Transcriber's Note:

 This etext was produced from Space Science Fiction, February and March, 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. 

 ULLR UPRISING

 A STORY IN TWO PARTS

 [Illustration]

 BY H. BEAM PIPER

 ILLUSTRATED BY ORBAN

 [Illustration]

 "The heathen geeks, they wear no breeks, " the Terrans sang. But on a crazy world like Ullr, clothes didn't make the fighting man. There both red and yellow meant danger--and blood!

 * * * * *

I

The big armor-tender vibrated, gently and not unpleasantly, as thecontragravity field alternated on and off. Sometimes it rockedslightly, like a boat on the water, and, in the big screen whichserved in lieu of a window at the front of the control-cabin, thedingy-yellow landscape would seem to tilt a little. The air wasfaintly yellow, the sky was yellow with a greenish cast, and theclouds were green-gray. 

No human had ever set foot on the surface, or breathed the air, ofNiflheim. To have done so would have been instant death; the air was amixture of free fluorine and fluoride gasses, the soil was metallicfluorides, damp with acid rains, and the river was pure hydrofluoricacid. Even the ordinary spacesuit would have been no protection; theglass and rubber and plastic would have disintegrated in a matter ofminutes. People came to Niflheim, and worked the mines and uraniumrefineries and chemical plants, but they did so inside power-drivenand contragravity-lifted armor, and they lived on artificialsatellites two thousand miles off-planet. Niflheim was worse thanairless; much worse. 

The chief engineer sat at his controls, making the minor lateraladjustments in the vehicle's position which were not possible to theautomatic controls. At his own panel of instruments, a small man withgrizzled black hair around a bald crown, and a grizzled beard, chewednervously at the stump of a dead cigar and listened intently. A large, plump-faced, young man in soiled khaki shirt and shorts, withextremely hairy legs, was doodling on his notepad and eating candy outof a bag. And a black-haired girl in a suit of coveralls three sizestoo big for her, and, apparently, not much of anything else, loungedwith one knee hooked over her chair-arm, staring into the screen atthe distant horizon. 

"I can see them, " the girl said, lifting a hand in front of her. "Attwo o'clock, about one of my hand's-breaths above the horizon. Butonly four of them. "

The man with the grizzled beard put his face into the fur around theeyepiece of the telescopic-'visor and twisted a dial. "You have goodeyes, Miss Quinton, " he complimented. "The fifth's inside the handlingmachine. One of the Ullrans. Gorkrink. "

 * * * * *

The largest of the specks that had appeared on the horizon resolveditself into a handling-machine, a thing like an oversizedcontragravity-tank, with a bull-dozer-blade, a stubby derrick-boominstead of a gun, and jointed, claw-tipped, arms at the sides. Thesmaller dots grew into personal armor--egg-shaped things that sproutedarms and grab-hooks and pushers in all directions. The man with thegrizzled beard began talking rapidly into his hand-phone, then hung itup. There was a series of bumps, and the armor-tender, weightless oncontragravity, shook as the handling-machine came aboard. 

"You ever see any nuclear bombing, Miss Quinton?" the young man withthe hairy legs asked, offering her his candybag. 

"Only by telecast, back Solside, " Paula Quinton replied, helpingherself. "Test-shots at the Federation Navy proving-ground on Mars. Inever even heard of nuclear bombs being used for mining till I camehere, though. "

"It'll be something to see, " he promised. "These volcanoes have beendormant for, oh, maybe as long as a thousand years; there ought to bea pretty good head of gas down there. The volcanoes we shot threemonths ago yielded a fine flow of lava with all sorts ofmetals--nickel, beryllium, vanadium, chromium, iridium, as well ascopper and iron. "

"What sort of gas were you speaking about?" she asked. 

"Hydrogen. That's what's going to make the fireworks; it combinesexplosively with fluorine. The hydrogen-fluorine combination is whatpasses for combustion here: the result is hydrofluoric acid, the localequivalent of water. The subsurface hydrogen is produced when the acidfilters down through the rock, combines with pure metals underneath. "

The door at the rear of the control-cabin opened, and Juan Murillo, the seismologist, entered, followed by an assistant, who was nothuman. He was a biped, vaguely humanoid, but he had four arms and aface like a lizard's, and, except for some equipment on belt, he wasentirely naked. 

He spoke rapidly to Murillo, in a squeaking jabber. Murillo turned. 

"Yes, if you wish, Gorkrink, " he said, in Lingua Terra. Then he turnedback to Gomes as the Ullran sat down in a chair by the door. 

"Well, she's all yours, Lourenço; shoot the works. "

Gomes stabbed the radio-detonator button in front of him. 

 * * * * *

Out on the rolling skyline, fifty miles away, a lancelike ray ofblue-white light shot up into the gathering dusk--a clump of fiverays, really, from five deep shafts in an irregular pentagon half amile across, blended into one by the distance. An instant later, therewas a blinding flash, like sheet-lightning, and a huge ball ofvaricolored fire belched upward, leaving a series of smoke-rings tofloat more slowly after it. The fireball flattened, then spread toform the mushroom-head of a column of incandescent gas that mounted toovertake it, engorging the smoke-rings as it rose, twisting, writhing, changing shape, turning to dark smoke in one moment and belching flameand crackling with lightning the next. 

