IV

Von Schlichten and Blount entered the bar together. Going to a

bartending machine, von Schlichten dialed the cocktail they had

decided upon and inserted his key to charge the drinks to his account,

filling a four-portion jug.

As they turned away, they almost collided with Hideyoshi O'Leary and

Paula Quinton. The girl wore a long-sleeved gown to conceal a bandage

on her right wrist, and her face was rather heavily powdered in spots;

otherwise she looked none the worse for recent experiences. Von

Schlichten invited her and her escort to join him and Blount. Colonel

O'Leary was carrying a cocktail jug and a couple of glasses; finding a

table out of the worst of the noise, they all sat down together.

"I suppose you think it's a joke, our being nearly murdered by the

people we came to help," Paula began, a trifle defensively.

"Not a very funny joke," von Schlichten told her. "It's been played on

us till it's lost its humor."

"Yes, geek ingratitude's an old story to all of us," Blount agreed.

"You stay on this planet very long and you'll see what I mean."

"You call them that, too?" she asked, as though disappointed in him.

"Maybe if you stopped calling them geeks, they wouldn't resent you the

way they do. You know, that's a nasty name; in the First Century

Pre-Atomic, it designated a degraded person who performed some sort of

revolting public exhibition...."

"As far as that goes, you know what the geek name for a Terran is?"

Blount asked. "_Suddabit_."

She looked puzzled for a moment, then slipped in her enunciator. Even

in the absence of any native, she used her handkerchief to mask the

act.

"Suddabit," she said, distinctly. "Sud-da-a-_bit_." Taking out the

geek-speaker, she put it away. "Why, that's exactly how they'd

pronounce it!"

"And don't tell me you haven't heard it before," O'Leary said. "The

geeks were screaming it at you, over on Seventy-second Street, this

afternoon. _Znidd suddabit_; kill the Terrans. That's Rakkeed the

Prophet's whole gospel."

"So you see," Eric Blount rammed home the moral, "this is just another

case of nobody with any right to call anybody else's kettle black....

Cigarette?"

* * * * *

"Thank you." She leaned toward the lighter-flame O'Leary had snapped

into being. "I suspect that of being a principle you'd like me to bear

in mind at the Polar mines, when I see, let's say, some laborer being

beaten by a couple of overseers with three foot lengths of

three-quarter-inch steel cable."

"If you think the natives who work at the mines feel themselves

ill-treated, you might propose closing them down entirely and see what

the native reaction would be," von Schlichten told her.

"Independently-hired free workers can make themselves rich, by native

standards, in a couple of seasons; many of the serfs pick up enough

money from us in incentive-pay to buy their freedom after one season."

"Well, if the Company's doing so much good on this planet, how is it

that this native, Rakkeed, the one you call the Mad Prophet, is able

to find such a following?" Paula demanded. "There must be something

wrong somewhere."

"That's a fair question," Blount replied, inverting a cocktail jug

over his glass to extract the last few drops. "When we came to Ullr,

we found a culture roughly like that of Europe during the Seventh

Century Pre-Atomic. We initiated a technological and economic

revolution here, and such revolutions have their casualties, too. A

number of classes and groups got squeezed pretty badly, like the

horse-breeders and harness-manufacturers on Terra by the invention of

the automobile, or the coal and hydroelectric interests when direct

conversion of nuclear energy to electric current was developed, or the

railroads and steamship lines at the time of the discovery of the

contragravity-field. Naturally, there's a lot of ill-feeling on the

part of merchants and artisans who weren't able or willing to adapt

themselves to changing conditions; they're all backing Rakkeed and

yelling '_Znidd suddabit!_' now. But it is a fact, which not even

Rakkeed can successfully deny, that we've raised the general living

standard of this planet by about two hundred per cent."

* * * * *

Both jugs were empty. Colonel O'Leary, as befitted his junior rank,

picked them up; after a good-natured wrangled with von Schlichten,

Blount handed the colonel his credit-key.

"The merchants in the North don't like us; beside spoiling the

caravan-trade, we're spoiling their local business, because the

landowning barons, who used to deal with them, are now dealing

directly with us. At Skilk, King Firkked's afraid his feudal nobility

is going to force a Runnymede on him, so he's been currying favor with

the urban merchants; that makes him as pro-Rakkeed and as anti-Terran

as they are. At Krink, King Jonkvank has the support of his barons,

but he's afraid of his urban bourgeoisie, and we pay him a handsome

subsidy, so he's pro-Terran and anti-Rakkeed. At Skilk, Rakkeed comes

and goes openly; at Krink he has a price on his head."

"Jonkvank is not one of the assets we boast about too loudly,"

Hideyoshi O'Leary said, pausing on his way from the table. "He's as

bloody-minded an old murderer as you'd care not to meet in a dark

alley."

