"Cheer up," I told him. "I know just how you feel. Only it's not the
heat ... it's the humility."
So that was that. The next hour was taken up with routine stuff.
Decelerating to atmo velocity, cruising over Themis until we located
the capital city of Kraalbur, where the Thagwar maintained his royal
residence, dropping to a stern-jet landing ... that was all child's
play for a spaceman like Lt. Lancelot Biggs.
* * * * *
Thus it was that a short while later, armed to the teeth and ready for
any eventuality, our foray party of ten men stood in the lock of the
_Saturn_, listening to Hanson's final instructions.
"Be quiet," he advised us, "be calm ... but above all, be careful.
These Themisites is as untrustworthy as three-of-a-kind in a gamblin'
joint. Our orders is to improve relations, not make 'em worse ... so
act accordin'ly. We'll treat them exactly like they meet us. If they
greet us friendly, we'll be nice. But if they get tough--"
"Well?" asked one of the crew.
"Give 'em the works!" said the Old Man succinctly, and nodded to his
son-in-law. "O.Q., Lanse. Open up!"
The airlock wheezed asthmatically, and we stepped out upon the soil of
the satellite Themis.
A huge mob of natives had gathered around to greet us. They were a
weird looking outfit. Sort of like men on horses, you might say, or
like those old Centaurs you read about in mythology books. Maybe that's
where the legend of Centaurs originated; I don't know. The more man
travels the spaceways, the more he discovers races of beings similar
to the freaks and curiosities recorded in ancient myths. Lanse Biggs
believes that once upon a time, thousands of years ago, before Earth's
old moon crashed, destroying the civilization then existent, Man knew
the secret of spacetravel, and legend is a record of things once seen
and known. But I wouldn't know about that. I'm just a radioman....
Anyhow, these Themisites were sort of like us down to the tummy. But
from there on they branched out into the equine family, being endowed
with strong, muscular, quadrupedal bodies and postscripted with long,
bushy tails.
But they were intelligent. No doubt about that. And surprisingly
enough, they seemed friendly! One, their ruler, trotted forward and
raised an arm in the cosmoswide gesture of greeting. He addressed us in
Universale, the common language of space.
"_Salujo, amiji!_" he said. "Welcome to Themis, land of peace and
brotherly love!"
Hanson gasped, "Get a load of that! Three days ago the four-legged
punks murdered a whole crew of Earthmen, and now they yap about
brotherly--"
"Maybe he's right?" I suggested thoughtfully. "You ever have a brother,
Skipper?"
"Shhh!" whispered Biggs. He stepped forward, acting as spokesman for
our team. "Greetings, O Thagwar of Themis! We come as emissaries from
the Blue World, seeking to forge a bond of friendship between your
people and ours."
"Friendship and peace," said the Thagwar grandiloquently, "are ever the
desire of my race."
Lanse said, "We hear and believe, noble Thagwar. But evil tidings have
lately reached our ears. It is told that a few days ago you led your
people in mortal combat against a party from our planet--"
* * * * *
The Thagwar drew himself stiffly erect and shook his head in firm
denial.
"That," he said in a tone of outraged dignity, "is not so! It was the
_old_ Thagwar who led that brutal assault."
"Old Thagwar? Then you have overthrown his government since--?"
"The former Thagwar," informed the Themisite leader, "has been removed
from power. _I_ am now Thagwar of Themis. I wish only friendship and
peace between our peoples. And now," his eyes rolled hopefully, "have
you brought the usual--er--tributes?"
"Tributes," of course, meant graft. Humanoid forms change with the
planets, but human nature doesn't. However, we had come prepared,
knowing the mentalities of our opponents. Lanse beckoned to a pair of
our crewmen who lugged forward a crate packed with an assortment of
the doolallies and thingamajiggers loved by abos like the Themisites.
Mirrors, gaudy bits of costume jewelry, brightly-colored trinkets,
yards of richly hued cloth, horn-rimmed spectacles, cheap cameras ...
all that sort of thing.
Crooked? Sure. Taking advantage of ignorant savages? Posilutely.
But, hell, you can't interest uncultured aborigines in vanRensselaer
atomo-converters and pre-Rooseveltian Era art treasures. Of course
they'd be glad to get their paws on a few Haemholtz ray-pistols or a
case of three-star _tekel_, but the authorities frown on the practice
of supplying lower races with firearms, fireworks or firewater.
