"And this?"
"That's an analysis of the gasoline. Funny thing about that, sir. We found the tank, all twisted out of shape, but there was some gas still left in it. It hadn't…"
"But why an analysis?"
"Because it's not gasoline, sir. It is something else. It was gasoline, but it's been changed, sir."
"Is that all, Sergeant?"
The sergeant, I could see, was beginning to sweat a little. "No, sir, there's more to it. It's all in that report. We got most all the wreckage, sir. Just bits here and there are missing. We are working now on reassembling it."
"Reassembling…"
"Maybe, sir, pasting it back together is a better way to put it."
"It will never run again?"
"I don't think so, sir. It's pretty well smashed up. But if it could be put back together whole, it would be the best car that was ever made. The speedometer says 80,000 miles, but it's in new-car condition. And there are alloys in it that we can't even guess at."
The sergeant paused. "If you'll permit me, sir, it's a very funny business."
"Yes, indeed," the colonel said. "Thank you, Sergeant. A very funny business." The sergeant turned to leave. "Just a minute," said the colonel.
"Yes, sir."
"I'm sorry about this, Sergeant, but you and the entire detail that was assigned to the car are restricted to the base. I don't want this leaking out. Tell your men, will you? I'll make it tough on anyone who talks."
"Yes, sir," the sergeant said, saluting very polite, but looking like he could have slit the colonel's throat.
When the sergeant was gone, the colonel said to me: "Asa, if there's something that you should say now and you fail to say it and it comes out later and makes a fool of me, I'll wring your scrawny little neck."
"Cross my heart," I said.
He looked at me funny. "Do you know what that skunk was?"
I shook my head.
"It wasn't any skunk," he said. "I guess it's up to us to find out what it is."
"But it isn't here. It ran into the woods."
"It could be hunted down."
"Just you and me?"
"Why just you and me when there are two thousand men right on this base?"
"But…"
"You mean they wouldn't take too kindly to hunting down a skunk?"
"Something like that, Colonel. They might go out, but they wouldn't hunt. They'd try not to find it."
"They'd hunt if there was five thousand dollars waiting for the man who brought the right one in."
I looked at him as if he'd gone off his rocker.
"Believe me," said the colonel, "it would be worth it. Every penny of it."
I told you he was crazy.
I didn't go out with the skunk hunters. I knew just how little chance there was of ever finding it. It could have gotten clear out of the county by that time or found a place to hole up where one would never find it.
And, anyhow, I didn't need five thousand. I was drawing down good pay and drinking regular.
The next day, I dropped in to see the colonel. The medical officer was having words with him.
"You got to call it off!" the sawbones shouted.
"I can't call it off," the colonel yelled. "I have to have that animal."
"You ever see a man who tried to catch a skunk barehanded?"
"No, I never have."
"I got eleven of them now," the sawbones said. "I won't have any more of it."
"Captain," said the colonel, "you may have a lot more than eleven before this is all over."
"You mean you won't call it off, sir?"
"No, I won't."
"Then I'll have it stopped."
"Captain!" said the colonel and his voice was deadly.
"You're insane," the sawbones said. "No court martial in the land…"
"Captain."
But the captain did not answer. He turned straight around and left.
The colonel looked at me. "It's sometimes tough," he said.
I knew that someone had better find that skunk or the colonel's name was mud.
"What I don't understand", I said, "is why you want that skunk. He's just a skunk that purrs."
The colonel sat down at his desk and put his head between his hands. "My God," he moaned, "how stupid can men get?"
"Pretty stupid," I told him, "but I still don't understand…"
"Look," the colonel said, "someone jiggered up that car of yours. You say you didn't do it. You say no one else could have done it. The boys who are working on it say there's stuff in it that's not been even thought of."
"If you think that skunk…"
The colonel raised his fist and smacked it on the desk. "Not a skunk! Something that looks like a skunk! Something that knows more about machines than you or I or any human being will ever get to know!"
"But it hasn't got no hands. How could it do what you think?"
He never got to answer. The door burst in and two of the saddest sacks outside the guardhouse stumbled in. They didn't bother to salute.
"Colonel, sir," one of them said, heaving hard. "Colonel, sir, we got one. We didn't even have to catch it. We whistled at it and it followed us."
The skunk walked in behind them, waving its tail and purring. It walked right over to me and rubbed against my legs. When I reached down and picked it up, it purred so loud I was afraid it would go ahead and explode.
"That the one?" the colonel asked me.
"He's the one," I said.
The colonel grabbed the phone. "Get me Washington. General Sanders. At the Pentagon."
He waved his hand at us. "Get out of here!"
"But, Colonel, sir, the money…"
"You'll get it. Now get out of here." He looked exactly like you might imagine a man might look right after he's been told he's not going to be shot at dawn.
We turned around and got out of there.
At the door, four of the toughest-looking hombres this side of Texas were waiting, with rifles in their hands. "Don't pay no attention to us, Mac," one of them said to me. "We're just your bodyguards."
They were my bodyguards, all right. They went every place I went. And the skunk went with me, too. That, of course, was why they stuck around. They didn't care a rap about me. It was the skunk that was getting the bodyguarding.
And that skunk stuck closer to me than paper to the wall. He followed at my heels and walked between my feet, but mostly he wanted me to carry him or to let him perch on my shoulder. And he purred all the blessed time. Either he figured I was the only true friend he had or he thought I was a soft touch.
Life got a little complicated. The skunk slept with me and the four guards stayed in the room. The skunk and one of the guards went to the latrine with me while the others kept close. I had no privacy at all. I said it wasn't decent. I said it was unconstitutional. It didn't make no difference. There was nothing I could do. There were, it turned out, twelve of them guards and they worked in eight-hour shifts.
For a couple of days, I didn't see the colonel and I thought it was funny how he couldn't rest until he'd found the skunk and then paid no attention to it.
I did a lot of thinking about what the colonel had said about the skunk not being a skunk at all, but something that only looked like a skunk and how it might know more, some ways, than we did. And the more I lived with it, the more I began to believe that he might be right. Although it still seemed impossible that any critter without hands could know much about machinery in the first place, let alone do anything about it.
Then I got to remembering how me and Betsy had understood each other and I carried that a little further, imagining how a man and machine might get to know one another so well, they could even talk together and how the man, even if he didn't have hands, might help the machine to improve itself.
And while it sounds somewhat far-fetched just telling it, thinking of it in the secrecy of one's mind made it sound all right and it gave a sort of warm feeling to imagine that one could get to be downright personal friendly with machines.