"In about half an hour, " the large young man told Paula Quinton, "thereal fireworks should be starting. What's coming up now is just smalldebris from the nuclear blast. When the shock-waves get down farenough to crack things open, the gas'll come up, and then steam andash, and then magma. "

"Well, even this was worth staying over for, " the girl said, watchingthe screen. 

"You going on to Ullr on the _City of Canberra_?" Lourenço Gomesasked. "I wish I were; I have to stay over and make another shot, in amonth or so, and I've had about all of Niflheim I can take, now. "

"When are you going to Terra?" the girl asked him. 

"Terra? I don't know; a year, two years. But I'm going to Ullr on thenext ship--the _City of Pretoria_--if we get the next blast off intime. They want me to design some improvements on a couple ofpower-reactors at Keegark so I'll probably see you when I get there. "

"Here she comes!" the chief engineer called. "Watch the base of thecolumn!"

The pillar of fiery smoke and dust, still boiling up from where thebombs had gone off far underground, was being violently agitated atthe bottom. A series of new flashes broke out, lifting and spreadingthe incandescent radioactive gasses, and then a great gush of flamerose. A column of pure hydrogen must have rushed up into the vacuumcreated by the explosion; the next blast of flame, in a lateral sheet, came at nearly ten thousand feet above the ground. Then geysers of hotash and molten rock spouted upward; some of the white-hot debrislanded almost at the acid river, half-way to the armor-tender. 

"We've started a first-class earthquake, too, " Murillo said, lookingat the instruments. 

"About six big cracks opening in the rock-structure. You know, whenthis quiets down and cools off, we'll have more ore on the surfacethan we can handle in ten years, and more than we could have mined byordinary means in fifty. "

"Well, that finishes our work, " the large young man said, going to akit-bag in the corner of the cabin and getting out a bottle. "Get someof those plastic cups, over there, somebody; this one calls for adrink. "

The Ullran, in the background, rose quickly and squeakedapologetically. Murillo nodded. "Yes, of course, Gorkrink. No need foryou to stay here. " The Ullran went out, closing the door behind him. 

"That taboo against Ullrans and Terrans watching each other eat anddrink, " Paula Quinton commented. "But you were speaking to him inLingua Terra; I didn't know any of them understood it. "

"Gorkrink does, " Murillo said, uncorking the bottle and pouring intothe plastic cups. "None of them can speak it, of course, because ofthe structure of their vocal organs, any more than we can speak theirlanguages without artificial aids. But I can talk to him in LinguaTerra without having to put one of those damn gags in my mouth, and hecan pass my instructions on to the others. He's been a big help; I'llbe sorry to lose him. "

"Lose him?"

"Yes, his year's up; he's going back to Ullr on the _Canberra_. He'sfrom Keegark; claims to be a prince, or something. But he's a damngood worker. Very smart; picks things up the first time you tell him. I'll recommend him unqualifiedly for any kind of work withcontragravity or mechanized equipment. "

They all had drinks, now, except the chief engineer, who wanted arain-check on his. 

"Well, here's to us, " Murillo said. "The first A-bomb miners inhistory. .. . "

II

Carlos von Schlichten, General of the troops on Ullr, threw hiscigarette away and set his monocle more firmly in his eye, steppingforward to let Brigadier-General Themistocles M'zangwe and littleColonel Hideyoshi O'Leary follow him out of the fort. On the littlehundred-foot-square parade ground in front of the keep, his aircar wasparked, 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 Ullrans. Theystood erect on stumpy legs and broad, six-toed feet. They had fourarms apiece, one pair from true shoulders and the other connected to apseudo-pelvis midway down the torso. Their skins were slate-gray andrubbery, speckled with pinhead-sized bits of quartz that had beenformed from perspiration, since their body-tissues were siliconeinstead of carbon-hydrogen. Their narrow heads were unpleasantlysaurian; they had small, double-lidded red eyes, and slit-likenostrils, and wide mouths filled with opalescent teeth. Beingcold-blooded, they needed no clothing, beyond their belts andequipment, and the emblem of the Chartered Ullr Company painted ontheir chests and backs. They had no need for modesty, since all wereof the same gender--true, functional hermaphrodites; any individualamong them could bear young, or fertilize the ova of any otherindividual. 

Fifteen years before, when he had come to Ullr as a newly commissionedcolonel in the army of the Ullr Company, it had taken him some time toadjust. But now his mind disregarded them and went on worrying aboutthe mysterious disappearance of pet animals from Terran homes; theremust be some connection with the subtle change he had noticed in theattitudes of the natives, but he couldn't guess what. He didn't likeit, though, any more than the beginning of cannibalism among the wildJeel tribesmen. Or the visit of Paula Quinton on Ullr as field-agentfor the Extraterrestrials' Rights Association; now was no time to stirup trouble among the natives, unless his hunch was wrong. 