"We can turn our backs on him and not expect a knife between our

shoulders, anyhow," von Schlichten said. "And we can believe, oh, up

to eighty per cent of what he tells us, and that's sixty per cent

better than any of the other native princes, except King Kankad, of

course. The Kragans are the only real friends we have on this planet."

He thought for a moment. "Miss Quinton, are you doing sociographic

research-work here, in addition to your Ex-Rights work?" he asked.

"Well, let me advise you to pay some attention to the Kragans."

"Oh, but they're just a parasite-race on the Terrans," Dr. Paula

Quinton objected. "You find races like that all through the explored

Galaxy--pathetic cultural mongrels."

Both men laughed heartily. Colonel O'Leary, returning with the jugs,

wanted to know what he'd missed. Blount told him.

"Ha! She's been reading that thing of Stanley-Browne's," he said.

"What's the matter with Stanley-Browne?" Paula demanded.

"Stanley-Browne is one author you can depend on," O'Leary assured her.

"If you read it in Stanley-Browne, it's wrong. You know, I don't think

she's run into many Kragans. We ought to take her over and introduce

her to King Kankad."

* * * * *

Von Schlichten allowed himself to be smitten by an idea. "By Allah, so

we had!" he exclaimed. "Look, you're going to Skilk, in the next week,

aren't you? Well, do you think you could get all your end-jobs cleared

up here and be ready to leave by 0800 Tuesday? That's four days from

today."

"I'm sure I could. Why?"

"Well, I'm going to Skilk, myself, with the armed troopship

_Aldebaran_. We're stopping at King Kankad's Town to pick up a

battalion of Kragan Rifles for duty at the Polar mines, where you're

going. Suppose we leave here in my command-car, go to Kankad's Town,

and wait there till the _Aldebaran_ gets in. That would give us about

two to three hours. If you think the Kragans are 'pathetic cultural

mongrels', what you'll see there will open your eyes. And I might add

that the nearest Stanley-Browne ever came to seeing Kankad's Town was

from the air, once, at a distance of more than four miles."

"Well, general, I'll take you up," she said. "But I warn you; if this

is some scheme to indoctrinate me with the Ullr Company's side of the

case and blind me to unjust exploitation of the natives here, I don't

propagandize very easily."

"Fair enough, as long as you don't let fear of being propagandized

blind you to the good we're doing here, or impair your ability to

observe and draw accurate conclusions. Just stay scientific about it

and I'll be satisfied. Now, let's take time out for lubrication," he

said, filling her glass and passing the jug.

Two hours and five cocktails later, they were still at the table, and

they had taught Paula Quinton some twenty verses of _The Heathen

Geeks, They Wear No Breeks_, including the four printable ones.

* * * * *

Four days later they stood together as the aircar passed over the

Kraggork Swamps--pleasantly close together, von Schlichten realized.

For the moment, he could almost forget the queer, intangible tension

that had been growing steadily, and the feeling that things were

nearing a breaking point of some kind.

Von Schlichten was scanning the horizon ahead. He pulled over a pair

of fifty-power binoculars on a swinging arm and put them where she

could use them.

"Right ahead, there; just a little to the left. See that brown-gray

spot on the landward edge of the swamp? That's King Kankad's Town.

It's been there for thousands of years, and it's always been Kankad's

Town. You might say, even the same Kankad. The Kragan kings have

always provided their own heirs, by self-fertilization. The offspring

is an exact duplicate of the single parent. The present Kankad speaks

of his heir as 'Little Me,' which is a fairly accurate way of putting

it."

He knew what she was seeing through the glasses--a massive butte of

flint, jutting out into the swamp on the end of a sharp ridge, with a

city on top of it. All the buildings were multi-storied, some piling

upward from the top and some clinging to the sides. The high

watchtower at the front now carried a telecast-director, aimed at an

automatic relay-station on an unmanned orbiter two thousand miles

off-planet.

"They're either swamp-people who moved up onto that rock, or they're

mountaineers who came out that far along the ridges and stopped," she

said. "Which?"

"Nobody's ever tried to find out. Maybe if you stay on Ullr long

enough, you can. That ought to be good for about eight to ten honorary

doctorates. And maybe a hundred sols a year in book royalties."

"Maybe I'll just do that, general.... What's that, on the little

island over there?" she asked, shifting the glasses. "A clump of

flat-roofed buildings. Under a red-and-yellow danger-flag."

"That's Dynamite Island; the Kragans have an explosives-plant there.

They make nitroglycerine, like all the thalassic peoples; they also

make TNT and propellants. Learned that from us, of course. They also

manufacture most of their own firearms, some of them pretty

extreme--up to 25-mm. for shoulder rifles. Don't ever fire one; it'd

break every bone in your body."

