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can’t be no outlander come in here and tell us what to do.”
    From behind Reilly came a faint, thin, screeching sound and the instant that I heard it, I pegged it for what it was, a nail being forced out of the wood that held it.
    Reilly and his henchmen swung around and I let out a yell. “All right, Elmer! Out and at them!”
    At my yell the big crate seemed to explode, the planks nailed across its top wrenched and torn away, and out of the crate rose Elmer, all eight feet of him.
    He stepped out of the crate, almost fastidiously.
    “What’s the matter, Fletch?”
    “Go easy on them, Elmer,” I said. “Don’t kill them. Just cripple them a little.”
    He took a step forward and Reilly and the two men backed away.
    “I won’t hurt them none,” said Elmer. “I’ll just brush them off. Who’s that you got there with you, Fletch?”
    “This is Cynthia,” I said. “She’ll be going with us.”
    “Will I?” Cynthia asked.
    “Look here, Carson,” Reilly roared, “don’t you try no rough stuff …”
    “Get going,” Elmer said. He took a rapid step toward them and swung his arm. They broke and ran, piling out the door.
    “No, you don’t!” yelled Elmer. He went past us rapidly. They were closing the door and just before it closed, he thrust a hand into the crack, clutched the door, and wrenched it open, then butted it with his shoulder. It crumpled and hung.
    “That will hold them,” Elmer said. “Now the door won’t close. They were about to lock us in, can you imagine that. Now if you’ll tell me, Fletch, what is going on.”
    “Maxwell Peter Bell,” I said, “doesn’t like us. Let’s get going on the Bronco. The quicker we are out of here …”
    “I have to get the car,” said Cynthia. “I’ve got all the supplies and my clothes in there.”
    “Supplies?” I asked.
    “Sure. Food and the other stuff we’ll need. I don’t suppose you brought anything along. That’s one reason I’m so broke. I spent the last of my money …”
    “You go and get the car,” said Elmer. “I’ll keep watch. There won’t no one lay a hand on you.”
    “You thought of everything,” I said. “You were pretty sure …”
    But she was running out the door. There was no sign of Reilly or his men. She got into the car and drove it through the door into the shed.
    Elmer went over to the other crates and rapped on the smaller one. “That you, Bronco?” he asked. “You inside of there?”
    “It’s me,” said a muffled voice. “Elmer, is that you? Have we reached the Earth?”
    “I didn’t know,” said Cynthia, “that Bronco was a sentient thing or that he could talk. Professor Thorndyke didn’t tell me that.”
    “He is sentient,” said Elmer, “but of low intellect. He is no mental giant.”
    He said to Bronco, “You come through all right?”
    “I am fine,” said Bronco.
    “We’ll have to get a pinch bar to open up those crates,” I said.
    “There is no need,” said Elmer. He balled a fist and smashed it down on one corner of the crate. The wood crumpled and splintered and he reached his fingers into the resultant hole and tore loose a board.
    “This is easy,” he grunted. “I wasn’t sure I could bust out of my crate. There wasn’t too much room and little leverage. But when I heard what was going on …”
    “Is Fletch here?” asked Bronco.
    “Fletch takes care of himself real good,” said Elmer. “He is here and he’s picked up himself a girl.”
    He went on ripping boards off the crate.
    “Let’s get to work,” he said.
    We got to work, the two of us. Bronco was a complicated thing and not easy to assemble. There were a lot of parts and all of them had to be phased together with little tolerance. But the two of us had worked with Bronco for almost two years and we knew him inside out. At First we’d used a manual, but now there was no need of one. We’d thrown away the manual when it had become so tattered it was of little use, and when Bronco, himself,