He shrugged it aside and climbed into the command-car, followed byM'zangwe and O'Leary. Sergeant Harry Quong and Corporal HassanBogdanoff took their places in the front seat; the car lifted, turnedto nose into the wind, and rose in a slow spiral. 

"Where now, sir?" Quong asked. 

"Back to Konkrook; to the island. "

 * * * * *

The nose of the car swung east by south; the cold-jet rotors beganhumming, and the hot-jets were cut in. The car turned from the fortand the mountains and shot away over the foothills toward the coastalplains. Below were forests, yellow-green with new foliage of thesecond growing-season of the equatorial year, veined with narrow dirtroads and spotted with occasional clearings. Farther east, the dirtygray woodsmoke of Ullr marked the progress of the charcoal-burnings. That was the only natural fuel on Ullr; there was too much silica onUllr and not enough of anything else; what would be coal-seams onTerra were strata of silicified wood. And, of course, there was nopetroleum. There was less charcoal being burned now than formerly; theUllr Company had been bringing in great quantities of syntheticthermoconcentrate-fuel, and had been setting up nuclear furnaces andnuclear-electric power-plants, wherever they gained a foothold on theplanet. 

As planets went, Ullr was no bargain, he thought sourly. At times, hewished he had never followed the lure of rapid promotion andfanatically high pay and left the Federation regulars for the army ofthe Ullr Company. If he hadn't, he'd probably be a colonel, at fivethousand sols a year, but maybe it would be better to be a middle-agedcolonel on a decent planet than a Company army general at twenty-fivethousand on this combination icebox, furnace, wind-tunnel andstonepile, where the water tasted like soapsuds and left a cracklyfilm when it dried; where the temperature ranged, from pole to pole, between two hundred and fifty and minus a hundred and fifty Fahrenheitand the Beaufort-scale ran up to thirty; where nothing that ran orswam or grew was fit for a human to eat. 

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 on hiscigarette. Then he stiffened, the muscles around his right eyeclamping tighter on the monocle. Leaning forward, he punched HarryQuong lightly on the man's right shoulder. 

"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. VonSchlichten had the handset of the car's radio, and was punching outthe combination of the Company guardhouse on Gongonk Island; he helddown 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. 

Bogdanoff rose into the ball-turret and swung the twin 15-mm. 'saround, cutting loose. Quong brought the car in fast, at aboutshoulder-height on the mob. Between them, they left a swath ofmangled, killed, wounded, and stunned natives. Then, spinning the cararound, Quong set it down hard on a clump of rioters as close aspossible 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 Ullran'shead, and jabbed another in the rump with the spike. 

"_Zak! Zak!_" he yelled, in pidgin-Ullran. "_Jik-jik_, youlizard-faced Creator's blunder!"

The Ullran whirled, swinging a blade somewhere between a bigbutcher-knife and a small machete. His mouth was open, and there wasfroth on his lips. 

"_Znidd suddabit!_" he shrieked. 

Von Schlichten parried the cut on the steel shaft of his mace. "_Suddabit_ yourself!" he shouted back, ramming the spike-end into theopal-filled mouth. "And _znidd_ you, too, " he added, recovering andslamming the ball-head down on the narrow saurian skull. The Ullranwent down, spurting a yellow fluid about the consistency of gun-oil. 

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. 

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 Ullran 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. 

O'Leary, jumping forward after von Schlichten, stuck his dagger intothe neck of a rioter and left it there, then caught the girl aroundthe waist with his free arm. M'zangwe dropped his mace and swung thefrail-looking man onto his back. Together, they struggled back to thecommand-car, von Schlichten covering the retreat with his pistol. Another rioter was aiming one of the long-barreled native air-rifles, holding the ten-inch globe of the air-chamber in both lower hands. VonSchlichten shot him, and the native literally blew to pieces. 

For an instant, he wondered how the small bursting-charge of a 10-mm. Explosive 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 King Jaikark ofKonkrook's cavalry came trotting up on their six-legged, lizard-headed, quartz-speckled, mounts. Some of these charged intoside alleys, 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 they had gotten the wounded man into the car. The girl, having dropped her bolo, was leaning against the side of thecar. 

"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-Ullran. Stuffing the gadget into his mouth, he turned and beganjabbering 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 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 quirled 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 Ullr for the last three months; ever since the _Cityof Canberra_ got in from Niflheim. On Ullr, 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, " he added quickly. 

"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. We talked with Mr. Keeluk fora while, and when we came out, we found that our driver had beenkilled and a mob had gathered. Of course, we were carrying pistols;they're part of this survival-kit you make everybody carry, along withthe emergency-rations and the water desilicator. Mr. Ferriera's wasn'tloaded, but mine was. When they rushed us, I shot a couple of them, and then picked up that big knife. .. . I never in my life saw anythingas beautiful as you coming through that mob swinging that warclub!"

