I.
Commander-in-Chief Front and Center
General Carlos von Schlichten threw his cigarette away, flexed hishands in his gloves, and set his monocle more firmly in his eye,stepping forward as the footsteps on the stairway behind him ceasedand the other officers emerged from the squat flint keep--CaptainCazabielle, the post CO; big, chocolate-brown Brigadier-GeneralThemistocles M'zangwe; little Colonel Hideyoshi O'Leary. Far in frontof him, to the left, the horizon was lost in the cloudbank over TakkadSea; directly in front, and to the right, the brown and gray and blackflint mountains sawed into the sky until they vanished in thedistance. Unseen below, the old caravan-trail climbed one side of thepass and slid down the other, a sheer five hundred feet below theparapet and the two corner catapult-platforms which now mounted 90-mmguns. On the little hundred-foot-square parade ground in front of thekeep, 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 andcorporal-gunner of his own car. The other fifty-odd were Ullerannatives. They stood erect on stumpy legs and broad, six-toed feet.They had four arms apiece, one pair from true shoulders and the otherconnected to a pseudo-pelvis midway down the torso. Their skins wereslate-gray and rubbery, speckled with pinhead-sized bits of quartzthat had been formed from perspiration, for their body-tissues weresilicone instead of carbon-hydrogen. Their narrow heads wereunpleasantly saurian; they had small, double-lidded red eyes, andslit-like nostrils, and wide mouths filled with opalescent teeth.Except for their belts and equipment, they were completely naked; theuniform consisted of the emblem of the Chartered Uller Companystencil-painted on chests and backs. Clothing, to them, wasunnecessary, either for warmth or modesty. As to the former, they werecold-blooded and could stand a temperature-range of from a hundred andtwenty to minus one hundred Centigrade. Von Schlichten had seen themsleeping in the open with their bodies covered with frost or freezingrain; he had also seen them wade through boiling water. As to thesecond, they had practically no sex-inhibitions; they were all of thesame gender, true, functional, hermaphrodites. Any individual amongthem could bear young, or fertilize the ova of any other individual.Fifteen years ago, when he had come to Uller as a former TerranFederation captain newly commissioned colonel in the army of the UllerCompany, it had taken some time before he had become accustomed to thedetailing of a non-com and a couple of privates out of each platoonfor baby-sitting duty. At least, though, they didn't have thesquaw-trouble around army posts on Uller that they had on Thor, wherehe had last been stationed.
An airjeep, coming in out of the sun, circled the crag-top fort andlet down onto the terrace next to von Schlichten's command-car. Itcarried a bristle of 15-mm machine-guns, and two of the eight 50-mmrocket-tubes on either side were empty and freshly smoke-stained. Theduraglass canopy slid back, and the two-man crew--lieutenant-driverand sergeant-gunner--jumped out. Von Schlichten knew them both.
"Lieutenant Kendall; Sergeant Garcia," he greeted. "Good afternoon,gentlemen."
Both saluted, in the informal, hell-with-rank-we're-all-human mannerof Terran soldiers on extraterrestrial duty, and returned thegreeting.
"How's the Jeel situation?" he asked, then nodded toward the firedrocket-tubes. "I see you had some shooting."
"Yes, sir," the lieutenant said. "Two bands of them. We sighted thefirst coming up the eastern side of the mountain about two miles thisside of the Blue Springs. We got about half of them with MG-fire, andthe rest dived into a big rock-crevice. We had to use two rockets onthem, and then had to let down and pot a few of them with our pistols.We caught the second band in that little punchbowl place about a milethis side of Zortolk's Old Fort. There were only six of them; theywere bunched together, feeding. Off one of their own gang, I'd say;the way we've been keeping them up in the high rocks, they've beeneating inside the family quite a bit, lately. We let them have tworockets. No survivors. Not many very big pieces, in fact. We let downat Zortolk's for a beer, after that, and Captain Martinelli told usthat one of his jeeps caught what he thinks was the same band that wasdown off the mountain night-before-last and ate those peasants onPrince Neeldink's estate."
