Golem in the Gears
Pewter!" a Bull lowed. And now there was a resurgence among the Bulls.
    "It's a crock!" a Bear protested, but the tide had turned. The Bulls surged back on the strength of the Pewter con. The Bears retreated in confusion. The Con-Pewter age had arrived!
    This was too much success! The charge of the Bulls was just as dangerous as that of the Bears. The bed was getting rocked.
    "Kissimmee River is telling!" Grundy screamed. "Telling?" a Bull snorted, dismayed. "That's not sup- posed to happen!"
    "Well, it is!" Grundy said. Evidently the notion of anything telling dismayed the
    Bulls. They milled about uncertainly, and the Bears began to reform their formation. This did little good for the bed, though; it got nudged right up against a tree. "Yo!" a voice came faintly. "Grundy!" Grundy looked. There was Bink, riding Chester! They were back! "Over here!" he cried. "By the tree!"
    But the field was filled with milling Bulls and Bears, and it was obvious that Chester would have difficulty
    getting through.
    A Bull crashed against the bed, and the bed slammed
    into the trunk of the tree, and a fruit plopped into the center of the bed, just missing Grundy. The fruit was as big as he was, and shaped like a giant light bulb; it would have flattened him had it caught him. "Watch what you're
    dropping!" Grundy yelled at the tree.
    "It's your fault!" the tree retorted in plant language.
    "You stirred up the stockyard!"
    "Who are you to blame anything on me?" Grundy
    demanded belligerently.
    "I am a power plant," the tree replied proudly. Suddenly Grundy saw a solution to his problem. "Give me a bite of that!" he said, pouncing on the fruit. It had split slightly from the impact of the fall; had it not landed on the bed, it would have broken right apart. Grundy
    snatched out a juicy seed and chewed on it.
    In a moment he felt its effect. Power rippled through him. He did not become larger or more muscular; he merely developed a lot more strength in what he had.
    That was of course the nature of the fruit of the power plant: it made the eater strong. For a little while.
    Grundy took advantage of the moment. He jumped down to the ground and took hold of a leg of the bed. "We're getting out of here!" he told Snortimer, who was huddled under the center, shaking with fear. "Just stay centered, so the light doesn't touch you."
    Then he hauled on the leg. The bed moved. He strode forward, hauling the bed along. He moved it around the tree and on into the forest, out of the press of Bulls and Bears. By the time the strength lent by the power plant abated, he had brought the bed to safety in a thicker part of the forest.
    Bink and Chester rejoined him. "We feasted on loquats, middlequats and highquats," Bink explained. "When we started back, we encountered traveling nickelpedes and had to skirt widely around them. Then we heard a com- motion in the field, but we couldn't get to it quickly."
    "We were trapped amid rampaging Bulls and Bears!" Grundy exclaimed. "Those are the craziest animals I ever saw! All they do is charge up and down, up and down! Luckily I found a power plant at the last minute."
    "Yes, a fortunate coincidence," Bink agreed, smiling obscurely. Grundy wondered what he was thinking of, but wasn't in a mood to inquire.
    "Let's get some sleep," Chester said gruffly. He lay down, letting his head and shoulders rest on a hummock. It was strange to see a centaur in that position, but of course Chester was no longer as young as he once had been and had to rest in whatever fashion was best for him.
    Bink settled down against a tree. "Shouldn't we post a guard?" Grundy asked.
    "Not necessary," Bink said, and closed his eyes.
    How could the man be so sure of that? They weren't that far from the stockyard where the animals ranged, after all; suppose a stray Bull or Bear crashed through here? But Grundy was quite tired in the aftermath of his exercise with the power plant strength; one problem with that sort of thing was that there was a

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