Atlas came out ofits slot. The skipper punched keys and the atlas clicked and whirred.Then its screen lighted. It showed a report on a solar system that hadbeen fully surveyed.
"Uh-uh," grunted the sergeant. "A survey woulda showed up if a planetwas Huk-occupied. What's next nearest?"
* * * * *
Again the atlas whirred and clicked. A single line of type appeared. Itsaid, "_Sirene, 1432. Unsurveyed._" The galactic co-ordinates followed.That was all.
"This looks likely!" said the sergeant. "Unsurveyed, and off the shiplanes. It ain't between any place and any other. It could go a thousandyears and never be landed on. It's got planets."
It was highly logical. According to Krishnamurti's Law, any sol-type sunwas bound to have planets of such-and-such relative sizes in orbits ofsuch-and-such relative distances.
"Willis and me," said the sergeant, "we'll go over and see if there'sHuks there and if they've got the _Cerberus_. You better get this stuffon a message-torp ready to send off if you have to. Are you going tocome over to this--Sirene 1432?"
The skipper of the _Aldeb_ shrugged.
"Might as well. Why go home and have to come back again? There could bea lot of Huks there."
"Yeah," admitted Sergeant Madden. "I'd guess a whole planet full of 'emthat laid low when the rest were scrapping with the Force. The otherslost and went clean across the galaxy. These characters stayed close.I'm guessing. But they hid their mine, here. They could've been stewingin their own juice these past eighty years, getting set to put up a hellof a scrap when somebody found 'em. We'll be the ones to do it."
He stood up and shook himself.
"It's not far," he repeated. "Our boat's just fast enough we ought toget there a couple of days after the _Cerberus_ sets down. You'd oughtto be five-six hours behind us." He considered. "Meet you north polefarthest planet out this side of the sun. Right?"
"I'll look for you there," said the skipper of the _Aldeb_.
Sergeant Madden and Patrolman Willis went out of the salvage ship andtrudged to the squad ship. They climbed in.
"You got the co-ordinates?" asked the sergeant.
"I copied them off the atlas," said Willis.
Sergeant Madden settled himself comfortably.
"We'll go over," he grumbled, "and see what makes these Huks tick. Theyraised a lot of hell, eighty years ago. It took all the off-duty menfrom six precincts to handle the last riot. The Huks had got togetherand built themselves a fightin' fleet then, though. It's not likelythere's more than one planetful of them where we're going. I thoughtthey'd all been moved out."
He shook his head vexedly.
"No need for 'em to have to go, except they wouldn't play along withhumans. Acted like delinks, they did. Only proud. Y'don't get madfighting 'em. So I heard, anyway. If they only had sense you could getalong with them."
He dogged the door shut. Patrolman Willis pushed a button. The squadship fell toward the sky.
Very matter-of-factly.
* * * * *
On the way over, in overdrive, Sergeant Madden again dozed a great dealof the time. Sergeants do not fraternize extensively with merepatrolmen, even on assignments. Especially not very senior sergeantsonly two years from retirement. Patrolman Willis met with the sergeant'sapproval, to be sure. Timmy was undoubtedly more competent as a cop, butTimmy would have been in a highly emotional state with his girl on the_Cerberus_ and that ship in the hands of the Huks.
Between naps, the sergeant somnolently went over what he knew about thealien race. He'd heard that their thumbs were on the outside of theirhands. Intelligent nonhumans would have to have hands, and with someequivalent of opposable thumbs, if their intelligence was to be of anyuse to them. They pretty well had to be bipeds, too, and if they weren'twarm-blooded they couldn't have the oxygen-supply that highgrade braincells require.
There were even certain necessary psychological facts. They had to becapable of learning and of passing on what they'd learned, or they'dnever have gotten past an instinctual social system. To pass on acquiredknowledge, they had to have family units in which teaching was done tothe young--at least at the beginning. Schools might have been inventedlater. Most of all, their minds had to work logically to cope with alogically constructed universe. In fact, they had to be very much likehumans, in almost all significant respects, in order to build up acivilization and develop sciences and splendidly to invade space just afew centuries before humans found them.
