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LONE STAR PLANET
by
H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
Transcriber's Note:This etext was prepared from a 1979 reprint of the 1958 original. There isno evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.Obvious typesetting errors in the source text have been corrected
Lone Star Planet
SF
ace books
A Division of Charter Communications Inc.
A GROSSET & DUNLAP COMPANY
360 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10010
LONE STAR PLANET
Copyright (C) 1958 by Ace Books, Inc.
Originally published as A PLANET FOR TEXANS
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any formor by any means, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in areview, without permission in writing from the publisher.
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actualpersons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This Ace Printing: April 1979
Printed in U.S.A.
CHAPTER I
They started giving me the business as soon as I came through the doorinto the Secretary's outer office.
There was Ethel K'wang-Li, the Secretary's receptionist, at her desk.There was Courtlant Staynes, the assistant secretary to theUndersecretary for Economic Penetration, and Norman Gazarin, fromProtocol, and Toby Lawder, from Humanoid Peoples' Affairs, and RaoulChavier, and Hans Mannteufel, and Olga Reznik.
It was a wonder there weren't more of them watching the condemned man'smarch to the gibbet: the word that the Secretary had called me in musthave gotten all over the Department since the offices had opened.
"Ah, Mr. Machiavelli, I presume," Ethel kicked off.
"Machiavelli, Junior." Olga picked up the ball. "At least, that's theway he signs it."
"God's gift to the Consular Service, and the Consular Service's gift toPolicy Planning," Gazarin added.
"Take it easy, folks. These Hooligan Diplomats would as soon shoot youas look at you," Mannteufel warned.
"Be sure and tell the Secretary that your friends all want importantposts in the Galactic Empire." Olga again.
"Well, I'm glad some of you could read it," I fired back. "Maybe even afew of you understood what it was all about."
"Don't worry, Silk," Gazarin told me. "Secretary Ghopal understands whatit was all about. All too well, you'll find."
A buzzer sounded gently on Ethel K'wang-Li's desk. She snatched up thehandphone and whispered into it. A deathly silence filled the room whileshe listened, whispered some more, then hung it up.
They were all staring at me.
"Secretary Ghopal is ready to see Mr. Stephen Silk," she said. "Thisway, please."
As I started across the room, Staynes began drumming on the top of thedesk with his fingers, the slow reiterated rhythm to which a man marchesto a military execution.
"A cigarette?" Lawder inquired tonelessly. "A glass of rum?"
There were three men in the Secretary of State's private office. GhopalSingh, the Secretary, dark-faced, gray-haired, slender and elegant,meeting me halfway to his desk. Another slender man, in black, with asilver-threaded, black neck-scarf: Rudolf Klueng, the Secretary of theDepartment of Aggression.
And a huge, gross-bodied man with a fat baby-face and opaque black eyes.
When I saw him, I really began to get frightened.
The fat man was Natalenko, the Security Cooerdinator.
"Good morning, Mister Silk," Secretary Ghopal greeted me, his handextended. "Gentlemen, Mr. Stephen Silk, about whom we were speaking.This way, Mr. Silk, if you please."
There was a low coffee-table at the rear of the office, and four easychairs around it. On the round brass table-top were cups and saucers, acoffee urn, cigarettes--and a copy of the current issue of the _GalacticStatesmen's Journal_, open at an article entitled _Probable FutureCourses of Solar League Diplomacy_, by somebody who had signed himselfMachiavelli, Jr.
I was beginning to wish that the pseudonymous Machiavelli, Jr. had neverbeen born, or, at least, had stayed on Theta Virgo IV and been awineberry planter as his father had wanted him to be.
As I sat down and accepted a cup of coffee, I avoided looking at theperiodical. They were probably going to hang it around my neck beforethey shoved me out of the airlock.
"Mr. Silk is, as you know, in our Consular Service," Ghopal was sayingto the others. "Back on Luna on rotation, doing something in Mr.Halvord's section. He is the gentleman who did such a splendid job forus on Assha--Gamma Norma III.
"And, as he has just demonstrated," he added, gesturing toward the_Statesman's Journal_ on the Benares-work table, "he is a student bothof the diplomacy of the past and the implications of our presentpolicies."
"A bit frank," Klueng commented dubiously.
"But judicious," Natalenko squeaked, in the high eunuchoid voice thatcame so incongruously from his bulk. "He aired his singularly accuratepredictions in a periodical that doesn't have a circulation of more thana thousand copies outside his own department. And I don't think thepublic's semantic reactions to the terminology of imperialism is as badas you imagine. They seem quite satisfied, now, with the change in thetitle of your department, from Defense to Aggression."
"Well, we've gone into that, gentlemen," Ghopal said. "If the articlereally makes trouble for us, we can always disavow it. There's nocensorship of the _Journal_. And Mr. Silk won't be around to draw fireon us."
_Here it comes_, I thought.
"That sounds pretty ominous, doesn't it, Mr. Silk?" Natalenko titteredhappily, like a ten-year-old who has just found a new beetle to pull thelegs out of.
"It's really not as bad as it sounds, Mr. Silk," Ghopal hastened toreassure me. "We are going to have to banish you for a while, but Idaresay that won't be so bad. The social life here on Luna has probablybegun to pall, anyhow. So we're sending you to Capella IV."
"Capella IV," I repeated, trying to remember something about it. Capellawas a GO-type, like Sol; that wouldn't be so bad.
"New Texas," Klueng helped me out.