"Are they that much stronger than us?"

He shook his head. "Just denser; heavier. They're about equal to us in

weight-lifting. They can't run, or jump, as well as we can. We often

come out here for games with the Kragans, where the geeks can't watch

us. And that reminds me--you're right about that being a term of

derogation, because I don't believe I've ever knowingly spoken of a

Kragan as a geek, and in fact they've picked up the word from us and

apply it to all non-Kragans. But as I was saying, our baseball team

has to give theirs a handicap, but their football team can beat the

daylights out of ours. In a tug-of-war, we have to put two men on our

end for every one of theirs. But they don't even try to play tennis

with us."

"Don't the other natives make their own firearms?"

"No, and we're not going to teach them how!"

* * * * *

The aircar came in, circling slowly over the town on the big rock, and

let down on the roof of the castle-like building from which the

watchtower rose. There were a dozen or so individuals waiting for

them--the five Terrans, three men and two women, from the telecast

station, and the rest Kragans. One of these, dark-skinned but with

speckles no darker than light amber, armed only with a heavy dagger,

came over and clapped von Schlichten on the shoulder, grinning

opalescently.

"Greetings, Von!" he squawked in Kragan, then, seeing Paula, switched

over to the customary language of the Takkad Sea country. "It makes

happiness to see you. How long will you stay with us?"

"Till the _Aldebaran_ gets in from Konkrook, to pick up the Rifles,"

von Schlichten replied, in Lingua Terra. He looked at his watch. "Two

hours and a half.... Kankad, this is Paula Quinton; Paula, King

Kankad."

He took out his geek-speaker and crammed it into his mouth. Before any

other race on Ullr, that would have been the most shocking sort of bad

manners, without the token-concealment of the handkerchief. Kankad

took it as a matter of course. At some length, von Schlichten

explained the nature of Paula's sociographic work, her connection with

the Extraterrestrials' Rights Association, and her intention of going

to the Arctic mines. Kankad nodded.

"You were right," he said. "I wouldn't have understood all that in

your language. If I had read it, maybe, but not if I heard it." He put

his upper right hand on Paula's shoulder and uttered a clicking

approximation of her name. He turned and introduced another Kragan,

about his own age, who wore the equipment and insignia of a Company

native-major and was freshly painted with the Company emblem. "This is

Kormork. He and I have borne young to each other. Kormork, you watch

over Paula Quinton." He managed, on the second try, to make it more or

less recognizable. "Bring her back safe. Or else find yourself a good

place to hide."

Kankad introduced the rest of his people, and von Schlichten

introduced the Terrans from the telecast-station. Then Kankad looked

at the watch he was wearing on his lower left wrist.

"We will have plenty of time, before the ship comes, to show Paula the

town," he suggested. "Von, you know better than I do what she would

like to see."

* * * * *

He led the way past a pair of long 90-mm. guns to a stone stairway.

Von Schlichten explained, as they went down, that the guns of King

Kankad's town were the only artillery above 75-mm. on Ullr in

non-Terran hands. They climbed into an open machine-gun carrier and

strapped themselves to their seats, and for two hours King Kankad

showed her the sights of the town. They visited the school, where

young Kragans were being taught to read Lingua Terra and studied from

textbooks printed in Johannesburg and Sydney and Buenos Aires. Kankad

showed her the repair-shops, where two-score descendants of Kragan

river-chieftains were working on contragravity equipment, under the

supervision of a Scottish-Afrikaner and his Malay-Portuguese wife;

the small-arms factory, where very respectable copies of Terran rifles

and pistols and auto-weapons were being turned out; the machine-shop;

the physics and chemistry labs; the hospital; the ammunition-loading

plant; the battery of 155-mm. Long Toms, built in Kankad's own shops,

which covered the road up the sloping rock-spine behind the city; the

printing-shop and book-bindery; the observatory, with a big telescope

and an ingenious orrery of the Beta Hydrae system; the nuclear-power

plant, part of the original price for giving up brigandage.

Half an hour before the ship from Konkrook was due, they had arrived

at the airport, where a gang of Kragans were clearing a berth for the

_Aldebaran_. From somewhere, Kankad produced two cold bottles of Cape

Town beer for Paula and von Schlichten, and a bowl of some boiling-hot

black liquid for himself. Von Schlichten and Paula lit cigarettes;

between sips of his bubbling hell brew, Kankad gnawed on the stalk of

some swamp-plant. Paula seemed as much surprised at Kankad's disregard

for the eating taboo as she had been at von Schlichten's open flouting

of the convention of concealment when he had put in his geek-speaker.

"This is the only place on Ullr where this happens," von Schlichten

told her. "Here, or in the field when Terran and Kragan soldiers are

together. There aren't any taboos between us and the Kragans."