_But_, said Sergeant Madden to himself, _I bet they've still got armiesand navies!_
Patrolman Willis looked at him inquiringly, but the sergeant scowled athis own thoughts. Yet the idea was very likely. When Huks firstencountered humans, they bristled with suspicion. They were definitelyon the defensive when they learned that humans had been in spacelonger--much longer--than they had, and already occupied planets inalmost fifteen per cent of the galaxy.
Sergeant Madden found his mind obscurely switching to the matter ofdelinks--those characters who act like adolescents, not only while theyare kids, but after. They were the permanent major annoyance of thecops, because what they did didn't make sense. Learned books explainedwhy people went delink, of course. Mostly it was that they were madlyambitious to be significant, to matter in some fashion, and didn't havethe ability to matter in the only ways they could understand. Theywanted to drive themselves to eminence, and frantically snatched atchances to make themselves nuisances because they couldn't wait to beimportant any other way.
Sergeant Madden blinked slowly to himself. When humans first took tospace a lot of them were after glamour, which is the seeming ofimportance. His son Timmy was on the cops because he thought itglamorous. Patrolman Willis was probably the same way. Glamour is theoffer of importance. An offer of importance is glamour.
The sergeant grunted to himself. A possible course of action came intohis mind. He and Patrolman Willis were on the way to the solar systemSirene 1432, where Krishnamurti's Law said there ought to be somethingvery close to a terran-type planet in either the third or fourth orbitout from the sun. That planet would be inhabited by Huks, who were verymuch like humans. They knew of the defeat and forced emigration of theirfellow-Huks in other solar systems. They'd hidden from humans--and itmust have outraged their pride. So they must be ready to put up adesperate and fanatical fight if they were ever discovered.
* * * * *
A squad ship with two cops in it, and a dumpy salvage ship with fifteenmore, did not make an impressive force to try to deal with a planetarypopulation which bitterly hated humans. But the cops did not planconquest. They were neither a fighting rescue expedition nor a punitiveone. They were simply cops on assignment to get the semi-freighter_Cerberus_ back in shape to travel on her lawful occasions among thestars, and to see that she and her passengers and crew got to thedestination for which they'd started. The cop's purpose was essentiallyroutine. And the Huks couldn't possibly imagine it.
Sergeant Madden settled some things in his mind and dozed off again.
When the squad ship came out of overdrive and he was awakened by theunpleasantness of breakout, he yawned. He looked on without comment asPatrolman Willis matter-of-factly performed the tricky task ofdetermining the ecliptic while a solar system's sun was little more thana first-magnitude star. It was wholly improbable that anything like Hukpatrol ships would be out so far. It was even more improbable that anykind of detection devices would be in operation. Any approaching shipcould travel several times as fast as any signal.
Patrolman Willis searched painstakingly. He found a planet which was amere frozen lump of matter in vastness. It was white from a layer offrozen gases piled upon its more solid core. He made observations.
"I can find it again, sir, to meet the _Aldeb_. Orders, sir?"
"Orders?" demanded Sergeant Madden. "What? Oh. Head in toward the sun.The Huks'll be on Planet Three or Four, most likely. And that's wherethey'll have the _Cerberus_."
/> The squad ship continued sunward while Patrolman Willis continued hisobservations. A star-picture along the ecliptic. An hour's run oninterplanetary drive--no overdrive field in use. Another picture. Thetwo prints had only to be compared with a blinker for planets to stickout like sore thumbs, as contrasted with stars that showed no parallax.Sirene I--the innermost planet--was plainly close to a transit. II wasaway on the far side of its orbit. III was also on the far side. IV wasin quadrature. There was the usual gap where V should have been. VI--itdidn't matter. They'd passed VIII a little while since, a ball of stonewith a frigid gas-ice covering.
Patrolman Willis worked painstakingly with amplifiers on what oddmentscould