 * * * * *

The aircar swung out over Konkrook Channel and headed toward theblue-gray Company buildings on Gongonk Island, and the Companyairport. 

"Just what happened, while you and Mr. Ferriera were in Keeluk'shouse, Miss Quinton?" O'Leary asked, trying not to sound official. "Was Keeluk with you all the time? Or did he go out for a while, sayfifteen 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. 

"Why, yes. .. . " Paula Quinton's eyes widened. "But there are no dogs onUllr, 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. "

"But, what . .. ?" the girl began, her voice puzzled. 

"That's why you were attacked, " he told her. "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 Ullr Company?"

"It's just a big brown collie named Stalin. But somebody stole it, andKeeluk was keeping it. We want to know why. We don't like geekmysteries--not when they lead to murderous attacks on Terrans, atleast. "

It seemed to satisfy her, as the aircar let down on the hospitallanding stage. But it didn't satisfy von Schlichten. He could smelltrouble brewing. Just what could the geeks do with a dog? Nothing, sofar as he could tell--but they didn't go in for such behaviour withoutwhat they considered good reason. Good for them, that is!

III

Governor-General Sidney Harrington had a ruddy outdoors-man's face anda ragged gray mustache; in his old tweed coat spotted with pipe ashes, he might have been any of a dozen-odd country-gentlemen of vonSchlichten's boyhood in the Argentine. His face was composed enoughfor the part, too. But beyond him in the governor's office, Lieutenant-Governor Eric Blount matched von Schlichten's frown, hissandy-haired and younger face puckered in worry. 

"We picked up a few of Keeluk's goon-gang, " von Schlichten wasreporting. "But I doubt if they'll tell us anything we don't alreadyknow. The dog was gone, but we found where it had been kept; at leastone of the rabbits had been there, too. No trace of the goat. Anyhow, the riot's been put down. The Kragans and some of King Jaikark'sinfantry are patrolling the section. Jaikark's troops are busy makingmass arrests. Either more slaves for the King's court favorites orelse our Prime Minister Gurgurk wants to use them for patronage. "

Blount nodded. "Gurgurk's building quite a political organization, lately. He must be about ready to shove Jaikark off the throne. "

"Oh, Gurgurk wouldn't dare try anything like that, " Harrington said. "He knows we wouldn't let him get away with it. "

"Then why's he subsidizing this Mad Prophet Rakkeed?" Blount wanted toknow. "Rakkeed is preaching a holy war against all Terrans and againstJaikark. Gurgurk subsidizes Rakkeed, and. .. . "

"You haven't any proof of that, " the governor protested. 

Blount shrugged, his face looking grim. Von Schlichten knew how hefelt. They couldn't prove it, but both knew that Rakkeed had beengetting funds from the hands of Gurgurk. The prophet had been steppingup his crusade against the Terrans, and Gurgurk wasn't the only onebacking him. The Prime Minister probably figured on using Rakkeed tostir up an outbreak; then Gurgurk could step in, after Jaikark waskilled, put down the revolt he helped incite, and claim to be the bestfriend of the Company. But the question was whether Rakkeed could beused that way. He was becoming more of a menace than Gurgurk couldever be. Everywhere they turned, Rakkeed was at the bottom of theirtrouble--just in this case, where Keeluk was one of Rakkeed'sfollowers. 

His power seemed to be growing, too. There were rumors that he hadbeen entertained at the palace in Keegark, just as he was usuallyentertained by the big shipowning nobles here at Konkrook; come tothink of it, the last time here, he'd been guest of the Keegarkanambassador. He went all over Ullr, crusading, traveling coolie-classin disguise on Company ships, according to their best information. 

Blount sighed heavily. "This damned dog business worries me. "

"Worries me, too, " Harrington said. "I'm fond of that mutt, and Godonly knows what sort of stuff he's been getting to eat. "

"I'm a lot more worried about why Keeluk was hiding him, and why hewas willing to murder the only two Terrans on Konkrook who trust him, to prevent our finding out he had Stalin, " Blount struck in. 

Von Schlichten chain-lit another cigarette and stubbed out the oldone. "Maybe Keeluk turned him over to Rakkeed to kill before acongregation of his followers--killing us in effigy. Or maybe theyfigure we worship Stalin, and getting him would give them power overus. I wish I knew a little more about Ullran psychology. "

"One thing, " Blount said. "It doesn't take any Ullran psychologist toknow about eighty per cent of them hate us poisonously. "

"Oh, rubbish!" Harrington blew the exclamation out around his pipestem with a gush of smoke. "A few fanatics hate us, but nine-tenths ofthem have benefitted enormously from us. "

"And hate us more deeply with each new benefit, " Blount added. "Theyresent everything we've done for them. "

"Yes, this spaceport proposition of King Orgzild of Keegark looks likeit, doesn't it?" Harrington retorted. "He hates us so much he'soffered us a spaceport at his city. .. . "

"At what cost?" Blount asked. "He takes the land from some noble heexecutes for treason and gives it to us--together with forced labor. We furnish everything else. We get a port we don't need, and he getsall the business it'll bring. In fact, considering that Rakkeed is awelcome guest there, I wonder if he isn't fomenting trouble here atKonkrook to make us move our main base to Keegark. He's so sure we'llaccept already that he's started building two new power-reactors tohandle the additional demand from increased business. "

"Where's he getting the plutonium?" von Schlichten asked, suspiciously. 