"No," Kankad said. "We cannot eat each others' food, and because our

bodies are different, we cannot be the fathers of each others' young.

But we have been battle-comrades, and work-sharers, and we have

learned from each other, my people more from yours than yours from

mine. Before you came, my people were like children, shooting arrows

at little animals on the beach, and climbing among the rocks at

dare-me-and-I-do, and playing war with toy weapons. But we are growing

up, and it will not be long before we will stand beside you, as the

grown son stands beside his parent, and when that day comes, you will

not be ashamed of us."

* * * * *

It was easy to forget that Kankad had four arms and a rubbery,

quartz-speckled skin, and a face like a lizard's.

"I want Little Me, when he's old enough to travel, to visit your

world," Kankad said. "And some of the other young ones. And when

Little Me is old enough to take over the rule of our people, I would

like to go to Terra, myself."

"You're going," von Schlichten assured him. "Some day, when I return,

I'll see that you make the trip with me."

"Wonderful, Von!" Kankad was silent for a moment. When he spoke again,

it was in Kragan, and quickly. "If we live so long, old friend. There

is trouble coming, though even my spies cannot find what that trouble

is. And two days ago in Keegark, two of my people died trying to learn

it. I ask you--be careful!"

Then he switched hastily back to the language Paula could understand,

apologizing. It gave von Schlichten time to wipe the worry from his

face before she turned back to him, though it was worse news than he

had expected. If Kankad thought things were bad enough to add his own

spies to those of the Company, things couldn't be much worse. In fact,

anything that brought whatever it was out into the open would be

better.

He was still fretting over it as they said their good-byes to Kankad

and boarded the _Aldebaran_ for Skilk.

V

The last clatter of silverware and dishes ceased as the native

servants finished clearing the table. There was a remaining clatter of

cups and saucers; liqueur-glasses tinkled, and an occasional

cigarette-lighter clicked. At the head table, the voices seemed

louder.

"... don't like it a millisol's worth," Brigadier-General Barney

Mordkovitz, the Skilk military CO, was saying to the lady on his

right. "They're too confounded meek. Nowadays, nobody yells '_Znidd

suddabit!_' at you. They just stand and look at you like a farmer

looking at a turkey the week before Christmas, and that I don't like!"

"Oh, bosh!" Jules Keaveney, the Skilk Resident-Agent, at the head of

the table, exclaimed. "If they don't bow and scrape to you and get off

the sidewalk to let you pass, you say they're insolent and need a

lesson. If they do, you say they're plotting insurrection."

"What I said," Mordkovitz repeated, "was that I expect a certain

amount of disorder, and a certain minimum show of hostility toward us

from some of these geeks, to conform to what I know to be our

unpopularity with many of them. When I don't find it, I want to know

why."

"I'm inclined," von Schlichten came to his subordinate's support, "to

agree. This sudden absence of overt hostility is disquieting. Colonel

Cheng-Li," he called on the local Intelligence officer and

Constabulary chief. "This fellow Rakkeed was here, about a month ago.

Was there any noticeable disorder at that time? Anti-Terran

demonstrations, attacks on Company property or personnel, shooting at

aircars, that sort of thing?"

"No more than usual, general. In fact, it was when Rakkeed came here

that the condition General Mordkovitz was speaking of began to become

conspicuous."

Von Schlichten nodded. "And I might say that Lieutenant-Governor

Blount has reported from Keegark, where he is now, that the same

unnatural absence of hostility exists there."

"Well, of course, general," Keaveney said patronizingly, "King Orgzild

has things under pretty tight control at Keegark. He'd not allow a few

fanatics to do anything to prejudice these spaceport negotiations."

* * * * *

"I wonder if the idea back of that spaceport proposition isn't to get

us concentrated at Keegark, where Orgzild could wipe us all out in one

surprise blow," somebody down the table suggested, and others nodded.

"Oh, Orgzild wouldn't be crazy enough to try anything like that,"

Commander Dirk Prinsloo, of the _Aldebaran_, declared. "He'd get away

with it for just twelve months--the time it would take to get the news

to Terra and for a Federation Space Navy task-force to get here. And

then, there'd be little bits of radioactive geek floating around this

system as far out as the orbit of Beta Hydrae VII."

"That's quite true," von Schlichten agreed. "The point is, does

Orgzild know it? I doubt if he even believes there is a Terra."

"Then where in Space does he think we come from?" Keaveney demanded.

"I believe he thinks Niflheim is our home world," von Schlichten

replied. "Or, rather, the string of orbiters and artificial satellites

around Niflheim. Where he thinks Niflheim is, I wouldn't even try to

guess."

