Jimmieboy thought so, too, but he was too much interested in getting to Saturn to say anything, so he, too, kept silent and pedalled away as hard as he could. Together and happily they went on until Jimmieboy said:
"Bikey, what's that ahead? Looks like the side of a great gold cheese."
"That," Bikey answered, "is exactly what you think it is. It's the ring of Saturn, and, as the saying goes, for biking Saturn is quite the cheese. In two minutes we'll be there."
And in two minutes they were there. In less, in fact, for hardly eight seconds had passed before a great, blinding light caused Jimmieboy to close his eyes, and when he had opened them again he and Bikey were speeding along a most beautiful road, paved with gold.
"I thought so," said Bikey, "we're on the ring. And isn't it smooth?"
"It's like riding on glass," said Jimmieboy. And then they stopped short.
A peculiar looking creature had stopped them. It was a creature with a face not unlike that of a man, and a body like a man's, but instead of legs it had wheels like a bicycle. If you can imagine a Centaur with a body like a bicycle instead of a horse you will have a perfect mental picture of this strange creature.
"Excuse me," said the stranger, "but we have to be very particular here. Where do you come from?"
"Earth," said Bikey.
"All right," said the stranger. "Move on, I'm a Saturn policeman and so many wheelmen from the Sun and the Moon and Jupiter have caused disturbances of late that we have had to forbid them coming. You are the only Earth people who have been here, and of course are not included in our rules, but I will have to go along with you to see that you do not break any of them."
"We're very glad to meet you," said Bikey, "and if you'll tell us your rules we will be very glad to obey them."
"Well," said the creature with wheels instead of legs, "the first rule is that nobody shall ride a wheel standing on his head. There was a person over here from Mars last week who actually put his head in the saddle and wheeled his pedals with his hands."
"How utterly absurd!" said Jimmieboy.
"Wasn't it?" said the Saturnian; "and my! how mad he got when I interfered asked whether this was a free country and if anybody had rights, and all sorts of stuff like that. Now there's another rule we have, and that is that coasting backward cannot be permitted. We used to allow that until a man from Jupiter ran slap bang into another man who lived at the extreme end of the handle of the Great Dipper, who was coasting backward from the other direction. They came together so hard that we couldn't get 'em apart, and we have had to keep 'em here ever since. They can't be separated, and the Dipper man won't go to Jupiter, and the Jupiter man won't go to Dipperville consequently they stay here. They're a fearful nuisance, and it all came from coasting backward."
"It's a very good rule," said Jimmieboy, "but in our world I don't think we'd need a rule like that, because, while our bicycle riders do lots of queer things, I don't think they'd do that."
"I hope not," said the Saturnian, "because there isn't any use in it, any more than in that other trick our visiting bicyclists try to play here. They take those bicycles built for two, you know, and have what they call tugs of war with 'em. One fellow takes the hind wheel and the other the front wheel, and each begins to work for all he is worth to pull the other along. We had to stop that, too, because the last time they did it the men were so strong that the bar was pulled apart and both tuggers went flying off on one wheel so fast that they have never managed to get back not that we want them back, but that we don't want people to set bicycling down as a dangerous sport. It means so much to us. We get all our money from our big ring here; bicyclists come from all parts of the universe to ride around it, and as they pay for the privilege why we get millions of dollars a year, which is divided up among the people. Consequence is, nobody has to do any work and we are all happy. You can see for yourself that it would be very bad for us if people gave it up as dangerous."
"Very true," said Bikey, "and now we know the rules I suppose we can go ahead."
"Yes," said the policeman, "only you must go to the Captain's office and get a permit. It'll cost you $2,000 for one season."
"Two thousand dollars?" echoed Jimmieboy, aghast.
"That's what I said," said the policeman.
"But," said Jimmieboy, ruefully, "I haven't got more than five cents with me."
"Then," said the policeman, "you can get a permit for five cents' worth that's one-forty thousandth part of a season."
"And how long is a season?" asked Jimmieboy.
"Forty thousand years," said the policeman. "You can ride a year for five cents."
Bikey laughed.
"That'll be long enough," he said. "And where can I find the Captain?"
"I'm him," said the Saturnian. "Give me the five cents and it will be all right."
So Jimmieboy handed over his nickel, and in a moment he and Bikey were speeding along over a beautiful golden road so wide that he could not see the other side of it, and stretching on and on to the fore for thousands of miles.
