Brown Limper whistled with relief. Then he looked around over his shoulders both ways and leaned forward, impatient at the delays of cross-translation. “Would you sell the company and the planet to me? I mean us?”
Terl thought about it. Then he said, “It’s worth more than two billion, but if I have it in cash and a few other considerations, I will do it.”
Brown Limper had studied a lot of economics lately. He knew how to be cunning. “With a proper bill of sale?”
“Oh, yes,” said Terl. “The bill of sale would be legal as soon as signed. But it would have to be recorded on Psychlo as a formality.” Oh, devils, if he ever tried to record such a thing, if they even heard of it, they’d vaporize him the slow way!
He pretended the last cartridge had been spent and he bought time with another change. There was a condition where a planet was written off. The company never sold a planet. When one was abandoned, they had a weapon they used. Terl had already decided to destroy this planet. He’d already covered the ground. He got a grip on himself. Any bill of sale he signed would go up in smoke if he destroyed the planet. Good. It might take the company two years to counterattack. He had lots of time. Yes, he could safely sign a bogus bill of sale.
Once more the close huddle was going again. “To make such a concession, you would have to do the following: (1) get my old office set up, (2) let me work in there freely to calculate and build the console of a new transshipment rig, (3) provide any and all needed supplies, and (4) provide me with adequate protection and force at the firing itself.”
Brown Limper was a little doubtful.
“But I will have to take the two billion to the company offices on Psychlo,” said Terl. “I’m no thief.”
Brown Limper could appreciate that.
“And I will have to record the deed of sale for both the planet and the company branch here for it to be totally legal,” said Terl. “I wouldn’t want you holding an unrecorded deed. I want to be fair to you, too.” (That was another word, “fair,” he had looked up.)
“Yes,” said Brown Limper. One could see he was leaning over backward to be fair and legal. He was still a little doubtful.
“And if you have a bill of sale to the company, you own all the equipment and minesites as well as the planet, and Tyler won’t be permitted to fly about.”
Brown Limper sat a little straighter. He began to get a little eager.
“Also,” continued Terl, “you can let it be known through various channels that you are going to fire a shipment to Psychlo. And the moment he hears that, he’ll be right over here and you’ve got him!”
That did it!
Brown Limper almost reached through the bars to shake hands on it until Lars reminded him they were electrified. He got up, restraining an impulse to jump about.
“I’ll draw up the deed!” he said. Too loud. “I’ll draw up the deed,” he whispered. “All your conditions are accepted. We will do exactly what you say!” He rushed off in the wrong direction to get to the ground car. Lars had to collect him and get him into it. Brown Limper had a wild look in his eyes.
“Now we will see justice done,” Brown Limper kept repeating all the way back to Denver.
Terl, in his cage, couldn’t believe his luck. Laughs and twitches fought to take over.
He had done it! And he would be—was!—one of the richest Psychlos alive!
Power! Success! He had done it! But would he ever have to be sure this accursed planet went up in smoke. As soon as he left.
3
Jonnie was pitching rocks down off the bluff and into the lake. The vast lake, really an inland sea, stretched out to a cloudy horizon. There was a storm building up out there now, a not uncommon thing for this huge expanse of water.
The bluff on which he stood rose nearly sheer, two hundred feet above the lake. Erosion or some volcanic cataclysm from the cloud-hidden peaks to the northeast had covered the bluff top with rocks the size of a man’s fist. They were simply made for throwing.
He had formed the habit of daily trotting down here from the minesite a few miles away. It was hot and humid here at the equator but the running did him good. He was not afraid of the various animals around here, ferocious though they might be, for he never went unarmed and the beasts seldom attacked unless disturbed. There was a road of sorts to follow, and the Psychlos must have made a habit of coming here from the minesite, perhaps to swim, for the road went across the bluff and down to a beach on the other side. No, not to swim. Psychlos didn’t like swimming. Perhaps to go boating?
Once he had read that this lake area had been one of the most heavily populated on the continent. Several millions had lived here. The Psychlos seemed to have taken care of them long, long ago, for there was not even a trace of fields or huts, much less people, left.