"Yes. After he'd wiped us out, he might even consider the idea of an

invasion of Niflheim with captured contragravity ships," Hideyoshi

O'Leary chuckled. "That would be a big laugh--if any of us were alive,

then, to do any laughing."

"You don't really believe that, general?" Keaveney asked. His tone was

still derisive, but under the derision was uncertainty. After all,

von Schlichten had been on Ullr for fifteen years, to his two.

"Any question of geek psychology is wide open as far as I'm concerned;

the longer I stay here, the less I understand it." Von Schlichten

finished his brandy and got out cigarette-case and lighter. "I have an

idea of the sort of garbled reports these spies of his who spend a

year on Niflheim as laborers bring back."

* * * * *

"You know the line Rakkeed's been taking, of course," Colonel Cheng-Li

put in. "He as much as says that Niflheim's our home, and that the

farms where we raise food, here, and those evergreen plantings on Konk

Isthmus and between here and Grank are the beginning of an attempt to

drive all native life from this planet and make it over for

ourselves."

"And that savage didn't think an idea like that up for himself; he got

it from somebody like Orgzild," the black-bearded brigadier-general

added. "You know, the main base off Niflheim is practically

self-supporting, with hyproponic-gardens and animal-tissue culture

vats. And it's enough bigger than one of the _City_ ships to pass for

a little world. Yes; somebody like Orgzild, or King Firkked, here,

could easily pick up the idea that that's our home planet."

"The Company ought to let us stockpile nuclear weapons here, just to

be on the safe side," another officer, farther down the table, said.

"Well, I'm not exactly in favor of that," von Schlichten replied.

"It's the same principle as not allowing guards who have to go in

among the convicts to carry firearms. If somebody like Orgzild got

hold of a nuclear bomb, even a little old First-Century H-bomb, he

could use it for a model and construct a hundred like it, with all the

plutonium we've been handing out for power reactors. And there are too

few of us, and we're concentrated in too few places, to last long if

that happened. What this planet needs, though, is a visit by a

fifty-odd-ship task-force of the Space Navy, just to show the geeks

what we have back of us. After a show like that, there'd be a lot less

_znidd suddabit_ around here."

"General, I deplore that sort of talk," Keaveney said. "I hear too

much of this mailed-fist-and-rattling-sabre stuff from some of the

junior officers here, without your giving countenance and

encouragement to it. We're here to earn dividends for the

stockholders of the Ullr Company, and we can only do that by gaining

the friendship, respect and confidence of the natives...."

* * * * *

"Mr. Keaveney," Paula Quinton spoke. "I doubt if even you would

seriously accuse the Extraterrestrials Rights Association of favoring

what you call a mailed fist and rattling sabre policy. We've done

everything in our power to help these people, and if anybody should

have their friendship, we should. Well, only five days ago, in

Konkrook, Mr. Mohammed Ferriera and I were attacked by a mob, our

native aircar driver was murdered, and if it hadn't been for General

von Schlichten and his soldiers, we'd have lost our own lives. Mr.

Ferriera is still hospitalized as a result of injuries he received. It

seems that General von Schlichten and his Kragans aren't trying to get

friendship and confidence; they're willing to settle for respect, in

the only way they can get it--by hitting harder and quicker than the

natives can."

Somebody down the table--one of the military, of course--said, "Hear,

hear!" Von Schlichten came as close as a man wearing a monocle can to

winking at Paula. Good girl, he thought; she's started playing on the

Army team, and about time!

"Well, of course...." Keaveney began. Then he stopped, as a Terran

sergeant came up to the table and bent over Barney Mordkovitz'

shoulder, whispering urgently. The black-bearded brigadier rose

immediately, taking his belt from the back of his chair and putting it

on. Motioning the sergeant to accompany, he spoke briefly to Keaveney

and then came around the table to where von Schlichten sat, the

Resident-Agent accompanying him.

"Message just came in from Konkrook, general," he said softly.

"Governor Harrington's dead."

It took von Schlichten all of a second to grasp what had been said.

"Good God! When? How?"

"Here's all we know, sir," the sergeant said, giving him a radioprint

slip. "Came in ten minutes ago."

It was an all-station priority telecast. Governor-General Harrington

had died suddenly, in his room, at 2210; there were no details. He

glanced at his watch; it was 2243. Konkrook and Skilk were in the same

time-zone; that was fast work. He handed the slip to Mordkovitz, who

gave it to Keaveney.

"You from the telecast station, sergeant?" he asked. "All right, in

that case, let's go."

As he hurried from the banquet-room, he could hear Keaveney tapping on

his wine-glass.

"Everybody, please! Let me have your attention! There has just come in

a piece of the most tragic news...."

* * * * *

A woman captain met him just inside the door of the big soundproofed

room of the telecast station, next to the Administration Building.

