Carlos von Schlichten, General of the troops on Ullr, threw his
cigarette away and set his monocle more firmly in his eye, stepping
forward to let Brigadier-General Themistocles M'zangwe and little
Colonel Hideyoshi O'Leary follow him out of the fort. On the little
hundred-foot-square parade ground in front of the keep, his aircar was
parked, and the soldiers were assembled.
Ten or twelve of them were Terrans--a couple of lieutenants,
sergeants, gunners, technicians, the sergeant-driver and
corporal-gunner of his own car. The other fifty-odd were Ullrans. They
stood erect on stumpy legs and broad, six-toed feet. They had four
arms apiece, one pair from true shoulders and the other connected to a
pseudo-pelvis midway down the torso. Their skins were slate-gray and
rubbery, speckled with pinhead-sized bits of quartz that had been
formed from perspiration, since their body-tissues were silicone
instead of carbon-hydrogen. Their narrow heads were unpleasantly
saurian; they had small, double-lidded red eyes, and slit-like
nostrils, and wide mouths filled with opalescent teeth. Being
cold-blooded, they needed no clothing, beyond their belts and
equipment, and the emblem of the Chartered Ullr Company painted on
their chests and backs. They had no need for modesty, since all were
of the same gender--true, functional hermaphrodites; any individual
among them could bear young, or fertilize the ova of any other
individual.
Fifteen years before, when he had come to Ullr as a newly commissioned
colonel in the army of the Ullr Company, it had taken him some time to
adjust. But now his mind disregarded them and went on worrying about
the mysterious disappearance of pet animals from Terran homes; there
must be some connection with the subtle change he had noticed in the
attitudes of the natives, but he couldn't guess what. He didn't like
it, though, any more than the beginning of cannibalism among the wild
Jeel tribesmen. Or the visit of Paula Quinton on Ullr as field-agent
for the Extraterrestrials' Rights Association; now was no time to stir
up trouble among the natives, unless his hunch was wrong.
He shrugged it aside and climbed into the command-car, followed by
M'zangwe and O'Leary. Sergeant Harry Quong and Corporal Hassan
Bogdanoff took their places in the front seat; the car lifted, turned
to nose into the wind, and rose in a slow spiral.
"Where now, sir?" Quong asked.
"Back to Konkrook; to the island."
* * * * *
The nose of the car swung east by south; the cold-jet rotors began
humming, and the hot-jets were cut in. The car turned from the fort
and the mountains and shot away over the foothills toward the coastal
plains. Below were forests, yellow-green with new foliage of the
second growing-season of the equatorial year, veined with narrow dirt
roads and spotted with occasional clearings. Farther east, the dirty
gray woodsmoke of Ullr marked the progress of the charcoal-burnings.
That was the only natural fuel on Ullr; there was too much silica on
Ullr and not enough of anything else; what would be coal-seams on
Terra were strata of silicified wood. And, of course, there was no
petroleum. There was less charcoal being burned now than formerly; the
Ullr Company had been bringing in great quantities of synthetic
thermoconcentrate-fuel, and had been setting up nuclear furnaces and
nuclear-electric power-plants, wherever they gained a foothold on the
planet.
As planets went, Ullr was no bargain, he thought sourly. At times, he
wished he had never followed the lure of rapid promotion and
fanatically high pay and left the Federation regulars for the army of
the Ullr Company. If he hadn't, he'd probably be a colonel, at five
thousand sols a year, but maybe it would be better to be a middle-aged
colonel on a decent planet than a Company army general at twenty-five
thousand on this combination icebox, furnace, wind-tunnel and
stonepile, where the water tasted like soapsuds and left a crackly
film when it dried; where the temperature ranged, from pole to pole,
between two hundred and fifty and minus a hundred and fifty Fahrenheit
and the Beaufort-scale ran up to thirty; where nothing that ran or
swam or grew was fit for a human to eat.
Ahead, the city of Konkrook sprawled along the delta of the Konk river
and extended itself inland. The river was dry, now. Except in Spring,
when it was a red-brown torrent, it never ran more than a trickle, and
not at all this late in the Northern Summer. The aircar lost altitude,
and the hot-jet stopped firing. They came gliding in over the suburbs
and the yellow-green parks, over the low one-story dwellings and
shops, the lofty temples and palaces, the fantastically-twisted
towers, following a street that became increasingly mean and squalid
as it neared the industrial district along the waterfront.