"He just bought four tons of it from us, off the _City of Pretoria_, "Harrington replied. 

"A hell of a lot of plutonium, " Blount said. "I wonder if he has anyidea of what else plutonium can be used for?"

"Oh, God, I hope not!" Harrington exclaimed. "Bosh! What about thoseletters Keeluk gave the Quinton girl?"

"All addressed to rabidly anti-Terran Rakkeed disciples, " vonSchlichten replied. "We couldn't find any indication of a cipher, butthe gossip about Keeluk's friends might have had code-meanings. I'llhave to advise her to have nothing to do with any of the peopleKeeluk gave her letters to. "

"Think she'll listen to you? These Extraterrestrial Rights Associationpeople are a lot of blasted fanatics, themselves. They think we're agang of bloody-fisted, flint-hearted imperialists. "

"Oh, they're not as bad as all that. Old Mohammed Ferriera's alwaysbeen decent enough. And the Association's really done a lot of good inother places. "

A calculating look came into Harrington's eye. "She was going toSkilk, eh? And you're going there yourself, to investigate some ofthis Rakkeed worry of Eric's. Why not invite her along, and maybe youcan plant a couple of ideas where they'll do the most good. We allknow there are a lot of things at the polar mines that would look badto anybody who didn't understand. And with all this trouble beingstirred up now. .. . "

It was his first admission that there _was_ trouble, but vonSchlichten let it pass. "Her company wouldn't be any heavy cross tobear, " he replied. "I won't guarantee anything, of course. .. . "

The intercom-speaker on the table whistled, and Harrington flipped aswitch and spoke into the box. "Governor, " a voice replied out of it, "there's a geek procession just landed from a water-barge in front, coming up the roadway to Company House. A platoon of Jaikark'sHousehold Guards with a royal litter, Spear of State, gift-litter, nobles and such. "

"Gurgurk with indemnity for the riot, eh? Let them in, give them anhonor guard of Kragans, but keep their own gun-toters outside. Take themto Reception Hall until I signal from Audience Hall, then herd them in. "He flipped back the switch and turned back. "We'll have to let them waitor they'll think we're worried. But you see--everything's going alongnormal lines. "

Blount nodded, but his face showed disbelief. And von Schlichtengrumbled unhappily to himself, without knowing why, until they finallywent out to the big Audience Hall to meet the delegation. 

Governor-General Sidney Harrington, on the comfortably-upholsteredbench on the dais of the Audience Hall, didn't look particularlyregal. But then, to a Terran, any of the kings of Ullr would havelooked like a freak birth in a lizard-house at a zoo; it was hard toguess what impression Harrington would make on the Ullran psychology. 

He took the false palate and tongue-clicker, officially designated asan "enunciator, Ullran" and, colloquially, as a geek-speaker, out ofhis coat pocket and shoved it into his mouth. Von Schlichten andBlount put in theirs, and Harrington pressed the floor-button with histoe. After a brief interval, the wide doors at the other end of thehall slid open, and the Konkrookan notables, attended by a dozenCompany native-officers and a guard of Kragan Rifles, entered. Thehonor-guard advanced in two columns; between them marched an uncladand heavily armed native carrying an ornate spear with a three-footblade upright in front of him with all four hands. It was theKonkrookan Spear of State; it represented the proxy-presence of KingJaikark. Behind it stalked Gurgurk, the Konkrookan equivalent of PrimeMinister or Grand Vizier; he wore a gold helmet and a thing like astring-vest made of gold wire, and carried a long sword with atwo-hand grip, a pair of Terran automatics built for a hand withsix-four-knuckled fingers, and a pair of matched daggers. He wasconsiderably past the Ullran prime of life--seventy or eighty, tojudge from the worn appearance of his opal teeth, the color of hisskin, and the predominantly reddish tint of his quartz-speckles. Theretinue of nobles behind Gurgurk ran through the whole spectrum, froma princeling who was almost oyster-gray to the Keegarkan Ambassador, who was even blacker and more red-speckled than Gurgurk. 

Four slaves brought up in the rear, carrying an ornately inlaid box onpoles. When the spear-bearer reached the exact middle of the hall, hehalted and grounded his regalia-weapon with a thump. Gurgurk came upand halted a couple of paces behind and to the left of the spear, andmost of the other nobles drew up in two curved lines some ten paces tothe rear; the ambassador and another noble came up and plantedthemselves beside Gurgurk. 

 * * * * *

The Governor-General rose slowly and descended from the dais, advancing to within ten paces of the Spear, von Schlichten and Blountaccompanying him. 