"We have a wavelength open to Konkrook, general," she said. "In booth

three."

Another girl, a tech-sergeant, was in the booth; on the screen was the

image of a third young woman, a lieutenant, at Konkrook station. The

sergeant rose and started to leave the booth.

"Stick around, sergeant," von Schlichten told her. "I'll want you to

take over when I'm through." He sat down in front of the combination

visiscreen and pickup. "Now, lieutenant; just what happened?" he

asked. "How did he die?"

"We think it was poison, general. General M'zangwe has ordered autopsy

and chemical analysis. If you can wait about ten minutes, he'll be

able to talk to you, himself."

"Call him. In the meantime, give me everything you know."

"Well, at about 2210, the Kragan guard-sergeant on that floor heard

ten pistol-shots, as fast as they could be fired semi-auto, in the

governor's room. The door was locked, but he shot it off with his own

pistol and went in. He found Governor Harrington on the floor, wearing

only his gown, holding an empty pistol. He was in convulsions,

frothing at the mouth, in horrible pain. Evidently he'd fired his

pistol, which he kept on his desk, to call help; all the bullets had

gone into the ceiling. One of the medics got there in five minutes,

just as he was dying. He'd written his diary up to noon of today, and

broken off in the middle of a word. There was a bottle and an

overturned glass on his desk. The Constabulary got there a few minutes

later, and then Brigadier-General M'zangwe took charge. A white rat,

given fifteen drops from the whiskey-bottle, died with the same

symptoms in about ninety seconds."

"Who had access to the whiskey-bottle?"

"A geek servant, who takes care of the room. He was caught, an hour

earlier, trying to slip off the island without a pass; they were

holding him at the guardhouse when Governor Harrington died. He's now

being questioned by the Kragans." The girl's face was bleakly

remorseless. "I hope they do plenty to him!"

"I hope they don't kill him before he talks."

* * * * *

"Wait a moment, general; we have General M'zangwe, now," the girl

said. "I'll switch you over."

The screen broke into a kaleidoscopic jumble of color, then cleared;

the chocolate-brown face of M'zangwe was looking out of it.

"I heard what happened, how they found him, and about that geek

chamber-valet being arrested," von Schlichten said. "Did you get

anything out of him?"

"He's admitted putting poison in the bottle, but he claims it was his

own idea. But he's one of Father Keeluk's parishioners, so...."

"Keeluk! God damn, so that was it!" von Schlichten almost shouted.

"Now I know what he wanted with Stalin, and that goat, and those

rabbits! Of course they'd need terrestrial animals, to find out what

would poison a Terran! Who's in charge at Konkrook now?"

"Not much of anybody. Laviola, the Fiscal Secretary, and Hans

Meyerstein, the Banking Cartel's lawyer, and Howlett, the Personnel

Chief, and Buhrmann, the Commercial Secretary, have made up a sort of

quadrumvirate and are trying to run things. I don't know what would

happen if anything came up suddenly...." A blue-gray uniformed arm,

with a major's cuff-braid, came into the screen, handing a slip of

paper to M'zangwe; he took it, glanced at it, and swore. Von

Schlichten waited until he had read it through.

"Well, something has, all right," the African said. "Just got a call

from Jaikark's palace--a revolt's broken out, presumably headed by

Gurgurk; Household Guards either mutinied or wiped out by the

mutineers, all but those twenty Kragan Rifles we loaned Jaikark. They,

and about a dozen of Jaikark's courtiers and their personal retainers,

are holding the approaches to the King's apartments. The

native-lieutenant in charge of the Kragans just radioed in; says the

situation is desperate."

"When a Kragan says that, he means damn near hopeless. Is this being

recorded?" When M'zangwe nodded, he continued. "All right. Use the

recording for your authority and take charge. I'm declaring martial

rule at Konkrook, as of now, 2258. Tell Eric Blount what's happened,

and what you've done, as soon as you can get in touch with him at

Keegark. I'm leaving for Konkrook at once! I ought to get in by 0800.

"Now, as to the trouble at the Palace. Don't commit more than one

company of Kragans and ten airjeeps and four combat-cars, and tell

them to evacuate Jaikark and his followers and our Kragans to Gongonk

Island. And alert your whole force. These geek palace revolutions are

always synchronized with street-rioting, and this thing seems to have

been synchronized with Sid Harrington's death, too. Get our Kragans

out if you can't save anybody else from the Palace, but sacrificing

thirty or forty men to save twenty is no kind of business. And keep

sending reports; I can pick them up on my car radio as I come down."

He turned to the girl Sergeant. "Keep on this; there'll be more coming

in."

