Avocations

Usage examples of hobbies.

Tuck was puffing and panting, trying to boost Smith onto one of the hobbies, Sara already was on one of them, sitting straight and prim, the perfect picture of a gal on the threshold of a very great adventure, and that, of course, was all it was to her-another great adventure.

The sound of the shot was loud and flat and the hobbies reared in terror.

The hobbies thundered cityward, their rockers pounding out a ringing clangor as they humped along like a herd of horses galloping wildly before a scudding storm front.

The hobbies plunged into one of the slits of emptiness and darkness closed upon us.

The hobbies turned and flung themselves at the ramp and went humping up it and through one of the gaping doors.

The hobbies rocked swiftly toward one of the blocks and came to a halt before it.

The stars had not been apparent in the quick glance we had gotten of this place before the hobbies bucked us into it, but now they were-stars that seemed so close it seemed a man could reach up his hand and pick them, like the apples off a tree.

There was no sign of the hobbies or the gnomelike humanoid who had picked the world into which the hobbies threw us.

The hobbies stood in a semicircle about him, looking on and rocking most sedately and while they had no expression on their carven faces, I thought that I detected in them a sense of satisfaction at having made so good a haul.

Then the hobbies, seeing us, reared back upon their rockers and the gnome began to straighten slowly, as if his back might have grown stiff from standing all bent over to go through our things.

Sara and as I jerked my head around, I saw the hobbies charging us, rocking forward on their rear rockers and their front rockers lifted menacingly.

Except that all the hobbies were piled into a far corner of the room, all tangled up together, with their rockers waving in the air.

Behind the hobbies came Hoot, like a dog hazing a flock of sheep, and at times sidewheeling along the way a dog will run.

His body was built low to the ground and on each side of it he had a couple of dozen stubby legs, like a centipede, and I knew that so long as he was back there behind them, the hobbies would try no monkey business.

But not all of the people dumped into those other worlds would have been thrown out and that would have meant that the gnome and his pals, the hobbies, would have had good pickings.