* * * * *
Von Schlichten, on the right, glanced idly down, puffing slowly on his
cigarette. Then he stiffened, the muscles around his right eye
clamping tighter on the monocle. Leaning forward, he punched Harry
Quong lightly on the man's right shoulder.
"Yes, sir; I saw it," the Chinese-Australian driver replied. "Terrans
in trouble; bein' mobbed by geeks. Aircar parked right in the bloody
middle of it."
The car made a twisting, banking loop and came back, more slowly. Von
Schlichten had the handset of the car's radio, and was punching out
the combination of the Company guardhouse on Gongonk Island; he held
down the signal button until he got an answer.
"Von Schlichten, in car over Konkrook. Riot on Fourth Avenue, just off
Seventy-second Street." No Terran could possibly remember the names of
Konkrook's streets; even native troops recruited from outside found
the numbers easier to learn and remember. "Geeks mobbing a couple of
Terrans. I'm going down, now, to do what I can to help; send troops in
a hurry. Kragan Rifles. And stand by; my driver'll give it to you as
it happens."
The voice of somebody at the guardhouse, bawling orders, came out of
the receiver as he tossed the phone forward over Harry Quong's
shoulder; Quong caught it and began speaking rapidly and urgently into
it while he steered with the other hand. Von Schlichten took one of
the five-pound spiked riot-maces out of the rack in front of him.
Bogdanoff rose into the ball-turret and swung the twin 15-mm.'s
around, cutting loose. Quong brought the car in fast, at about
shoulder-height on the mob. Between them, they left a swath of
mangled, killed, wounded, and stunned natives. Then, spinning the car
around, Quong set it down hard on a clump of rioters as close as
possible to the struggling group around the two Terrans. Von
Schlichten threw back the canopy and jumped out of the car, O'Leary
and M'zangwe behind him.
There was another aircar, a dark maroon civilian job, at the curb; its
native driver was slumped forward over the controls, a short
crossbow-bolt sticking out of his neck. Backed against the closed door
of a house, a Terran with white hair and a small beard was clubbing
futilely with an empty pistol. He was wounded, and blood was streaming
over his face. His companion, a young woman in a long fur coat, was
laying about her with a native bolo-knife.
* * * * *
Von Schlichten's mace had a spiked ball-head, and a four-inch spike in
front of that. He smashed the ball down on the back of one Ullran's
head, and jabbed another in the rump with the spike.
"_Zak! Zak!_" he yelled, in pidgin-Ullran. "_Jik-jik_, you
lizard-faced Creator's blunder!"
The Ullran whirled, swinging a blade somewhere between a big
butcher-knife and a small machete. His mouth was open, and there was
froth on his lips.
"_Znidd suddabit!_" he shrieked.
Von Schlichten parried the cut on the steel shaft of his mace.
"_Suddabit_ yourself!" he shouted back, ramming the spike-end into the
opal-filled mouth. "And _znidd_ you, too," he added, recovering and
slamming the ball-head down on the narrow saurian skull. The Ullran
went down, spurting a yellow fluid about the consistency of gun-oil.
Ahead, one of the natives had caught the wounded Terran with both
lower hands, and was raising a dagger with his upper right. The girl
in the fur coat swung wildly, slashing the knife-arm, then chopped
down on the creature's neck.
Another of them closed with the girl, grabbing her right arm with all
four hands and biting at her; she screamed and kicked her attacker in
the groin, where an Ullran is, if anything, even more vulnerable than
a Terran. The native howled hideously, and von Schlichten, jumping
over a couple of corpses, shoved the muzzle of his pistol into the
creature's open mouth and pulled the trigger, blowing its head apart
like a rotten pumpkin and splashing both himself and the girl with
yellow blood and rancid-looking gray-green brains.
O'Leary, jumping forward after von Schlichten, stuck his dagger into
the neck of a rioter and left it there, then caught the girl around
the waist with his free arm. M'zangwe dropped his mace and swung the
frail-looking man onto his back. Together, they struggled back to the
command-car, von Schlichten covering the retreat with his pistol.