"Welcome, Gurgurk, " Harrington gibbered through his false palate. "TheCompany is honored by this visit. "

"I come in the name of my royal master, His Sublime and IneffableMajesty, Jaikark the Seventeenth, King of Konkrook and of all thelands of the Konk Isthmus, " Gurgurk squeaked and clicked. "I have thehonor to bring with me the Lord Ambassador of King Orgzild of Keegarkto the court of my royal master. "

"And I, " the ambassador said, after being suitably welcomed, "amhonored to be accompanied by Prince Gorkrink, special envoy from mymaster, His Royal and Imperial Majesty King Orgzild, who is in yourcity to receive the shipment of power-metal my royal master has beenhonored to be permitted to purchase from the Company. "

More protocol about welcoming Gorkrink. Then Gurgurk cleared histhroat with a series of barking sounds. 

"My royal master, His Sublime and Ineffable Majesty, is prostratedwith grief, " he stated solemnly. "Were his sorrow not so overwhelming, he would have come in His Own Sacred Person to express the pain andshame which he feels that people of the Company should be set upon andendangered in the streets of the royal city. "

"The soldiers of His Sublime and Ineffable Majesty came most promptlyto the aid of the troops of the Company, did they not, General vonSchlichten?" Harrington asked, solemn-faced. 

"Within minutes, Your Excellency, " von Schlichten replied gravely. "Their promptness, valor and efficiency were most exemplary. "

 * * * * *

Gurgurk spoke at length, expressing himself as delighted, on behalf ofhis royal master, at hearing such high praise from so distinguished asoldier. Eric Blount contributed a short speech, beseeching the godsthat the deep and beautiful friendship existing between the CharteredUllr Company and His Sublime etcetera would continue unimpaired. TheKeegarkan Ambassador spoke his piece, expressing on behalf of KingOrgzild the deepest regret that the people of the Company should be somolested, and managing to hint that things like that simply didn'thappen at Keegark. 

The Prince Gorkrink then spoke briefly, in sympathy. Von Schlichtennoticed that a few of his more recent quartz-specks were slightlygreenish in tinge, a sure sign that he had, not long ago, been exposedto the fluorine-tainted air which men and geeks alike breathed onNiflheim. When a geek prince hired out as a laborer for a year onNiflheim, he did so for only one purpose--to learn Terrantechnologies. 

Gurgurk then announced that so enormous a crime against the friends ofHis Sublime etcetera had not been allowed to go unpunished, signallingbehind him with one of his lower hands for the box to be broughtforward. The slaves carried it to the front, set it down, and openedit, taking from it a rug which they spread on the floor. On this, fromthe box, they placed twenty-four newly severed opal-grinning heads, infour neat rows. They had all been freshly scrubbed and polished, butthey still smelled like crushed cockroaches. 

The three Terrans looked at them gravely. A double-dozen heads wasstandard payment for an attack in which no Terran had been killed. Ostensibly, they were the heads of the ringleaders; in practice, theywere usually lopped from the first two-dozen prisoners or overageslaves at hand, without regard for whether the victims had ever heardof the crime they were expiating. 

There was another long speech from Gurgurk, with the nobles behind himmurmuring antiphonal agreement--standard procedure, for which therewas a standard pun, geek chorus--and a speech of response from SidHarrington. Standing stiffly through the whole rigamarole, vonSchlichten waited for it to end, as, finally, it did. 

They walked back from the door, whence they had escorted thedelegation, and stood looking down at the saurian heads on the rug. Harrington raised his voice and called to a Kragan sergeant whosechevrons were painted on all four arms. 

"Take this carrion out and stuff it in the incinerator, " he ordered. 

 * * * * *

"Wait a minute, " von Schlichten told the sergeant. Then he disgorgedand pouched his geek-speaker. "See that head, there?" he asked, rolling it over with his toe. "I killed that geek, myself, with mypistol. And Hid O'Leary stuck a knife in that one. " He walked aroundthe rug, turning heads over with his foot. "This was a cut-ratehead-payment; they just slashed off two-dozen heads at the scene ofthe riot. Six months ago, Gurgurk wouldn't have tried to pull anythinglike this. Now he's laughing up his non-existent sleeve at us. "

"That's what I've been preaching, all along, " Eric Blount took upafter him. "These geeks need having the fear of Terra thrown intothem. "

"Oh, nonsense, Eric; you're just as bad as Carlos, here!" Harringtontut-tuted. "Next, you'll be saying that we ought to depose Jaikarkand take control ourselves. "

"Well, what's wrong with that, for an idea?" von Schlichten demanded. 

"My God!" Harrington exploded. "Don't let me hear that kind of talkagain! We're not _conquistadores_: we're employees of a businessconcern, here to make money honestly, by exchanging goods and serviceswith these people. .. . "

 * * * * *

He turned and walked away, out of the Audience Hall, leaving vonSchlichten and Blount to watch the removal of the geek-heads. 

"You know, I went a little too far, " von Schlichten confessed. "Or toofast, rather. "

"We can't go too slowly, though, " Blount replied. 