III
A SUDDEN STOP AT THE TYRED INN
"This is a great place," said Bikey as they sped along. "I've coasted on pretty much every kind of coasting thing there is, and I think I never struck anything like this before. It beats the North Pole all hollow."
"You never coasted on the North Pole, did you?" queried Jimmieboy.
"Oh, didn't I just!" laughed Bikey. "It's made of ice, that North Pole is, and it's so slippery that you can even slide up it that's awful slippery, when you come to think of it and as for coming down, well, you'd almost think you were falling off a roof."
"But, wasn't it dangerous?" asked Jimmieboy.
"Not at all," laughed Bikey. "Sliding up you run into the air, and that isn't very hard, and coming down you land in a great snow bank but this place here is much pleasanter, because it's warmer, and you don't have to exert yourself. That's the great thing about this track. We aren't going at all, though we seem to be it's the track that makes my wheels go round. It's just a-whizzing, this track is, but we are standing perfectly still. If you should step off on to the road you'd whizz back out of sight in two seconds."
"Well, I won't step off, then," said Jimmieboy a little fearfully; "I don't want to be left up here all by myself."
Silently they went on for at least five minutes, when what should they see before them but a great stone wall, built solidly across the road.
"Hi!" cried Bikey. "Put on the brake hurry up."
"There isn't one," shrieked Jimmieboy. "I b bub busted it on the lawn mower the day of the accident."
"Back pedal then back pedal," roared Bikey.
"C can't gug get my feet on 'em, they're going so fast," cried Jimmieboy.
"Then p pup punk puncture my tire take a nail or a pin or anything or we'll be dashed to pieces."
"Huh! haven't gug got a nail or a pup pin or anything," wept Jimmieboy.
"Then we are lost," said Bikey; but just then his tires punctured themselves and they came to a full stop two feet from the stone wall and directly in front of a little hotel, from the front door of which swung a bright red sign on which was the following inscription:
THE TYRED INNFORTHE TIRED OUT"My!" ejaculated Bikey as he and Jimmieboy tumbled in a heap before the inn. "That was the narrowest escape I ever had. If we hadn't stopped we'd have been smashed all to bits leastways I would have you might have cleared the wall all right."
"Good morning, Biklemen," said a fat, pudgy little old fellow, appearing in the doorway of the inn and bowing profoundly.
"What's that you say?" asked Bikey looking up. "I didn't catch that last word."
"Biklemen," repeated the fat little fellow. "It's a word I invented myself to save time and it signifies gentlemen who ride bicycles. Instead of saying 'good morning, gentlemen who ride bicycles,' I say 'good morning, biklemen, is there anything I can do for you?'"
"Well, I should say there was," retorted Bikey. "Just look at my tires, will you? There are twenty-six punctures in the front one and eighteen in the hind one. I should think you'd have better sense than to sprinkle the road with tacks in this way."
"Why, what an ungrateful creature you are," cried the landlord of the Tyred Inn, for that was who the pudgy little old fellow was. "If it hadn't been for those tacks I'd like to know where you'd be at this moment. You'd have smashed into that stone wall and busted yourself and your rider all to pieces."
"That's so, Bikey," said Jimmieboy. "Those tacks saved our lives."
"Of course they did," said the landlord. "And even if you had a right to growl about 'em, you haven't any right to growl at me because the government compels me to keep that part of the road sprinkled with 'em."
"Really?" asked Bikey. "Queer law that, isn't it?"
"I don't see why you think that," replied the landlord. "Is it a queer law which results in the saving of people's lives?"
"No; but the way to save people's lives would be to remove that stone wall," said Bikey. "And that's the thing that makes this place dangerous."
"I don't like to be impolite to biklemen," said the landlord, "but I must say that you don't know what you are talking about. Do you suppose I am in business for fun?"
"I don't see what that has to do with it," said Bikey, ruefully regarding his tires, which looked for all the world like porous plasters would look if they were sold by the yard.
"Well, I'll show you in ten seconds," said the landlord. "Do you see this inn? I presume you do, though there seems to be so little that you see that I have my doubts. Well, this inn is run, not because I think it's a game I'm playing, but because I'm after money. Now, this inn wouldn't earn a cent of money if biklemen didn't stop here. See that?"
"Yes," said Bikey. "That's plain enough, but that doesn't account for the tacks or the stone wall."