"By God, I'm glad to hear that!" There'd been a perfect hell of a flapabout that business. Before the Terrans came to Uller, it was a goodyear when not more than five hundred farm-folk would be killed andeaten by Jeel cannibals. The incident of two nights ago had been thefirst of its kind in almost six months, but the nobleman whose serfshad been eaten was practically accusing the Company of responsibilityfor the crime. "I'll see that Neeldink is informed. The more you dofor these damned geeks, the more they expect from you.... When you getyour vehicle re-ammoed, lieutenant, suppose you buzz back to where youmachine-gunned that first gang. If there are any more around, they'llhave moved in for the free meal by now." This breakdown of the Jeels'taboo against eating fellow-tribesmen was one of the best things he'dheard from the cannibal-extermination project for some time.
He turned to Themistocles M'zangwe. "In about two weeks, get a littletask-force together. Say ten combat-cars, about twenty airjeeps, and abattalion of Kragan Rifles in troop-carriers. Oh, yes, and thisgood-for-nothing Konkrook Fencibles outfit of Prince Jaizerd's; theycan be used for beaters, and to block escape routes." He turned backto Lieutenant Kendall and Sergeant Garcia. "Good work, boys. And ifthe synchro-photos show that any of that first bunch got away, don'tfeel too badly about it. These Jeels can hide on the top of apool-table."
He climbed into the command-car, followed by Themistocles M'zangwe andHideyoshi O'Leary. Sergeant Harry Quong and Corporal Hassan Bogdanofftook their places on the front seat; the car lifted, turned to noseinto the wind, and rose in a slow spiral. Below, the fort grewsmaller, a flat-topped rectangle of masonry overlooking the pass, agun covering each approach, and two more on the square keep to coverthe rocky hogback on which the fort had been built, with the flagpolebetween them. Once that pole had lifted a banner of ragged blackmarsh-flopper skin bearing the device of the Kragan riever-chieftainwhose family had built the castle; now it carried a neat rectangle ofblue bunting emblazoned with the wreathed globe of the TerranFederation and, below that, the blue-gray pennant which bore thevermilion trademark of the Chartered Uller Company.
"Where now, sir?" Harry Quong asked.
He looked at his watch. Seventeen-hundred; there wasn't time for avisit to Zortolk's Old Fort, ten miles to the north at the next pass.
"Back to Konkrook, to the island."
The nose of the car swung east by south; the cold-jet rotors beganhumming and then the hot-jets were cut in. The car turned from thefort and the mountains and shot away over the foothills toward thecoastal plain. Below were forests, yellow-green with new foliage ofthe second growing season of the equatorial year, veined with narrowdirt roads and spotted with occasional clearings. Farther east, thedirty gray woodsmoke of Uller marked the progress of thecharcoal-burnings. It took forty years to burn the forests clear backto the flint cliffs; by the time the burners reached the mountains,the new trees at the seaward edge would be ready to cut. Off to thesouth, he could see the dark green squares, where the hemlocks andNorway spruce had been planted by the Company. With a little chemicalfertilizer, they were doing well, and they made better charcoal thanthe silicate-heavy native wood. That was the only natural fuel onUller; there was no coal, of course, since fallen timber and evenstanding dead trees petrified in a matter of a couple of years. Therewas too much silica on Uller, and not enough of anything else; whatwould be coal-seams on Terra were strata of silicified wood. And, ofcourse, there was no petroleum. There was less charcoal being burnednow than formerly; the Uller Company had been bringing in greatquantities of synthetic thermoconcentrate-fuel, and had been settingup nuclear furnaces and nuclear-electric power-plants, wherever theygained a foothold on the planet.
Beyond the forests came the farmlands. Around the older estates, thickwalls of flint and petrified wood had been built, and wide moats dug,to keep ou
t the shellosaurs. But now the moats were dry, and the wallsfalling into disrepair. Some of the newer farms, land devoted toagriculture with the declining demand for charcoal, had neither moatsnor walls. That was the Company, too; the huge shell-armored beastshad become virtually extinct in the Konk Isthmus now, since theintroduction of bazookas and recoilless rifles. There seemed to bequite a bit of power-equipment working in the fields, and bigcontragravity lorries were drifting back and forth, scatteringfertilizer, mainly nitrates from Mimir or Yggdrasill. There were stilla good number of animal-drawn plows and harrows in use, however.