* * * * *

He rose and left the booth. If we can pull Jaikark's bacon off the

fire, he was thinking, the Company can dictate its own terms to him

afterward; if Jaikark's killed, we'll have Gurgurk's head off for it,

and then take over Konkrook. In either case, it'll be a long step

toward getting rid of all these geek despots. And with Eric Blount as

Governor-General....

The inner door of the soundproofed telecast-room burst open, three men

hurried inside, and it slammed shut behind them. In the brief

interval, there had been firing audible from outside. One of the men

had a pistol in his right hand, and with his left arm he supported a

companion, whose shoulder was mangled and dripped blood. The third man

had a burp-gun in his hands. All were in civilian dress--shorts and

light jackets. The man with the pistol holstered it and helped his

injured companion into a chair. The burp-gunner advanced into the

room, looked around, saw von Schlichten, and addressed him.

"General! The geeks turned on us!" he cried. "The Tenth North Ullr's

mutinied; they're running wild all over the place. They've taken their

barracks and supply-buildings, and the lorry-hangars and the

maintenance-yard; they're headed this way in a mob. Some of the Zirk

Cavalry's joined them."

"Have any ammo left for that burp-gun? Come on, then; let's see what

it's like at Company House," von Schlichten said. "Captain Malavez,

you know what to do about defending this station. Get busy doing it.

And have that girl in booth three tell Konkrook what's happened here,

and say that I won't be coming down, as I planned, just yet."

[Illustration]

He opened the door, and the rattle of shots outside became audible

again. The civilian with the burp-gun knew better than to let a

general go out first; elbowing von Schlichten out of the way, he

crouched over his weapon and dashed outside. Drawing his pistol, von

Schlichten followed, pulling the door shut after him.

* * * * *

Darkness had fallen, while he had been inside; now the whole Company

Reservation was ablaze with electric lights. Somebody at the

power-plant had thrown on the emergency lights. There was a confused

mass of gray-skinned figures in front of Company House, reflected

light twinkling on steel over them; from the direction of the

native-troops barracks more natives were coming on the run. On the

roof of a building across the street, two machine-guns were already

firing into the mob. From up the street, a hundred-odd saurian-faced

native soldiers were coming at the double, bayonets fixed and rifles

at high port; with them ran-several Terrans. Motioning his companion

to follow, von Schlichten ran to meet them, falling in beside a Terran

captain who ran in front.

"What's the score, captain?" he asked the panting captain.

"Tenth North Ullr and the Fifth Cavalry have mutinied; so have these

rag-tag Auxiliaries. That mob down there's part of them." He was

puffing under the double effort of running and talking. "Whole thing

blew up in seconds; no chance to communicate with anybody...."

A Terran woman, in black slacks and an orange sweater, ran across the

street in front of them, pursued by a group of enlisted "men" of the

Tenth North Ullr Native Infantry, all shrieking "_Znidd suddabit!_"

The fugitive ran into a doorway across the street; before her pursuers

were aware of their danger, the Kragans had swept over them. There was

no shooting; the slim, cruel-bladed bayonets did the work. From behind

him, as he ran, von Schlichten could hear Kragan voices in a new cry:

"_Znidd geek! Znidd geek!_"

The mob were swarming up onto the steps and into the semi-rotunda of

the storm-porch. There was shooting, which told him that some of the

humans who had been at the banquet were still alive. He wondered,

half-sick, how many, and whether they could hold out till he could

clear the doorway, and, most of all, he found himself thinking of

Paula Quinton. Skidding to a stop within fifty yards of the mob, he

flung out his arms crucifix-wise to halt the Kragans. Behind, he could

hear the Terrans and native-officers shouting commands to form front.

"Give them one clip, reload, and then give them the bayonet!" he

ordered. "Shove them off the steps and then clear the porch!"

The hundred rifles let go all at once; and for five seconds they

poured a deafening two thousand rounds into the mutineers. There was

some fire in reply; a Zirk corporal narrowly missed him with a pistol;

he saw the captain's head fly apart when an explosive rifle-bullet hit

him, and half a dozen Kragans went down.

"Reload! Set your safeties!" von Schlichten bellowed. "Charge!"

* * * * *

Under human officers, the North Ullr Native Infantry would have stood

firm. Even under their native-officers and sergeants, they should not

have broken as they did, but the best of these had paid for their

loyalty to the Company with their lives. At that, the Skilkan

peasantry who made up the Tenth Infantry, and the Zirk cavalrymen,

tried briefly to fight as individuals, shrieking "_Znidd suddabit!_"

until the Kragans were upon them, stabbing and shooting. They drove

the rioters from the steps or killed them there, they wiped out those

who had gotten into the semicircle of the storm-porch. The inside

doors, von Schlichten saw, were open, but beyond them were Terrans and

a dozen or so Kragans. Hideyoshi O'Leary and Barney Mordkovitz seemed

to be in command of these.

