He brought the shoe up, under the horizontal bar, over it again—and dumped the paste on the bar just as the leather gave way. The metal smoked acridly and melted.
Mazurin jettisoned the shoe, jammed his foot back into his own sandal, and peered at the bar through watering eyes. There was a hearty bite out of it, but a slender tongue of metal still united the two sections.
“Now!” said Mazurin. “Pull!”
He braced his back and shoved at the bar till his muscles cracked, while Charlie, his face white with strain, pulled from his side. The car lurched once more, and the gray surface beneath leaped up to the level of the floorboards. Mazurin got his feet up on the bar and gave one last desperate shove. The metal gave a ping and moved a fraction of an inch. Through the smoke, Mazurin saw that the narrow part had snapped. He pushed some more, until the bar reluctantly bent a full three inches out of its original line.
Kneeling on the bench, Mazurin held his wrists carefully away from the smoldering ends of the bar and slipped his arms free.
“Nice work so far,” said Charlie, “but what about the door?”
He slid down to the end of the bench and moved his own arms free of the bar. The car tilted again as the girl moved to follow him.
“Get back!” said Mazurin urgently. He motioned Charlie to the forward end of the car. “Balance the weight while she gets loose.” He looked at the door that still barred their way to freedom. The lock, naturally, was about halfway up, better than two feet from the level of the argo paste. “Other shoe,” he told Charlie. “Can’t be helped.”
Charlie took it off and handed it down to him. The girl had got her arms free now and was leaning forward with the wristcuffs spread, evidently intending to touch the connecting piece to the smoking end of the bar.
“No!” yelled Mazurin, and she started back. “Horrible stuff—get a drop of it on your flesh, no way to stop it. Get back with Charlie, please.”
Squatting on the bench, he leaned forward precariously and dipped the Second shoe into the seething gray mass. He got a bigger quantity this time, and he could control it better. He brought it up swiftly and carefully poured it over the lock, peering through the haze to make sure he had the right place.
Smoke gushed out, and he couldn’t see what was happening; but he pushed the door outward, and it gave. He stood up, put one foot on the opposite bench, and got the other wedged into the barred opening of the door. A push and a twist, and he was precariously balanced outside, directly over the center of the viscous, smoking pool.
The car settled again under his weight. He scrambled to get both feet on top of the door, lunged and sprawled across the smooth top of the car. Panting, he got his feet under him again and flung himself forward, feeling the car tilt slightly under him as he moved.
“All right,” he called, “come out quickly!”
He saw a motion beneath him, and turned as the door of the cab opened and a head thrust itself out. The head shook itself, dazedly. Mazurin, flat on his stomach, leaned out and slammed his manacled wrists apologetically under the man’s ear.
“Sorry, Sacred Ancestor,” he said regretfully. “One must take sides, it would seem.”
The guard dived slowly and gracefully out of the open door and sprawled on the grass outside. Mazurin, overbalanced by the blow, felt himself slipping, grabbed for a hand-hold, then let himself go. He landed on his shoulders, rolled quickly and stood up, poised to leap into the cab. But the second uniformed man was still hunched over with his flattened face pressed against the windshield. A trickle of blood trailed from his ear.
Mazurin looked up as Charlie appeared on top of the car, followed by the girl. “All secure here,” he said. “You two all right?”
“We’re just fine,” said Charlie grimly, "and we’re certainly grateful to you for saving our lives. But would you mind giving us a hint of what this is all about?” He and the girl jumped down beside Mazurin, and Charlie gestured toward the dwindling rear end of the car. “Argo paste,” he said. “And those things back in Welfare Square.”
“Tweedledums,” Mazurin supplied helpfully. “Pineapple-flavored, I think.”
“Tweedledums,” repeated the boy. “And you. What are you, the Mad Hatter? If so, what are you going to pull out of your hat next?”
“There’s lots more,” Mazurin said gloomily. “We haven’t seen the flangs yet, or the collapsed flooring, or the rozzers, or—”
“Wait a minute,” Charlie interrupted. “Just one minute. One thing at a time. What are flangs?”
Mazurin searched his mind for the archaic word. Castards? Something like that. Ces, cis, cos—“Custards,” he said. “From the French flan, although I believe there was some influence dating from the Early Hollywood Era. They’re mobile, but not as much as the tweedledums. They only creep around, and they like to crawl into any dark enclosed space they find. So you just leave them with a bunch of open pastry shells, and—”
Charlie interrupted again. “All right, I knew it was going to be something like that. I won’t ask you what rozzers are.”
“Like a very slender pig,” said Mazurin promptly. “Fast as lightning. Some people like to race them.”
“And eat them.”
“Eat rozzers?” Mazurin exclaimed in disgust. “We’d sooner starve!”
Charlie looked at him, breathing heavily. “All I want to know,” he said, “is where all these things that nobody ever heard of came from, and that includes you.”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Mazurin reluctantly, “but I have a feeling you won’t believe me.”
He squatted and began going through the pockets of the guard who lay on the greensward at their feet.
“No,” said Charlie, and gave him a push that sent him sprawling. Charlie knelt quickly and removed the guard’s hand-gun from its holster. Backing up, he handed the gun to the girl and then went back to the guard. “Sorry, but I don’t see how we can trust you.”
He found the guard’s keys, stood up and held the gun trained on Mazurin while the girl unlocked his wristcuffs; then they traded while he unlocked hers. It seemed, Mazurin thought ruefully, that they had no present intention of unlocking his.
“Can I get up now?” he asked mildly.
“Yes,” said Charlie. He gestured with the gun to their left, across an open field that ended at a wooded ridge. “We’ve got to get under cover.” He glanced at the gun in his hand, then back at the smoking rear of the paddy-wagon. “What do you think, Eve?”
“It would bq nice to have it,” the girl said regretfully, “but it’s a sure tipoff.”
“Right,” said Charlie, and he returned the gun to the guard’s holster. Then he pulled the keys out of his pocket and replaced them as well.
“Hey,” objected Mazurin, “when do I get out of these things?”
“Later—maybe,” said Charlie. “By the time anybody finds the car, there’s a good chance that the whole rear end will be gone, and they’ll figure we went with it. But not if we take anything from this guy.”
“They’ll die if we leave them unconscious in this pool of argo paste!” Mazurin said, horrified.
“What of it?” Charlie wanted to know. “You don’t think they’d let us live long, do you?”
Mazurin paused. “They wouldn’t?”
“Certainly not,” said Eve. “That’s how they stay in power—kill off the opposition.”
“But I’m not the opposition,” Mazurin denied.
“Oh, no?” Charlie demanded threateningly, and Mazurin decided abruptly that he was. Charlie said, “You don’t know how close you came to joining these stinkers.”
Eve started walking. “Let’s go. Someone may come along and ask why we’re not helping our gallant lads out of danger.”