As planets went, Uller was no bargain, he thought sourly. At times, hewished he had never followed the lure of rapid promotion andfantastically high pay and left the Federation regulars for the armyof the Uller Company. If he hadn't, he'd probably be a colonel, atfive thousand sols a year, but maybe it would be better to be amiddle-aged colonel on a decent planet--Odin, with its two moons,Hugin and Munin, and its wide grasslands and its evergreen foreststhat looked and even smelled like the pinewoods of Terra, or Baldur,with snow-capped mountains, and clear, cold lakes, and rocky riversdashing under great vine-hung trees, or Freya, where the people werehuman to the last degree and the women were so breathtakinglybeautiful--than a Company army general at twenty-five thousand onthis combination icebox, furnace, wind-tunnel and stonepile, where thewater tasted like soapsuds and left a crackly film when it dried;where the temperature ranged, from pole to pole, between two hundredand fifty and minus a hundred and fifty Fahrenheit and theBeaufort-scale ran up to thirty; where nothing that ran or swam orgrew was fit for a human to eat, and where the people....
Of course, there were worse planets than Uller. There was Nidhog, coldand foggy, its equatorial zone a gloomy marsh and the rest of the planetlocked in eternal ice. There was Bifrost, which always kept the sameface turned to its primary; one side blazingly hot and the other closeto absolute zero, with a narrow and barely habitable twilight zonebetween. There was Mimir, swarming with a race of semi-intelligentquasi-rodents, murderous, treacherous, utterly vicious. Or Niflheim. TheUller Company had the franchise for Niflheim, too; they'd had to takethat and agree to exploit the planet's resources in order to get thefranchise for Uller, which furnished a good quick measure of thecomparative merits of the two.
Ahead, the city of Konkrook sprawled along the delta of the Konk riverand 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, andnot at all this late in the northern summer. The aircar lost altitude,and the hot-jet stopped firing. They came gliding in over the suburbsand the yellow-green parks, over the low one-story dwellings andshops, the lofty temples and palaces, the fantastically twistedtowers, following a street that became increasingly mean and squalidas it neared the industrial district along the waterfront.
Von Schlichten, on the right, glanced idly down, puffing slowly onhis cigarette. Then he stiffened, the muscles around his right eyeclamping tighter on the monocle. Leaning forward, he punched HarryQuong lightly on the shoulder.
"Circle back, sergeant; let's have a look at that street again," hedirected. "Something going on, down there; looks like a riot."
"Yes, sir; I saw it," the Chinese-Australian driver replied. "Terransin trouble; bein' mobbed by geeks. Aircar parked right in the bloodymiddle of it."
The car made a twisting, banking loop and came back, more slowly.Colonel Hideyoshi O'Leary was using the binoculars.
"That's right," he said. "Terrans being mobbed. Two of them, backed upagainst a house. I saw one of them firing a pistol."
Von Schlichten had the handset of the car's radio, and was punchingout the combination of the Company guardhouse on Gongonk Island; heheld down the signal button until he got an answer.
"Von Schlichten, in car over Konkrook. Riot on Fourth Avenue, just offSeventy-second Street." No Terran could possibly remember the names ofKonkrook's streets; even native troops recruited from outside foundthe numbers easier to learn and remember. "Geeks mobbing a couple ofTerrans. I'm going down, now, to do what I can to help; send troops ina hurry. Kragan Rifles. And stand by; my driver'll give it to you asit happens."
The voice of somebody at the guardhouse, bawling orders, came out ofthe receiver as he tossed the phone forward over Harry Quong'sshoulder; Quong caught it and began speaking rapidly and urgently intoit while he steered with the other hand. Von Schlichten took one ofthe five-pound spiked riot-maces out of the rack in front of him.Themistocles M'zangwe had already drawn his pistol; he shifted it tohis left hand and took a mace in his right. The Nipponese-Irishcolonel, looking like a homicidally infuriated pixie, had an automaticin one hand and a long dagger in the other.