_Oh, God, no!_ I thought.
"It happens that we need somebody of your sort on that planet, Mr.Silk," Ghopal said. "Some of the trouble is in my department and some ofit is in Mr. Klueng's; for that reason, perhaps it would be better ifCooerdinator Natalenko explained it to you."
"You know, I assume, our chief interest in New Texas?" Natalenko asked.
"I had some of it for breakfast, sir," I replied. "Supercow."
Natalenko tittered again. "Yes, New Texas is the butcher shop of thegalaxy. In more ways than one, I'm afraid you'll find. They justbutchered one of our people there a short while ago. Our Ambassador, infact."
That would be Silas Cumshaw, and this was the first I'd heard about it.
I asked when it had happened.
"A couple of months ago. We just heard about it last evening, when thenews came in on a freighter from there. Which serves to point upsomething you stressed in your article--the difficulties of trying torun a centralized democratic government on a galactic scale. But we haveanother interest, which may be even more urgent than our need for NewTexan meat. You've heard, of course, of the z'Srauff."
That was a statement, not a question; Natalenko wasn't trying to insultme. I knew who the z'Srauff were; I'd run into them, here and there. Oneof the extra-solar intelligent humanoid races, who seemed to have beenevolved from canine or canine-like ancestors, instead of primates. Mostof them could speak Basic English, but I never saw one who would admitto understanding
more of our language than the 850-word Basicvocabulary. They occupied a half-dozen planets in a small star-clusterabout forty light-years beyond the Capella system. They had developednormal-space reaction-drive ships before we came into contact withthem, and they had quickly picked up the hyperspace-drive from us backin those days when the Solar League was still playing Missionaries ofProgress and trying to run a galaxy-wide Point-Four program.
In the past century, it had become almost impossible for anybody to getinto their star-group, although z'Srauff ships were orbiting in on everyplanet that the League had settled or controlled. There were z'Sraufftraders and small merchants all over the galaxy, and you almost neversaw one of them without a camera. Their little meteor-mining boats wereeverywhere, and all of them carried more of the most modern radar andastrogational equipment than a meteor-miner's lifetime earnings wouldpay for.
I also knew that they were one of the chief causes of ulcers andpremature gray hair at the League capital on Luna. I'd done a littlereading on pre-spaceflight Terran history; I had been impressed by theparallel between the present situation and one which had culminated, twoand a half centuries before, on the morning of 7 December, 1941.
"What," Natalenko inquired, "do you think Machiavelli, Junior would doabout the z'Srauff?"
"We have a Department of Aggression," I replied. "Its mottoes are, 'Stoptrouble before it starts,' and, 'If we have to fight, let's do it on theother fellow's real estate.' But this situation is just a little toodelicate for literal application of those principles. An unprovokedattack on the z'Srauff would set every other non-human race in thegalaxy against us.... Would an attack by the z'Srauff on New Texasconstitute just provocation?"
"It might. New Texas is an independent planet. Its people aredescendants of emigrants from Terra who wanted to get away from the ruleof the Solar League. We've been trying for half a century to persuadethe New Texan government to join the League. We need their planet, forboth strategic and commercial reasons. With the z'Srauff for neighbors,they need us as much at least as we need them. The problem is to makethem understand that."
I nodded again. "And an attack by the z'Srauff would do that, too, sir,"I said.
Natalenko tittered again. "You see, gentlemen! Our Mr. Silk picks thingsup very handily, doesn't he?" He turned to Secretary of State Ghopal."You take it from there," he invited.
Ghopal Singh smiled benignly. "Well, that's it, Stephen," he said. "Weneed a man on New Texas who can get things done. Three things, to beexact.
"First, find out why poor Mr. Cumshaw was murdered, and what can be doneabout it to maintain our prestige without alienating the New Texans.
"Second, bring the government and people of New Texas to a realizationthat they need the Solar League as much as we need them.
"And, third, forestall or expose the plans for the z'Srauff invasion ofNew Texas."
_Is that all, now?_ I thought. _He doesn't want a diplomat; he wants amagician._
"And what," I asked, "will my official position be on New Texas, sir? Orwill I have one, of any sort?"
"Oh, yes, indeed, Mr. Silk. Your official position will be that ofAmbassador Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary. That, I believe, isthe only vacancy which exists in the Diplomatic Service on that planet."
At Dumbarton Oaks Diplomatic Academy, they haze the freshmen by makingthem sit on a one-legged stool and balance a teacup and saucer on oneknee while the upper classmen pelt them with ping-pong balls. Whoeverinvented that and the other similar forms of hazing was one of the greatgeniuses of the Service. So I sipped my coffee, set down the cup, took apuff from my cigarette, then said:
"I am indeed deeply honored, Mr. Secretary. I trust I needn't go intoany assurances that I will do everything possible to justify your trustin me."
"I believe he will, Mr. Secretary," Natalenko piped, in a manner thatchilled my blood.
"Yes, I believe so," Ghopal Singh said. "Now, Mr. Ambassador, there's aliner in orbit two thousand miles off Luna, which has been held fromblasting off for the last eight hours, waiting for you. Don't botherpacking more than a few things; you can get everything you'll needaboard, or at New Austin, the planetary capital. We have a man whomCooerdinator Natalenko has secured for us, a native New Texan, HoddyRingo by name. He'll act as your personal secretary. He's aboard theship now. You'll have to hurry, I'm afraid.... Well, _bon voyage_, Mr.Ambassador."