I crossed a "park" I detected the
drive of another Adjuster, whom I determined to be Alephplex Priam's
Maw--that is, my father. He bespoke me as follows: "Hurry, Besplex
Priam's Maw. That crazy Foraminifera has been captured by aboriginals
and they have taken his weapons away from him." "Weapons?" I inquired.
"Yes, weapons," he stated, "for Foraminifera 9-Hart brought with him
more than forty-three kilograms of weapons, ranging up to and including
electronic."

I recorded this datum and we landed, went opaque in the shelter of a
doorway and examined our percepts. "Quarantine?" asked my father, and I
had to agree. "Quarantine," I voted, and he opened his carry-all and
set-up a quarantine shield on the console. At once appeared the silvery
quarantine dome, and the first step of our adjustment was completed. Now
to isolate, remove, replace.

Queried Alephplex: "An Adjuster?" I observed the phenomenon to which he
was referring. A young, dark aboriginal was coming toward us on the
"street," driving a group of police aboriginals before him. He was
armed, it appeared, with a fission-throwing weapon in one hand and some
sort of tranquilizer--I deem it to have been a Stollgratz 16--in the
other; moreover, he wore an invulnerability belt. The police aboriginals
were attempting to strike him with missile weapons, which the belt
deflected. I neutralized his shield, collapsed him and stored him in my
carry-all. "Not an Adjuster," I asserted my father, but he had already
perceived that this was so. I left him to neutralize and collapse the
police aboriginals while I zeroed in on the portatron. I did not envy
him his job with the police aboriginals, for many of them were "dead,"
as they say. It required the most delicate adjustments.

* * * * *

The portatron developed to be in a "cellar" and with it were some nine
or eleven aboriginals which it had immobilized pending my arrival. One
spoke to me thus: "Young lady, please call the cops! We're stuck here,
and--" I did not wait to hear what he wished to say further, but
neutralized and collapsed him with the other aboriginals. The portatron
apologized for having caused me inconvenience; but of course it was not
its fault, so I did not neutralize it. Using it for d-f, I quickly
located the culprit, Foraminifera 9-Hart Bailey's Beam, nearby. He spoke
despairingly in the dialect of the locus, "Besplex Priam's Maw, for
God's sake get me out of this!" "Out!