Harry Quong and Hassan Bogdanoff were old Uller hands; they'd donethis sort of work before. Bogdanoff rose into the ball-turret andswung the twin 15-mm's around, cutting loose. Quong brought the car infast, at about shoulder-height on the mob. Between them, they left aswath of mangled, killed, wounded, and stunned natives. Then, spinningthe car around, Quong set it down hard on a clump of rioters as closeas possible to the struggling group around the two Terrans. VonSchlichten threw back the canopy and jumped out of the car, O'Learyand M'zangwe behind him.
There was another aircar, a dark maroon civilian job, at the curb; itsnative driver was slumped forward over the controls, a shortcrossbow-bolt sticking out of his neck. Backed against the closed doorof a house, a Terran with white hair and a small beard was clubbingfutilely with an empty pistol. He was wounded, and blood was streamingover his face. His companion, a young woman in a long fur coat, waslaying about her with a native bolo-knife.
Von Schlichten's mace had a spiked ball-head, and a four-inch spike infront of that. He smashed the ball down on the back of one Ulleran'shead, and jabbed another in the rump with the spike.
"_Zak! Zak!_" he yelled, in pidgin-Ulleran. "_Jik-jik_, youlizard-faced Creator's blunder!"
The Ulleran whirled, swinging a blade somewhere between a bigbutcherknife and a small machete. His mouth was open, and there wasfroth on his lips.
"_Znidd suddabit!_" he screamed.
Von Schlichten parried the cut on the steel shaft of his mace."_Suddabit_ yourself, you geek bastard!" he shouted back, ramming thespike-end into the opal-filled mouth. "And _znidd_ you, too," headded, recovering and slamming the ball-head down on the narrowsaurian skull. The Ulleran went down, spurting a yellow fluid aboutthe consistency of gun-oil. Then, without wasting words, he macedanother of the things.
Ahead, one of the natives had caught the wounded Terran with bothlower hands, and was raising a dagger with his upper right. The girlin the fur coat swung wildly, slashing the knife-arm, then choppeddown on the creature's neck. To one side, a native somewhat betterdressed than the others, to the extent of a couple of belts with goldornaments, drew a Terran automatic. Von Schlichten hurled his mace anddrew his pistol, thumbing off the safety as he swung it up, but beforehe could fire, Hassan Bogdanoff had seen and swung his guns around;the double burst caught the native in the chest and fairly tore himapart.
Another of them closed with the girl, grabbing her right arm with allfour hands and biting at her; she screamed and kicked her attacker inthe groin, where an Ulleran is, if anything, even more vulnerable thana Terran. The native howled hideously, and von Schlichten, jumpingover a couple of corpses, shoved the muzzle of his pistol into thecreature's open mouth and pulled the trigger, blowing its head apartlike a rotten pumpkin and splashing both himself and the girl withyellow blood and rancid-looking gray-green brains.
Hideyoshi O'Leary, jumping forward after von Schlichten, stuck hisdagger into the neck of a rioter and left it there, then caught thegirl around the waist with his free arm. Themistocles M'zangwe droppedhis mace and swung the frail-looking man onto his back. Together, theystruggled back to the command-car, von Schlichten covering the retreatwith his pistol. Another rioter--a Zirk nomad from the North, heguessed--was aiming one of the long-barreled native air-rifles,holding the ten-inch globe o
f the air-chamber in both lower hands. VonSchlichten shot him, and the Zirk literally blew to pieces.
For an instant, he wondered how the small bursting-charge of a 10-mmexplosive pistol-bullet could accomplish such havoc, and assumed thatthe native had been carrying a bomb in his belt. Then anotherexplosion 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 sweptbetween the hovels on one side and the warehouses on the other,strafing the mob, darted up to a thousand feet, looped, and cameswooping back, and this time there were three long blue-graytroop-carriers behind them.