Von Schlichten nodded seriously. "Did you notice the green specks inthe hide of that Prince Gorkrink?" he asked. "He's just come back fromNiflheim. Probably on the _Canberra_, three months ago. "

"And he's here to get that plutonium, and ship it to Keegark on the_Oom Paul Kruger_, " Blount considered. "I wonder just what he learned, on Niflheim. "

"I wonder just what's going on at Keegark, " von Schlichten said. "Orgzild's pulled down a regular First-Century-model iron curtain. Youknow, four of our best native Intelligence operatives have beenmurdered in Keegark in the last three months, and six more have justvanished there. "

"Well, I'm going there in a few days, myself, to talk to Orgzild aboutthis spaceport deal, " Blount said. "I'll have a talk with HendrikLemoyne and Colonel MacKinnon. And I'll see what I can find out formyself. "

"Well, let's go have a drink, " von Schlichten suggested. 

But he kept remembering the falsehood of Gurgurk's indemnity. When theUllrans started making a mockery of such things, it was no time forHarrington's trusting policies. The smell of trouble was suddenlystronger in his nostrils. 

IV

Von Schlichten and Blount entered the bar together. Going to abartending machine, von Schlichten dialed the cocktail they haddecided 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 andPaula Quinton. The girl wore a long-sleeved gown to conceal a bandageon her right wrist, and her face was rather heavily powdered in spots;otherwise she looked none the worse for recent experiences. VonSchlichten invited her and her escort to join him and Blount. ColonelO'Leary was carrying a cocktail jug and a couple of glasses; finding atable 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 thepeople we came to help, " Paula began, a trifle defensively. 

"Not a very funny joke, " von Schlichten told her. "It's been played onus 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 theway they do. You know, that's a nasty name; in the First CenturyPre-Atomic, it designated a degraded person who performed some sort ofrevolting 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. Evenin the absence of any native, she used her handkerchief to mask theact. 

"Suddabit, " she said, distinctly. "Sud-da-a-_bit_. " Taking out thegeek-speaker, she put it away. "Why, that's exactly how they'dpronounce it!"

"And don't tell me you haven't heard it before, " O'Leary said. "Thegeeks were screaming it at you, over on Seventy-second Street, thisafternoon. _Znidd suddabit_; kill the Terrans. That's Rakkeed theProphet's whole gospel. "

"So you see, " Eric Blount rammed home the moral, "this is just anothercase of nobody with any right to call anybody else's kettle black. .. . Cigarette?"

 * * * * *

"Thank you. " She leaned toward the lighter-flame O'Leary had snappedinto being. "I suspect that of being a principle you'd like me to bearin mind at the Polar mines, when I see, let's say, some laborer beingbeaten by a couple of overseers with three foot lengths ofthree-quarter-inch steel cable. "

"If you think the natives who work at the mines feel themselvesill-treated, you might propose closing them down entirely and see whatthe native reaction would be, " von Schlichten told her. "Independently-hired free workers can make themselves rich, by nativestandards, in a couple of seasons; many of the serfs pick up enoughmoney 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 itthat this native, Rakkeed, the one you call the Mad Prophet, is ableto find such a following?" Paula demanded. "There must be somethingwrong somewhere. "

"That's a fair question, " Blount replied, inverting a cocktail jugover his glass to extract the last few drops. "When we came to Ullr, we found a culture roughly like that of Europe during the SeventhCentury Pre-Atomic. We initiated a technological and economicrevolution here, and such revolutions have their casualties, too. Anumber of classes and groups got squeezed pretty badly, like thehorse-breeders and harness-manufacturers on Terra by the invention ofthe automobile, or the coal and hydroelectric interests when directconversion of nuclear energy to electric current was developed, or therailroads and steamship lines at the time of the discovery of thecontragravity-field. Naturally, there's a lot of ill-feeling on thepart of merchants and artisans who weren't able or willing to adaptthemselves to changing conditions; they're all backing Rakkeed andyelling '_Znidd suddabit!_' now. But it is a fact, which not evenRakkeed can successfully deny, that we've raised the general livingstandard 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 thecaravan-trade, we're spoiling their local business, because thelandowning barons, who used to deal with them, are now dealingdirectly with us. At Skilk, King Firkked's afraid his feudal nobilityis going to force a Runnymede on him, so he's been currying favor withthe urban merchants; that makes him as pro-Rakkeed and as anti-Terranas 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 handsomesubsidy, so he's pro-Terran and anti-Rakkeed. At Skilk, Rakkeed comesand 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 asbloody-minded an old murderer as you'd care not to meet in a darkalley. "

"We can turn our backs on him and not expect a knife between ourshoulders, anyhow, " von Schlichten said. "And we can believe, oh, upto eighty per cent of what he tells us, and that's sixty per centbetter than any of the other native princes, except King Kankad, ofcourse. The Kragans are the only real friends we have on this planet. "He thought for a moment. "Miss Quinton, are you doing sociographicresearch-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. PaulaQuinton objected. "You find races like that all through the exploredGalaxy--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 thinkshe's run into many Kragans. We ought to take her over and introduceher to King Kankad. "