Another rioter was aiming one of the long-barreled native air-rifles,
holding the ten-inch globe of the air-chamber in both lower hands. Von
Schlichten shot him, and the native literally blew to pieces.
For an instant, he wondered how the small bursting-charge of a 10-mm.
explosive pistol-bullet could accomplish such havoc, and assumed that
the native had been carrying a bomb in his belt. Then another
explosion tossed fragmentary corpses nearby, and another and another.
Glancing quickly over his shoulder, he saw four combat-cars coming in,
firing with 40-mm. auto-cannon and 15-mm. machine-guns. They swept
between the hovels on one side and the warehouses on the other,
strafing the mob, darted up to a thousand feet, looped, and came
swooping back, and this time there were three long blue-gray
troop-carriers behind them.
These landed in the hastily-cleared street and began disgorging native
Company soldiers--Kragan mercenaries, he noted with satisfaction. They
carried a modified version of the regular Terran Federation infantry
rifle, stocked and sighted to conform to their physical peculiarities,
with long, thorn-like, triangular bayonets. One platoon ran forward,
dropped to one knee, and began firing rapidly into what was left of
the mob. Four-handed soldiers can deliver a simply astonishing volume
of fire, particularly when armed with auto-rifles having twenty-shot
drop-out magazines which can be changed with the lower hands without
lowering the weapon.
* * * * *
There was a clatter of shod hoofs, and a company of King Jaikark of
Konkrook's cavalry came trotting up on their six-legged,
lizard-headed, quartz-speckled, mounts. Some of these charged into
side alleys, joyfully lancing and cutting-down fleeing rioters, while
others dismounted, three tossing their reins to a fourth, and went to
work with their crossbows. Von Schlichten, who ordinarily entertained
a dim opinion of the King of Konkrook's soldiery, admitted,
grudgingly, that it was smart work; four hands were a big help in
using a crossbow, too.
A Terran captain of native infantry came over, saluting.
"Are you and your people all right, general?" he asked.
Von Schlichten glanced at the front seat of his car, where Harry
Quong, a pistol in his right hand, was still talking into the
radio-phone, and Hassan Bogdanoff was putting fresh belts into his
guns. Then he saw that they had gotten the wounded man into the car.
The girl, having dropped her bolo, was leaning against the side of the
car.
"We seem to be, Captain Pedolsky. Very smart work; you must have those
vehicles of yours on hyperspace-drive.... How is he, colonel?"
"We'd better get him to the hospital, right away," O'Leary replied. "I
think he has a concussion."
"Harry, call the hospital. Tell them what the score is, and tell them
we're bringing the casualty in to their top landing stage.... Why,
we'll make out very nicely, captain. You'd better stay around with
your Kragans and make sure that these geeks of King Jaikark's don't
let the riot flare up again and get away from them. And don't let them
get the impression that they can maintain order around here without
our help; the Company would like to see that attitude discouraged."
"Yes, sir; I understand." Captain Pedolsky opened the pouch on his
belt and took out the false palate and tongue-clicker without which no
Terran could do more than mouth a crude and barely comprehensible
pidgin-Ullran. Stuffing the gadget into his mouth, he turned and began
jabbering orders.
Von Schlichten helped the girl into the car, placing her on his right.
The wounded civilian was propped up in the left corner of the seat,
and Colonel O'Leary and Brigadier-General M'zangwe took the
jump-seats. The driver put on the contragravity-field, and the car
lifted up.
"Them, see if there's a flask and a drinking-cup in the door pocket
next you," he said. "I think Miss Quinton could use a drink."
* * * * *
The girl turned. Even in her present disheveled condition, she was
beautiful--a trifle on the petite side, with black hair and black eyes
that quirled up oddly at the outer corners. Her nails were
black-lacquered and spotted with little gold stars, evidently a new
feminine fad from Terra.
"I certainly could, general.... How did you know my name?"