These landed in the hastily cleared street and began disgorging nativeCompany soldiers--Kragan mercenaries, he noted with satisfaction. Theycarried a modified version of the regular Terran Federation infantryrifle, 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 ofthe mob. Four-handed soldiers can deliver a simply astonishing volumeof fire, particularly when armed with auto-rifles having twenty-shotdrop-out magazines which can be changed with the lower hands withoutlowering the weapon.
There was a clatter of shod hoofs, and a company of the King ofKonkrook's cavalry came trotting up on their six-legged,lizard-headed, quartz-speckled mounts. Some of these charged into sidealleys, joyfully lancing and cutting down fleeing rioters, whileothers dismounted, three tossing their reins to a fourth, and went towork with their crossbows. Von Schlichten, who ordinarily entertaineda dim opinion of the King of Konkrook's soldiery, admitted,grudgingly, that it was smart work; four hands were a big help inusing 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 HarryQuong, a pistol in his right hand, was still talking into theradio-phone, and Hassan Bogdanoff was putting fresh belts into hisguns. Then he saw that the Graeco-African brigadier and theIrish-Japanese colonel had gotten the wounded man into the car. Thegirl, having dropped her bolo, was leaning against the side of thecar, one foot heedlessly in what was left of an Ulleran who had gottensmashed under it, weak with nervous reaction.
"We seem to be, Captain Pedolsky. Very smart work; you must have thosevehicles of yours on hyperspace-drive.... How is he, colonel?"
"We'd better get him to the hospital, right away," O'Leary replied. "Ithink he has a concussion."
"Harry, call the hospital. Tell them what the score is, and tell themwe're bringing the casualty in to their top landing stage.... Why,we'll make out very nicely, captain. You'd better stay around withyour Kragans and make sure that these geeks of King Jaikark's don'tlet the riot flare up again and get away from them. And don't let themget the impression that they can maintain order around here withoutour help; the Company would like to see that attitude discouraged."
"Yes, sir, I understand." Captain Pedolsky opened the pouch on hisbelt and took out the false palate and tongue-clicker without which noTerran could do more than mouth a crude and barely comprehensiblepidgin-Ulleran. Stuffing the gadget into his mouth, he turned andbegan 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 thejump-seats. The driver put on the contragravity-field, and the carlifted up.
"Them, see if there's a flask and a drinking-cup in the door pocketnext to you," he said. "I think Miss Quinton could use a drink."
The girl turned. Even in her present disheveled condition, she wasbeautiful--a trifle on the petite side, with black hair and black eyesthat quirked up oddly at the outer corners. Her nails wereblack-lacquered and spotted with little gold stars, evidently a newfeminine fad from Terra.
"I certainly could, general.... How did you know my name?"
"You've been on Uller for the last three months; ever since the _Cityof Canberra_ got in from Niflheim. On Uller, there aren't enough of usthat everybody doesn't know all about everybody else. You're Dr. PaulaQuinton; you're an extraterrestrial sociographer, and you're afield-agent for the Extraterrestrials' Rights Association, likeMohammed Ferriera, here." He took the cup and flask from ThemistoclesM'zangwe and poured her a drink. "Take this easy, now; Baldurhoney-rum, a hundred and fifty proof."
He watched her sip the stuff cautiously, cough over the firstmouthful, and then get the rest of it down.
"More?" When she shook her head, he stoppered the flask and relievedher of the cup. "What were you doing in that district, anyhow?" hewanted to know. "I'd have thought Mohammed Ferriera would have hadmore sense than to take you there, or go there, himself, for thatmatter."
"We went to visit a friend of his, a native named Keeluk, who seems tobe a sort of combination clergyman and labor leader," she replied."I'm going to observe labor conditions at the North Pole mines in ashort while, and Mr. Keeluk was going to give me letters ofintroduction to friends of his at Skilk."
With the aid of his monocle, von Schlichten managed to keep a straightface. Neither M'zangwe nor O'Leary had any such aid; the Africanrolled his eyes and the Japanese-Irishman grimaced.
