Washington."

"You bug-eyed behemoth! Do you realize what a trip that will be? You
grandfather of inanities, it will be a pleasure to destroy you!"

"I don't know what you are, or if you are really. I don't believe that
you even belong on the world."

"Not belong on the world! We own the world. We can show written title to
the world. Can you?"

"I doubt it. Where did you get the title?"

"None of your business. I'd rather not say. Oh, well, we got it from a
promoter of sorts. A con man, really. I'll have to admit that we were
taken, but we were in a spot and needed a world. He said that the larger
bifurcates were too stupid to be a nuisance. We should have known that
the stupider a creature, the more of a nuisance it is."

"I had about decided the same thing about the smaller a creature. We may
have to fumigate that old mountain mess."

"Oh, you can't harm us. We're too powerful. But we can obliterate you in
an instant."

"Hah!"

"Say 'Hah, _sir_' when you address me. Do you know the place in the
mountain that is called Sodom?"

"I know the place. It was caused by a large meteor."

"It was caused by one of these."

What he held up was the size of a grain of sand. Marshal could not see
it in detail.

"There was another city of you bug-eyed beasts there," said the small
martinet. "You wouldn't know about it. It's been a few hundred years. We
decided it was too close. Now I have decided that you are too close."

"A thing that size couldn't crack a walnut."

"You floundering fop, it will blast this town flat!"

"What will happen to you?"

"Nothing. I don't even blink for things like that."

"How do you trigger it off."

"You gaping goof, I don't have time to explain that to you. I have to
get to Washington."

It may be that Marshal did not believe himself quite awake. He certainly
did not take the threat seriously enough. For the little man did trigger
it off.

When the final count was in, High Plains did not have the highest
percentage gain in population in the nation. Actually it showed the
sharpest decline, from 7313 to nothing.

They were going to make a forest preserve out of the place, except that
it has no trees worthy of the name. Now it is proposed to make it the
Sodom and Gomorrah State Park from the two mysterious scenes of
desolation there, just seven miles apart.

It is an interesting place, as wild a region as you will ever find, and
is recommended for the man who has seen eve