"You've been on Ullr for the last three months; ever since the _City
of Canberra_ got in from Niflheim. On Ullr, there aren't enough of us
that everybody doesn't know all about everybody else. You're Dr. Paula
Quinton; you're an extraterrestrial sociographer, and you're a
field-agent for the Extraterrestrials' Rights Association, like
Mohammed Ferriera, here." He took the cup and flask from Themistocles
M'zangwe and poured her a drink. "Take this easy, now; Baldur
honey-rum, a hundred and fifty proof."
He watched her sip the stuff cautiously, cough over the first
mouthful, and then get the rest of it down.
"More?" When she shook her head, he stoppered the flask and relieved
her of the cup. "What were you doing in that district, anyhow?" he
wanted to know. "I'd have thought Mohammed Ferriera would have had
more sense than to take you there, or go there, himself, for that
matter," he added quickly.
"We went to visit a friend of his, a native named Keeluk, who seems to
be a sort of combination clergyman and labor-leader," she replied.
"I'm going to observe labor conditions at the North Pole mines in a
short while, and Mr. Keeluk was going to give me letters of
introduction to friends of his at Skilk. We talked with Mr. Keeluk for
a while, and when we came out, we found that our driver had been
killed and a mob had gathered. Of course, we were carrying pistols;
they're part of this survival-kit you make everybody carry, along with
the emergency-rations and the water desilicator. Mr. Ferriera's wasn't
loaded, but mine was. When they rushed us, I shot a couple of them,
and then picked up that big knife.... I never in my life saw anything
as beautiful as you coming through that mob swinging that warclub!"
* * * * *
The aircar swung out over Konkrook Channel and headed toward the
blue-gray Company buildings on Gongonk Island, and the Company
airport.
"Just what happened, while you and Mr. Ferriera were in Keeluk's
house, Miss Quinton?" O'Leary asked, trying not to sound official.
"Was Keeluk with you all the time? Or did he go out for a while, say
fifteen or twenty minutes before you left?"
"Why, yes, he did." Paula Quinton looked surprised. "How did you guess
it? You see, a dog started barking, behind the house, and he excused
himself and...."
"A dog?" von Schlichten almost shouted. The other officers echoed him.
"Why, yes...." Paula Quinton's eyes widened. "But there are no dogs on
Ullr, except a few owned by Terrans. And wasn't there something
about ...?"
Von Schlichten had the radio-phone and was calling the command car at
the scene of the riot. The sergeant-driver answered.
"Von Schlichten here; my compliments to Captain Pedolsky, and tell him
he's to make immediate and thorough search of the house in front of
which the incident occurred, and adjoining houses. For his
information, that's Keeluk's house. Tell him to look for traces of
Governor-General Harrington's collie, or any of the other terrestrial
animals that have been disappearing--that goat, for instance, or those
rabbits. And I want Keeluk brought in, alive and in condition to be
interrogated."
"But, what ...?" the girl began, her voice puzzled.
"That's why you were attacked," he told her. "Keeluk was afraid to let
you get away from there alive to report hearing that dog, so he went
out and had a gang of thugs rounded up to kill you."
"But he was only gone five minutes."
"In five minutes, I can put all the troops in Konkrook into action.
Keeluk doesn't have radio or TV--we hope--but he has his forces
concentrated, and he has a pretty good staff."
"But Mr. Keeluk's a friend of ours. He knows what our Association is
trying to do for his people...."
"So he shows his appreciation by setting that mob on you. Look, he has
a lot of influence in that section. When you were attacked, why wasn't
he out trying to quiet the mob?"
"When they jumped you, you tried to get back into the house," M'zangwe
put in. "And you found the door barred against you."
"Yes, but...." The girl looked troubled; M'zangwe had guessed right.
"But what's all the excitement about the dog? What is it, the sacred
totem-animal of the Ullr Company?"
"It's just a big brown collie named Stalin. But somebody stole it, and
Keeluk was keeping it. We want to know why. We don't like geek
mysteries--not when they lead to murderous attacks on Terrans, at
least."
It seemed to satisfy her, as the aircar let down on the hospital
landing stage. But it didn't satisfy von Schlichten. He could smell
trouble brewing. Just what could the geeks do with a dog? Nothing, so
far as he could tell--but they didn't go in for such behaviour without
what they considered good reason. Good for them, that is!