"We talked with Mr. Keeluk for a while," the girl said, "and when wecame out, we found that our driver had been killed and a mob hadgathered. Of course, we were carrying pistols; they're part of thissurvival-kit you make everybody carry, along with the emergency-rationsand 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 thatbig knife...."
"That's why you're still alive," von Schlichten commented.
"We wouldn't be if you hadn't come along," she told him. "I never inmy life saw anything as beautiful as you coming through that mobswinging that war-club!"
"Well, I never saw anything much more beautiful than those 40-mm'sbeginning to land in the mob," von Schlichten replied.
The aircar swung out over Konkrook Channel and headed toward theblue-gray Company buildings on Gongonk Island, and the Companyairport, swarming with lorries and airboats, where the tenthousand-ton _Oom Paul Kruger_ had just come in from Keegark, and theCompany's one real warship, the cruiser _Procyon_, was lifting out forGrank, in the North. Down at the southern tip of the island, thethree-thousand-foot globe of the spaceship _City of Pretoria_, fromNiflheim, was loading with cargo for Terra.
"Just what happened, while you and Mr. Ferriera were in Keeluk'shouse. Miss Quinton?" Hideyoshi O'Leary asked, trying not to soundofficial. "Was Keeluk with you all the time? Or did he go out for awhile, say fifteen or twenty minutes before you left?"
"Why, yes, he did." Paula Quinton looked surprised. "How did you guessit? You see, a dog started barking, behind the house, and he excusedhimself and...."
"A dog?" von Schlichten almost shouted. The other officers echoed him,and on the front seat, Harry Quong said, "Coo-bli'me!"
"Why, yes...." Paula Quinton's eyes widened. "But there are no dogs onUller, except a few owned by Terrans. And wasn't there somethingabout ...?"
Von Schlichten had the radio-phone and was calling the command car atthe scene of the riot. The sergeant-driver answered.
"Von Schlichten here; my compliments to Captain Pedolsky, and tell himhe's to make immediate and thorough search of the house in front ofwhich the incident occurred, and adjoining houses. For hisinformation, that's Keeluk's house. Tell him to look for traces ofGovernor-General Harrington's collie, or any of the other terrestrialanimals that have been disappearing--that goat, for instance, or thoserabbits. And I want Keeluk brought in, alive and in condition to beinterrogated. I'll send more troops, or Constabulary, to help you." Hehanded the phone to M'zangwe. "You take care of that end of it, Them;you know who can be spared."
"But, what ...?" the girl began.
"That's why you were attacked," he told he
r. "Keeluk was afraid to letyou get away from there alive to report hearing that dog, so he wentout 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 forcesconcentrated, and he has a pretty good staff."
"But Mr. Keeluk's a friend of ours. He knows what our Association istrying to do for his people...."
"So he shows his appreciation by setting that mob on you. Look, he hasa lot of influence in that section. When you were attacked, why wasn'the out trying to quiet the mob?"
"When they jumped you, you tried to get back into the house," M'zangweput 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 sacredtotem-animal of the Uller Company?"
"It's just a big brown collie, named Stalin, like half the dogs onTerra. Somebody stole it, and Keeluk was keeping it, and we want toknow why. We don't like geek mysteries; not when they lead tomurderous attacks on Terrans, at least."
The aircar let down on the hospital landing stage. A stretcher waswaiting, with a Terran interne and two Ulleran orderlies. They got thestill-unconscious Mohammed Ferriera out of the car.
"You'd better go with them, yourself, Miss Quinton," von Schlichtenadvised. "You have a couple of nasty-looking bruises and bumps. Acouple of abrasions, too, where those geeks grabbed you; they havehides like sandpaper. And better have that coat cleaned, before thatgoo on it hardens, or it'll be ruined."
"Yes. You have a lot of it on your uniform, too."
He glanced down at the blue-gray jacket. "So I have. And anotherthing. Those letters Keeluk was going to give you, the ones to hisfriends in Skilk. Did you get them?"
She felt in the pocket of her coat. "Yes. I still have them."
"I wish you'd let Colonel O'Leary have a look at them. There may bemore to them than you think.... Hid, will you go with Miss Quinton?"