"Yes, it does, too," retorted the landlord. "I ran this inn two years before that stone wall was built, and I paid the government $500 a week for being allowed to do it, but nobody ever stopped. Every bikleman in the universe went coasting by here and never a one stopped in, so I never got a cent and was paying $26,000 a year to the government into the bargain. Of course I complained to the Secretary of the Interior, and he just laughed me off; said it wasn't his fault; that I ought to do something myself to make 'em stop, and that is how I came to build the stone wall. They've got to stop now. See that?"
"Yes," said Bikey, "I see. And did you begin to make money?"
"Well, rather," said the landlord. "The first day after that was built a lot of biklemen from the Moon came over here and they ran plumb into that wall. Five out of eight broke their legs, two broke their arms and one of 'em got off with a cracked nose, but every one of 'em had to stay here two months at $10 a day apiece, and, of course, their families had to visit 'em, and they paid from $5 to $8 apiece, and then I charged 'em all for medical services, and altogether things began to look up. I cleared $7 a week steady. But they were a mean crowd. In spite of all the good treatment they got, as soon as they got well they made a complaint against that wall, said it was an outrage, and the government said it must come down.
"'All right,' said I to the Secretary. 'But if that wall comes down I go out of the hotel business, and you can whistle for your $500 a week.' He didn't like that a bit, the Secretary didn't, because his salary depended on the money I paid. Being Secretary of the Interior he got a commission on hotel taxes, and as mine was the only hotel in Saturn, shutting it up meant that he was ruined."
"You had him there," laughed Bikey.
"I rather guess so," smiled the landlord, "and he knew it. Still I was easy with him. I didn't want to have people making complaints all the time, so I said that while the stone wall had come to stay, I'd pave the street for two hundred yards in front of it with cat teasers."
"What?" cried Jimmieboy.
"Cat teasers," said the landlord. "Didn't you ever hear of cat teasers? They're small square pieces of zinc with prickers on 'em. City people generally put 'em on top of their back yard fences so that Patti cats"
"Excuse me," asked Bikey. "What cats?"
"Patti cats and De Reszke cats the kind that sing, you know," explained the landlord. "They put 'em on their back yard fences so that these operatic felines would not be able to sit down there and sing and keep them awake all night; but the scheme didn't work. I had an idea that the cat teasers would puncture the bicycle wheels in time to stop 'em, and they did, but they interfered with people on foot as well, and after these people got lockjaw from puncturing their feet on my pavement I took it up and suggested sprinkling the roadway twice a day with tacks. This satisfied the Secretary, and a law was passed compelling me to do it, and I do. How it works you have seen for yourselves."
"That's true," said Bikey, ruefully.
"Well, it saved me," said Jimmieboy.
"But how are we ever to get home?" asked Bikey.
"Oh, as for that," returned the landlord, "gather yourselves together and come inside. I think I can fix you out very shortly, and it won't cost you more than $800."
"Come on, Bikey," said Jimmieboy, "I'd sort of like to see the inside of this house, anyhow."
"I haven't got any $800," snapped Bikey.
"Oh, never mind about that," laughed the landlord. "I run a banking business here, too. I'll lend you all you want. Come in."
And so they went into the "Tyred Inn for the Tired Out," and a most remarkable place they found it to be.
IV
THE TYRED INN
The entrance to the Tyred Inn and the parlors and rooms of that extraordinary place were quite like those of any other roadside hotel, but the method of conducting it and the singular things that were to be found in it made Jimmieboy's brief stay there an experience long to be remembered. The bicycle idea was carried out in everything. If you wanted a bell boy you had to ring a bicycle bell. In place of an elevator or staircase they had a spiral pathway running up from the centre of the hall to the roof, upon which guests could either walk or ride, an electric bicycle built for two being provided for those who did not care to walk up, the elevator boy sitting on the front seat and managing the apparatus.
From the parlor there came the most beautiful strains of music, as from a fine brass and string orchestra, all of which was managed by the merest bit of a midget sitting astride of a safety and working the pedals, which in turn worked the great musical instrument that occupied the whole of the lower end of the room. Upon the walls were all sorts of curious pictures, and for a decoration of the ceiling there were automatic frescoes presenting a constantly moving bicycle scene. For instance, instead of a series of groups of rosebuds and cupids, there were about a hundred little plaster wheelmen racing about the edge of the ceiling, and every once in a while one of these would take a header, flying immediately back to his saddle again, however, and continuing on his way until the clockwork by which the frescoes were run forced him to take the header all over again. On and around they raced incessantly, and so varied were the things that they did that it did not seem to Jimmieboy as if he could remember half of them in case he should ever want to tell his father or his brothers about it afterward.