He wondered why the Psychlos mainly hunted people. Dr. MacKendrick said it was probably a matter of sympathetic nerve vibration: animals might not suffer acutely enough to add to the enjoyment of the monsters, or perhaps it was just that man’s nerve pattern, in a body with two arms, two legs, and upright, paralleled their own. Even their nerve gas specialized in sentient beings and was far less effective on four-legged creatures and reptiles. There was a Psychlo text on its use and it said as much. Something about its being attuned to “more highly developed central nervous systems.” But whatever might be the reasons for that, these Psychlos at the minesite had not made much of a dent in the game. And the game, smelling him, did not go racing away. He suddenly realized that he didn’t smell even vaguely like a Psychlo.
The storm out there was building up. He glanced toward the very distant minesite to see whether there was any rush getting back there to beat the storm.
Very tiny in the distance a small tri-wheeler ground car had left the mine. Somebody coming. To see him? Or just somebody out for a ride?
Jonnie went back to pitching rocks. The current state of affairs was a bit gloomy. One of the Psychlos had died; the other three were holding on. They had found about a third of the corpses had two items in their heads, and Dr. MacKendrick was practicing on the cadavers to find out how to bore in and remove them without killing a Psychlo—in case one of the last three made it. They still had two with two objects in their heads. Might even be a relief to them to get rid of the hideous things!
But Jonnie did not much like all this business with cadavers and he turned his mind to something more cheerful.
During the battle he had made an interesting discovery. He had been flying that mine platform with two hands. He hadn’t recalled that until a week had gone by. MacKendrick said it was another part of his brain taking over the lost functions. Under stress, he had assumed, those “lost” functions and nerves healed because of a battle. But Jonnie didn’t believe that.
Jonnie’s theory was that he manipulated the nerves. And it was working! He had begun by simply willing his arm and leg to do what he wanted. Each day he had gotten a bit better. And now he could trot. No cane. And he could throw.
For a hunter, trained as he was, the inability to sling a kill-club had made him feel helpless. And here he was pitching rocks.
He threw one out. It went arcing through the air, down off the bluff, and sent a small white geyser up in the lake, the “plunk” coming back to him a moment later.
Pretty good! If he did say it himself.
The storm out there was towering up a bit higher, grayish black, a bit ugly. He glanced toward the minesite and found the tri-wheeler had almost arrived. It stopped.
For a moment Jonnie did not recognize the rider and he stepped nearer to him, questioningly. Then he saw it was the third “duplicate” of him, a man they called Stormalong. His real name was Stam Stavenger, member of a Norwegian group who had emigrated to Scotland from Norway in ages past, and who had preserved their names and lineage but not their customs. They looked and acted like Scots.
He was Jonnie’s height and build and had eyes like Jonnie’s, but his hair was a shade darker and his skin ve
ry much more tanned. Since the lode days he had not bothered to keep up the resemblance and had cut his beard square at the bottom.
Stormalong had stayed at the Academy. A skilled pilot, he enjoyed teaching the new cadets to fly. He had found an ancient flying coat, a white scarf and a huge pair of goggles from a bygone age and he affected these. They gave him a bit of dash.
They swatted each other on the back and grinned at each other.
“They told me I’d find you down here throwing rocks at the crocs,” said Stormalong. “How’s the arm?”
“You must have seen the last one I threw,” said Jonnie. “It might not have knocked down one of these elephants but it’s getting there.” He guided him over to a big, flat rock overlooking the lake and they sat down. The storm was building up but it was an easy run back.
Stormalong was seldom very talkative but right now he was full of news. It had taken some ferreting out, real badger digging, to find where Jonnie was. Nobody knew in America, so he had gone to Scotland to find him or some trace of him.
Chrissie sent her love. He’d already given Pattie’s to Bittie. The chief of Clanfearghus had sent his respects, mind you, not his regards but his respects. His Aunt Ellen sent her love; she was married to the parson now and in Scotland.
He’d gotten on Jonnie’s trail through the two coordinators who had gone back to Scotland, the ones sent out to bring in some tribe or other . . . the Brigades? . . . the Brigantes. Oh, that mob was up in Denver now. Horrible people. He’d seen some. Anyway, they’d brought Allison’s body home for burial and Scotland was in an uproar over the murder of Allison.