"We had about thirty seconds' warning," Mordkovitz reported, "and the

Kragans in the hall bought us another sixty seconds. Of course, we all

had our pistols...."

"Hey! These storm-doors are wedged!" somebody discovered. "Those

goddam geek servants ...!"

"Yeah; kill any of them you catch," somebody else advised. "If we

could have gotten these doors closed...."

The mob, driven from the steps, was trying to re-form and renew the

attack. From up the street, the machine-guns, silent during the

bayonet-fight, began hammering again. The mob surged forward to get

out of their fire, and were met by a rifle-blast and a hedge of

bayonets at the steps; they surged back, and the machine-guns flailed

them again. They started to rush the building from whence the

automatic-fire came, and there was a fusilade and a shriek of "_Znidd

geek!_" from up the street. They turned and fled in the direction from

whence they had come, bullets scourging them from three directions at

once.

For a moment, von Schlichten and the three Terrans and eighty-odd

Kragans who had survived the fight stood on the steps, weapons poised,

seeking more enemies. The machine-guns up the street stuttered a few

short bursts and were silent. From behind, the beleaguered Terrans and

their Kragan guards were emerging. He saw Jules Keaveney and his wife;

Commander Prinsloo of the _Aldebaran_; Harry Quong and Bogdanoff. Ah,

there she was! He heaved a breath of relief and waved to her.

The Kragans were already setting about their after-battle chores. A

couple of hundred more Kragans, led by Native-Major Kormork, the

co-parent of young with King Kankad, came up at the double and stopped

in front of Company House.

* * * * *

"We were in quarters, aboard the _Aldebaran_ and in the guest-house at

the airport," Kormork reported. "We were attacked, fifteen minutes

ago, by a mob. We took ten minutes beating them off, and five more

getting here. I sent Native-Captain Zeerjeek and the rest of the force

to re-take the supply-depot and the shops and lorry hangars, which had

been taken, and relieve the military airport, which is under attack."

"Good enough. I hope you didn't spread yourself out too thin. What's

the situation at the commercial airport?"

"The two ships, the _Aldebaran_ and the freighter _Northern Star_, are

both safe," Kormork replied. "I saw them go on contragravity and rise

to about a hundred feet."

"Whose crowd is that you have?" he asked the Terran lieutenant who had

taken over command of the first force of Kragans.

"Company 6, Eighteenth Rifles, sir. We were on duty at the guardhouse;

fighting broke out in the direction of the native barracks. A couple

of runners from Captain Retief of Company 4 came in with word that he

was being attacked by mutineers from the Tenth N.U.N.I., but that he

was holding them back. So Captain Charbonneau, who was killed a few

minutes ago, left a Terran lieutenant and a Kragan native-lieutenant

and a couple of native-sergeants and thirty Kragans to hold the

guardhouse, and brought the rest of us here."

Von Schlichten nodded. "You'd pass the military airport and the

power-plant, wouldn't you?" he asked.

"Yes, sir. The military airport's holding out, and I saw the

red-and-yellow danger-lights on the fence around the power-plant."

That meant the power-plant was, for the time, safe; somebody'd turned

twenty thousand volts into the fence.

"All right. I'm setting up my command post at the telecast station,

where the communication equipment is." He turned to the crowd that had

come out onto the porch from inside. "Where's Colonel Cheng-Li?"

"Here, general." The Intelligence and Constabulary officer pushed

through the crowd. "I was on the phone, talking to the military

airport, the commercial airport, ordnance depot, spaceport, ship-docks

and power plant. All answer. I'm afraid Pop Goode, at the city

power-plant, is done for; nobody answers there, but the TV-pickup is

still on in the load-dispatcher's room, and the place is full of

geeks. Colonel Jarman's coming here with a lorry to get combat-car

crews; he's short-handed. Port-Captain Leavitt has all the native

labor at the airport and spaceport herded into a repair dock; he's

keeping them covered with the forward 90-mm. gun of the _Northern

Star_. Lorry-hangars, repair-shops and maintenance-yards don't

answer."

"That's what I was going to ask you. Good enough. Harry Quong, Hassan

Bogdanoff!"

His command-car crew front-and-centered.

"I want you to take Colonel O'Leary up, as soon as my car's brought

here.... Hid, you go up and see what's going on. Drop flares where

there isn't any light. And take a look at the native-labor camp and

the equipment-park, south of the reservation.... Kormork, you take all

your gang, and half these soldiers from the Eighteenth, here, and help

clear the native-troops barracks. And don't bother taking any

prisoners; we can't spare personnel to guard them."

Kormork grinned. The taking of prisoners had always been one of those

irrational Terran customs which no Ullran regarded with favor, or even

comprehension.