. “They’ve got the whole place surrounded.”

“All right. Time to go, Leon,” Crunch said confidently. “They won’t touch us. Hop on the other machine. Like I said, we’re in business.” He lowered his blaster and turned his attention to the control panel of his tricycle.

“Wait a minute!” shouted Guzman. “You’re making a mistake, Crunch. That alien is wearing …”

Arthur Crunch, master criminal, crouched over the handlebars of the pink tricycle and pressed the forward button down to its fullest extent. The machine headed for the back wall of the workshop with the speed of a bullet.

The machine went through the wall.

Leon Pulver, saved by his blessedly slow reflexes, looked at Guzman. “What happened, you’ll pardon me?”

Morris Guzman turned sickly from his contemplation of the revolting smear on the back wall of the workshop. “I tried to tell him. Look at the alien’s suit. Just as I thought— enclosure in that pink plastic is essential to the proper functioning of the realignment field.”

The alien stirred, then struggled shakily to his feet.

Leon, thoroughly demoralized by the loss of his leader, backed away from the pink tricycle trembling. The alien ignored him. Getting on the machine he headed it quickly through the back wall of the workshop—delicately avoiding the remains of the past president of the Adolf Hitler Society.

* * * *

Back at the beachhead, Jack Daly was in the busy communications centre of the Command Post.

“What do you mean, you’ve lost him ?” bellowed Colonel Miller, glaring at the image of a crestfallen police captain. “I told you to wait until my tanks got there, you drivelling idiot!”

“Message from one of our spotter planes, sir,” said an earphoned communications sergeant. “The alien has been seen heading in this direction.”

Miller turned his back on the image of the policeman. “Right! Now we’ll have a chance to do the job properly. Obviously the enemy will try and get back through the locker he used to enter our dimension, so all we have to do now is wait. As soon as he appears, all guns will be trained on him, but there’s to be no firing until I give the order. I want him alive, if possible.”

Daly stood with the officers at the blastproof observation window as a loudspeaker on the wall behind gave second by second reports on the approach of the alien.

“C Company stand by!” commanded the colonel.

“Stand by, sir.”

“Be ready to fire one round, in the path of the enemy, but not close enough to harm him.”

“Very good, sir.”

The tension in the Command Post was like a physical pressure. The only sound was the hiss of the live loudspeaker on the wall. Daly had a sinking feeling that he was going to be present at one of mankind’s more historic pieces of stupidity.

“There he is!” gasped a sweating captain.

The alien flowed through the wall of the building opposite the lockers. He was riding one machine and towing the other behind him.

“Company C—fire!” barked Colonel Miller.

An explosion reverberated along the street and when the debris and smoke had cleared away a crater some six feet across had appeared in the pavement, some fifteen yards in front of the alien.

The humanoid lizard stopped his machine and surveyed the assembled might of Earth’s military power.

Jack Daly felt as though a stream of ice water was being poured very slowly down his spine.

Colonel Miller picked up a microphone, “STAY WHERE YOU ARE. YOU ARE MY PRISONER!” his voice boomed down the street.

The alien glanced in the direction of the Command Post, then back towards the line of tanks that barred his way back into Locker No. YH786. Slowly, almost casually, like a man brushing away a fly, he raised his hand.

Three massive tanks disappeared in a soundless explosion.

Before the shocked gasps in the Command Post had died away, the alien punched the control panel of his machine. A micro-second later, he and both machines had disappeared through the closed door of Locker YH786.

“What now, Colonel?” Jack Daly said shakily. “He’ll be back … him and a few million others…”

* * * *

Earth’s population was shocked when, in the year 2009, the world government ordered the immediate destruction of all Snerd Extra Dimensional Parking Lockers. No explanation for this sudden decision, made under Emergency Security Regulations, was given; neither has one been forthcoming since. And no compensation has ever been paid to the owners of the millions of vehicles thus abandoned in another dimension. There was in consequence of this action, a five-year boom in the world automobile industry, and today we face a traffic situation beside which the problems of the late twentieth century pale into insignificance. …

(Ibid.)