But that wasn’t what he wanted to tell Jonnie. The craziest thing had happened on his flight over.
“You know,” said Stormalong, “how you said we could get invaded again here on Earth? Well, it does seem possible.”
He’d been coming over to Scotland on the North Great Circle, flying an ordinary battle plane, making good time, and just as he reached the northern tip of Scotland, right there on his viewscreen and visual as well, he had seen the biggest, most enormous craft he ever hoped to see. For a moment he thought he was running into it and would crash right then. There it was on his screens and through his windshield! But bang! He hit it, but it wasn’t there.
“Not there?” asked Jonnie.
Well, that was exactly it. He’d run into a solid object that wasn’t there. Right in the sky, mind you. Big as all the sky but not there. Here, he had the screen pictures in this pack.
Jonnie looked at it. It was a sphere with a ring around it. Nothing like any ship he had ever heard of. And it looked huge. In fact, at the corner, the Orkney Islands were visible. It looked like it reached from mid-Scotland to the Orkneys. The next consecutive picture showed it enveloping the battle plane taking the shot, and the third one showed it was gone.
“The ship that wasn’t there,” said Stormalong.
“Light,” said Jonnie, suddenly recalling some man-theories. “This thing could have been going faster than light. It left its image behind. That’s a guess, you know, but I read that they thought that things that went faster than light could look as big as the whole universe. It’s in some texts on nuclear physics we had. I didn’t understand most of it.”
“Well, that just could be,” said Stormalong. “Because the old woman said it wasn’t that big!”
The old woman?
Well, it’s like this. When he had gotten over his scare, he had backtracked his screen recorders. He hadn’t noticed it in approaching Scotland—you know how it is, you get groggy on a long flight, not alert, and he hadn’t had much sleep lately, cadets being what they were, slow to graduate when desperately needed by the overloaded pilots.
The backtrack of the screens showed this little trace coming up from a farm west of Kinlochbervie. You know, on the northwest coast of Scotland—that little place? Well, he cranked down his speed and went in to that spot, expecting maybe the place had been raided or shot up.
But there was just a burned spot in the rocks—a farm raises mostly rocks around there—and he didn’t see any other damage or hostile force, so he landed near the house.
An old woman came out, all fluttery about two callers from the sky in one day when she didn’t usually see anybody for months on end. And he was made to sit down and have some yarb tea and she showed him this new, shiny pocketknife.
“A pocketknife?” said Jonnie. This ordinarily very quiet Norwegian-Scot was taking his time about getting down to it.
Well, yes. They’d seen some in ruined cities, remember? They folded in on themselves. Only this one was shiny as could be. Yes, I am getting on with it.
So anyway, according to what the old woman told him, there she was combing her dog that often got burrs in him and it almost startled her witless. Standing right behind her was a small gray man. And right behind him was a big gray sphere with a ring around it parked right where the cow was usually staked out. Like to have frightened her silly daft, she said. There hadn’t been a sound. Maybe only a bit of wind.
So she asked the small gray man in for a cup of yarb tea, just like she asked me, except that I’d had the manners to come down roaring and announcing myself.
But the small gray man was very pleasant. He looked a bit smaller than most men. His skin was gray, his hair was gray and his suit gray. The only thing odd about him was he had a box he wore on a strap around his neck and hung on his chest. He’d say something to this box and then, presently, the box would speak English. The small gray man’s voice was quiet and had different tones and the box only had one tone, a monotone.
“A vocoder,” said Jonnie. “A portable translation device. A Psychlo text describes them but the Psychlos don’t use them.”
Well, all right. But anyway this small gray man asked her whether she had any newspapers. And no, because of course she’d never seen a newspaper; few people have. And then he asked her whether she had any history books. And she was disappointed to have to tell him she had heard of a book but didn’t have any.
Well, apparently he thought she didn’t understand, so the small gray man made a lot of motions to indicate something printed on paper was what he wanted.
So she got very helpful. Seems like somebody had bought some wool from her and given her a couple of those new credits in exchange. And explained what they were.
“What credits?”
“Oh, you haven’t seen them?” And Stormalong fished in his pockets and found one. “They pay us now. With these.” It was a one-credit note from the new Planetary Bank and Jonnie looked at it with casual interest. Then his attention riveted on the picture. A picture of him. Waving a gun. He didn’t think it was all that good a likeness and also it embarrassed him a bit.