So Lanse handed out the gadgets to the Thagwar, who beamed with
delight. And after that the negotiations were a snapperoo. We told what
we wanted: permission for Earth's colonists to settle on Themis, the
right to construct spaceports, and so on and so forth ... and the ruler
said, "Yes ... yes ... yes," till he sounded like a phonograph needle
caught in a worn groove.
There remained but one thing to be done. The formal signing of the
treaty. So Lanse drew from his pocket the previously prepared sheets,
and was just getting ready to help the Thagwar scrawl a legal "X" on
the dotted line when a stir passed through the assemblage.
* * * * *
It was a nervousness, a jitteriness, you could _feel_! Heads craned
upward to look at the sky, hooves pawed restlessly at the turf. And
one by one, the centaurlike denizens of Themis began drifting away,
cantering back toward the cluster of hovels which was their capital
city.
Even the Thagwar seemed hesitant, uncertain. For a few minutes he tried
to carry on like a bold, brave monarch. Then with a little whimper that
sounded almost like a whinny, he picked up his bundle of loot and
galloped away, too.
Cap Hanson's jaw dropped like a wildcat stock in a bear market.
"Well, I'll be!" he choked. "Now what?"
But Biggs had been studying the sky. Now he frowned.
"Night," he said.
"Eh?"
"Night," repeated Lanse, "or what passes for night on this peculiar
little satellite. You see, Themis doesn't revolve on its axis,
therefore it has no night or daytime as we on Earth know those periods.
And, of course, since it travels about its primary so swiftly, and
since Saturn itself emits so strong a _gegenschein_, occultation by the
mother planet doesn't create perfect darkness.
"But Themis' invisible little companion swings about Themis. And
whenever it comes between this world and the Sun a dark period ensues.
I should judge we are about to experience one right now. Yes--see? It
is beginning to get dark."
"You mean," stormed Hanson, "everything's called off on account of
darkness? The pact ain't goin' to be signed?"
"Apparently not," admitted Lanse ruefully. "Almost all aboriginal races
have a deep dread of darkness, you know. Well--"
He shrugged--"there's no sense in our waiting out here until the
'night' period ends. We might as well go back to the ship and be
comfortable."
So we did.
Fortunately, the phony "night" didn't last long. Fortunately for me, I
mean. Because as soon as we got to the ship, Lanse pranced along with
me up to the radio turret, and there pestered the living bejabbers out
of me to try to get some word from Earth. But that was strictly no go.
My audio was humming like a tenor in a tepid shower. Static galore.
But at last the invisible barrier cutting us off from Sol's light
slipped away, and once again we marched out onto the soil of Themis.
Marched out? Huh! This time we sauntered out. We were feeling very
carefree and confident, you see, that everything was hunky-dory. Why
not? We had been on the verge of signing the new peace pact when
darkness interrupted us....
That blind, trusting confidence almost cost us our lives! The
Themisites were again gathered around our ship. But when we stepped
from the airlock--we stepped out into a hail of lethal fury!
[Illustration: We stepped out of the ship--right into a hail of rocks!]
* * * * *
It was a good break for us that the Themisites had no modern weapons.
A couple of Haemholtz pistols in the paws of capable users, or even
one .54 millimetre rotor, and yours truly wouldn't be here to chronicle
the ensuing events.
But the four-legged scoundrels' armaments were fortunately on the
barbaric side. Stones and cudgels, crudely forged spears, incompetently
carven bows and arrows that were as inaccurate as a real estate agent's
descriptions ... these were the weapons with which we were assailed.
Cap Hanson caught a nice sized chunk of rock amidships, and one of the
crewmen had his shoulder opened up by a wobbling spear, but those were
our only casualties. Above the hub-bub and furore--the Themisites were
howling like a mob of unleashed demons--Lanse cried, "_Back into the
ship, quickly!_"
Which was a command requiring no repeat performance. For the next
three seconds the airlock port looked like Bargain Day at the Girdle
Counter. Then we were all inside once more, safe at home but sore as a
student equestrian's coccyx.
The Old Man bellowed, "Unlatch the rotors! Treacherous villains, I'll
learn 'em to attack Earthmen! We'll blast them clean off the face of
their nasty, sneakin' little globe, the good-for-nothin' horses--"