The Right to Arm Bears by Gordon R. Dickson Page B

moment he merely lay tense and waiting, ears straining, as if for the warning of an instant attack.
    But no attack came. After a moment, he sat up cautiously and looked around him.
    In the light of the single thick candle burning by the entrance he saw that the dormitory was now full of sleepers. The Dilbians all slumbered with a silence that was amazing, considering their size and their boisterousness during waking hours. Beside John the Hill Bluffer was now asleep on a neighboring mound, lying on his side with one great hairy arm outflung, palm up. But it was hardly possible to tell that the postman was breathing.
    John sat looking around the dormitory, trying to imagine what had wakened him. But there was nothing to see. He was isolated and undisturbed. Even his shoes, and One Man's broken staff lay just where John had laid them, beside the mound of branches.
    Yet, John's tenseness continued.
    The more he thought of it now, the more convinced he was that One Man had been trying to convey some message or other to him under the mask of casual conversation. The giant Dilbian was without a doubt vastly more intelligent than those around him. Also he seemed to occupy a unique position.
    John swore softly to himself.
    He had just remembered something that had been niggling at the back of his mind ever since he had walked into the Sour Ford Inn and seen the seated shape of its proprietor. One of the reasons One Man had attracted John's attention was that he had looked familiar. And he had looked familiar because John had seen him before—or at least his image.
    One Man had been the oversize Dilbian in the cube of the three-dimensional on Joshua Guy's desk in Humrog.
    That did it.
    Now what was he supposed to think, wondered John bleakly. One Man—friend or foe? If the giant Dilbian was a close friend of Joshua's—and if he was not a close friend of Joshua's, what was the three-dimensional of him doing on Joshua's desk?
    John shoved a hand distractedly through his ruffled mass of red hair. As a boy he had eagerly read not only The Three Musketeers , and Twenty Years After , but everything dealing with Dumas' famous musketeers. Then he had envied D'Artagnan and his three sworded friends for dashing about risking their lives by engaging in high intrigue. Now, fifteen years later and spang in the middle of a similar adventure, he realized they all must have been nuts, to say the least. Like the hired hand in the joke who could plow four hundred acres with ease but had a hard time sorting potatoes, it wasn't the risks in adventure that got you down. It was the decisions.
    And this business about the broken staff. Why give the pieces to John? A souvenir, One Man had said; and possibly this was true from the Dilbian point of view, but it was hardly the kind of present for a Shorty headed for a battle a l'outrance with a Terror.
    John reached down and hefted up the two pieces for another look. It was still impossible, he thought once more, as he examined the broken ends. Physical strength along just wasn't enough.
    He checked suddenly and bent to examine the break more closely. There seemed to be a faint stain covering most of the interior area of each broken end. It radiated out around a faint line that went from the edge into the center. In the dim light he bent close over the line, but could make nothing out. He rubbed the tip of his finger over it; it was a faint groove. He put the two ends back together and the grooves matched.
    It occurred to John that it would not be too impossible to drill a tiny hole in the center of even a fairly large staff. Then if some corrosive liquid was poured down this hole at intervals over a period of time, it could well result in a definite weakness in the wood at that point. In fact, with experimentation, it might be possible to control the degree of weakness, so that only someone with unusual strength to begin with . . .
    Hmm, thought John. He began to consider One Man in a new light.
    Now, if I