Every now and then, Hubbard writes a passage that hits the reader in the face like a swung mackerel.
I wondered if the airport came equipped with St. Bernard dogs, the kind with the kegs under their chins. Then I remembered reading that he Coca-Cola civilization [sic] had wiped them out. The Coca-Cola Company would not hear of the dogs carrying anything but Coca-Cola and the dogs, with a final pathetic hiccup, had died out. So there was no hope there.
Where does Gris get these ideas? To quote a Mr. Samson, we never see him read, it's like he's channeling dead crazy people. The scariest part is that if Gris isn't being stupid and/or misinformed as usual, a beverage company obliterating a breed of dog is entirely plausible given Hubbard's presentation of Earth thus far.
Anyway, back to Gris' battle with heaps for crystallized water droplets. He can't dig his way out and has little clue where to go other than the sound of departing airplanes, and he's decided not to "sit here and perish in the snow, even if it was the Swiss custom. There is a limit to the courtesy one must display in emulating primitive ethnological fixations."
The solution is, as always, to shoot something. Gris decides to risk an ever-so-dangerous Code Break by firing off his blastick, instantly clearing a twenty by thirty-foot path in the snow. He hopes some guards will react to the explosion of light and energy, but nothing happens. So he steps into the passage he just made, readies the Domestic Police "slash gun," puts it on its lowest setting, and chops away at the snow.
I pointed it. I depressed the trigger. I steadied the tendency of my arm to recoil, and began to slice away at the remaining wall of snow.
For a few moments it stood there in very neat blocks. Then it suddenly, under the latent influence of the slash-ray heat, disintegrated into slushy water.
VICTORY!
Gris just told us how he used his bizarre little weapon, and I'm still not sure how it works. It's a gun you swing with that emits "slash-rays." If he had a speargun he'd presumably be stabbing someone with it.
His efforts reveal the wall of a building, so Gris goes up to it and picks a direction to "slash" another path along, finding a door. The office inside has a man in it, and after greeting him in German (which Gris doesn't speak, so why did he try it?) and Italian, Gris learns the man speaks English. The Swiss gentleman is joined by another man who explains that Gris really ought to be visiting Immigration, until Gris blurts that he's "riding shotgun on a gold shipment" that's waiting just outside.
At the promise of shiny yellow metal, the two airport workers perk up, instructions for Gris to go through customs forgotten, and assure him that they "vill handle everyt'ing!"
Now, before you object to these customs agents' willingness to cast aside any questions about where a couple tons of gold have come from or how it got into their country, remember that the author told us that Swiss recently passed a law allowing them to accept gold with no questions asked. So whenever your story runs into some trouble, and you want something to happen that might strain readers' suspension of disbelief, just have a country pass a new law to explicitly allow that behavior and you're right as rain.
Back to Chapters Five and Six
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