The Stutterer | Page 8

worked for the company for a long time and when he became
crippled with arthritis, the directors gave him the job so that he might
have security in his latter years.
Yudovich, however, was a proud old man, and he never once
acknowledged to himself or to anyone else that his work was useless.
He guarded and checked the plant as though it were the storehouse of
the Terrestrial Treasury. Every hour punctually, he made his rounds
through the building.
At approximately seven thirty he was making his usual circuit when he

came to the second level. What he discovered justified all the years of
punctilious discharge of his duties. He was startled to see a man
kneeling on the floor, just above where the main power lines ran. He
had torn a hole in the composition floor, and as Yudovich watched, he
reached in and pulled out the great cable. Immediately the intruder
glowed in the semidarkness with an unearthly blue shine and sparkles
crackled off of his face, hands and feet.
Yudovich stood rooted to the floor. He knew very well that no man
could touch that cable and live. But as he watched, the intruder handled
it with impunity, pulling a length of wire out of his pocket and making
some sort of a connection.
It was too much for the old man. Electricity was obviously being stolen.
He roared out at the top of his voice, and stumped over to the wall
where he threw the alarm switch. Immediately, a hundred arc lights
flashed on, lighting the level brighter than the noon sun, and a
tremendously loud siren started wailing its warning to the whole
countryside.
The intruder jumped up as though he had been stabbed. He dropped the
wires, and after a wild look around him, he ran at full speed toward the
far exit.
"Hold on there," Yudovich shouted and tried to give chase, but his
swollen, crooked knees almost collapsed with the effort.
His eyes fell on a large wrench lying on a worktable, and he snatched it
up and threw it with all his strength. In his youth he had been a ball
player with some local fame as a pitcher, and in his later life, he was
addicted to playing horseshoes. His aim was, therefore, good, and the
wrench sailed through the air striking the runner on the back of the
head. Sparks flew and there was a loud metallic clang, the wrench
rebounding high in the air. The man who was struck did not even turn
his head, but continued his panicky flight and was gone in a second.
When he realized there was no hope of effecting a capture, Yudovich
stumped over to see the amount of the damage. A hole had been torn in

the floor, but the cable itself was intact.
Something strange caught his attention. Wherever the intruder had put
his foot down, there were many radiating cracks in the composition
floor, just as though someone had struck a sheet of ice with a sledge
hammer.
"I'll be danged," he said to himself. "I'll be danged and double danged."
He turned off the alarm and then went downstairs to the teledepth
screen to notify the sheriff's office.
A few hundred yards from the powerhouse, Jon Hall stood in the
darkness, listening to the voices of his fellows. There were eighteen of
them, not seventeen, for a short while before the one in the ice cave had
been captured, and they railed at him with a bitter hopeless anger.
He looked toward the bright lights of the powerhouse, considering
whether he should return. "It's too late," said one of them. "The alarm is
already out." "Go into the town and mix with the people," another
suggested. "If you stay within a half mile of the hafnium pile, the
detection man will not be able to pick up your radiation and maybe you
will have a second chance."
They all assented in that, and Hall, weary of making his own decisions
turned toward the town. He walked through a tree-lined residential
street, the houses with neatly trimmed lawns, and each with a copter
parked on the roof. In almost every house the teledepths were turned on
and he caught snatches of bulletins about himself: "... Is known to be in
the Mojave area." "... About six feet in height and very similar to a
human being. When last seen, he was dressed in--" "Governor
Leibowitz has promised speedy action and attorney general Markle has
stated--"
The main street of Ballarat was brilliantly lighted. Many of the
residents, aroused by the alarm from the powerhouse, were out,
standing in small groups in front of the stores and talking excitedly to
one another.

He hesitated, unwilling to walk through the bright street, but