So anyway, Stormalong went on, the old woman had accepted them because of the picture of you. And she had one of them on the wall. And she sold it to the small gray man for the pocketknife because she had another one she could put on the wall.
“I should think that was a cheap price for the pocketknife, if it was as fancy as you say,” said Jonnie.
Well, Stormalong hadn’t thought about that. But anyway the small gray man finished his yarb tea and put the bank note away very carefully between two pieces of metal, and put them in an inside pocket, and then he thanked her and went back to the ship and said something to somebody inside and got in. He called back for the old woman not to come close, and shut the door. And then there was a curl of flame and it rose up, and then all of a sudden it got as big as the whole sky and vanished. Yes, as Jonnie said, probably a phenomenon of light. But it didn’t fly like our ships and it didn’t teleport. It didn’t seem to be Psychlo, what with the man being a small gray man.
Jonnie had become very quiet. Some other alien race? Interested in Earth now that the Psychlos weren’t here?
He looked across the lake, puzzling about it. The storm was building even higher.
Well, be that as it may, continued Stormalong, that wasn’t why he was here. He
fumbled in a flat case he carried for maps.
“It’s a letter from Ker,” said Stormalong. “And he said I had to bring it personally and not let it get out of my hands. I owe him favors and he said if you didn’t get it the whole shaft would fall in. Here it is.”
4
Jonnie regarded the envelope. It was the paper cover used to package antiheat shields. The only writing on it was “AWFUL SECRET.” He held it up to the light, darkening now as the storm drew nearer. It had no explosive in it that he could detect. He ripped it open. Ah, it was Ker’s writing all right. The semiliterate curved hooks and loops might not spell correctly but they spelled Ker’s idea of a Psychlo alphabet. He opened it up all the way to read it. It said:
AWFUL SECRET
To You Know Who.
As you know, personal letters are forbidden by company policy and if I was caught writing and sending one, it would cost me three months’ pay. Ha. Ha. But you said before you left I should write you if a certain thing happened and give it to a pilot like you know who to bring to you fast. So no names as names is out-security. But it is going to happen so I am writing you even if the company docks me three months’ pay. Notice this handwriting is disguised too. Yesterday that flunked-out ex-pilot knothead Lars the one who thought he was the world’s greatest combat acrobatic pilot from talking to a party I won’t mention because of out-security (security, get it?) and broke his silly neck and got promoted to assistant to you know who (no names) come down and asked all the Psychlos they got in stir to fix up the breathe-gas pumps and ventilators in you know who’s old office. Well, they won’t cooperate as I knew and you knew they wouldn’t. They believe and I am sure they are drilling straight in that you know who killed old you know who by murder. Another one that was murdered afterward had figured it out and told them just before the semiannual firing and then he got missing down the shaft, so they believe it. They ain’t going to do a thing for you know who or have anything to do with you know who’s old quarters because the Psychlos are sure you know who would blow them up. So anyway, the breathe-gas pumps and circulators in that section are all blown to bits as we both know and before anybody can go work in there without a mask, they have to be fixed but they are broke. So this crazy idiot, the universe’s greatest combat pilot that never was in combat and broke his neck and we couldn’t train, come over to see me and I said yes, I could fix up the offices of you know who, but I would need certain parts maybe even from other minesites because the breathe-gas pump is so broke. And he said it was a council order and he could make sure I got what I needed. So I am drawing up a very fancy repair design that needs lots of parts and I am delaying as long as I can. They said you know who on the council said it was secret and urgent and they’re going to ride me to get it done and pay me extra pay. Ha. Ha. So I am stalling and like you said you better get over here as I told them I needed assistants, but don’t use your name as anything to do with you know who and you know who is poison gas in the drift. So there, you know now and I have about wore my paw out writing this and my ears out listening to how rush it is, but I will delay and look for unnecessary parts as long as I can for the breathe-gas circulator that sure was broke and is now even more broke. Ha. Ha. This personal letter could cost me three months’ pay. Ha. Ha. So you owe me if I’m caught at it. Ha. Ha.