 * * * * *

Von Schlichten allowed himself to be smitten by an idea. "By Allah, sowe 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 clearedup here and be ready to leave by 0800 Tuesday? That's four days fromtoday. "

"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 abattalion of Kragan Rifles for duty at the Polar mines, where you'regoing. 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 abouttwo to three hours. If you think the Kragans are 'pathetic culturalmongrels', what you'll see there will open your eyes. And I might addthat the nearest Stanley-Browne ever came to seeing Kankad's Town wasfrom 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 thisis some scheme to indoctrinate me with the Ullr Company's side of thecase and blind me to unjust exploitation of the natives here, I don'tpropagandize very easily. "

"Fair enough, as long as you don't let fear of being propagandizedblind you to the good we're doing here, or impair your ability toobserve and draw accurate conclusions. Just stay scientific about itand I'll be satisfied. Now, let's take time out for lubrication, " hesaid, filling her glass and passing the jug. 

Two hours and five cocktails later, they were still at the table, andthey had taught Paula Quinton some twenty verses of _The HeathenGeeks, They Wear No Breeks_, including the four printable ones. 

 * * * * *

Four days later they stood together as the aircar passed over theKraggork Swamps--pleasantly close together, von Schlichten realized. For the moment, he could almost forget the queer, intangible tensionthat had been growing steadily, and the feeling that things werenearing a breaking point of some kind. 

Von Schlichten was scanning the horizon ahead. He pulled over a pairof fifty-power binoculars on a swinging arm and put them where shecould use them. 

"Right ahead, there; just a little to the left. See that brown-grayspot 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'sTown. You might say, even the same Kankad. The Kragan kings havealways provided their own heirs, by self-fertilization. The offspringis an exact duplicate of the single parent. The present Kankad speaksof his heir as 'Little Me, ' which is a fairly accurate way of puttingit. "

He knew what she was seeing through the glasses--a massive butte offlint, jutting out into the swamp on the end of a sharp ridge, with acity on top of it. All the buildings were multi-storied, some pilingupward from the top and some clinging to the sides. The highwatchtower at the front now carried a telecast-director, aimed at anautomatic relay-station on an unmanned orbiter two thousand milesoff-planet. 

"They're either swamp-people who moved up onto that rock, or they'remountaineers who came out that far along the ridges and stopped, " shesaid. "Which?"

"Nobody's ever tried to find out. Maybe if you stay on Ullr longenough, you can. That ought to be good for about eight to ten honorarydoctorates. And maybe a hundred sols a year in book royalties. "

"Maybe I'll just do that, general. .. . What's that, on the littleisland over there?" she asked, shifting the glasses. "A clump offlat-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 alsomake TNT and propellants. Learned that from us, of course. They alsomanufacture most of their own firearms, some of them prettyextreme--up to 25-mm. For shoulder rifles. Don't ever fire one; it'dbreak 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 inweight-lifting. They can't run, or jump, as well as we can. We oftencome out here for games with the Kragans, where the geeks can't watchus. And that reminds me--you're right about that being a term ofderogation, because I don't believe I've ever knowingly spoken of aKragan as a geek, and in fact they've picked up the word from us andapply it to all non-Kragans. But as I was saying, our baseball teamhas to give theirs a handicap, but their football team can beat thedaylights out of ours. In a tug-of-war, we have to put two men on ourend for every one of theirs. But they don't even try to play tenniswith 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, andlet down on the roof of the castle-like building from which thewatchtower rose. There were a dozen or so individuals waiting forthem--the five Terrans, three men and two women, from the telecaststation, and the rest Kragans. One of these, dark-skinned but withspeckles no darker than light amber, armed only with a heavy dagger, came over and clapped von Schlichten on the shoulder, grinningopalescently. 

"Greetings, Von!" he squawked in Kragan, then, seeing Paula, switchedover to the customary language of the Takkad Sea country. "It makeshappiness 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. "Twohours and a half. .. . Kankad, this is Paula Quinton; Paula, KingKankad. "

He took out his geek-speaker and crammed it into his mouth. Before anyother race on Ullr, that would have been the most shocking sort of badmanners, without the token-concealment of the handkerchief. Kankadtook it as a matter of course. At some length, von Schlichtenexplained the nature of Paula's sociographic work, her connection withthe Extraterrestrials' Rights Association, and her intention of goingto the Arctic mines. Kankad nodded. 

"You were right, " he said. "I wouldn't have understood all that inyour language. If I had read it, maybe, but not if I heard it. " He puthis upper right hand on Paula's shoulder and uttered a clickingapproximation of her name. He turned and introduced another Kragan, about his own age, who wore the equipment and insignia of a Companynative-major and was freshly painted with the Company emblem. "This isKormork. He and I have borne young to each other. Kormork, you watchover Paula Quinton. " He managed, on the second try, to make it more orless recognizable. "Bring her back safe. Or else find yourself a goodplace to hide. "

Kankad introduced the rest of his people, and von Schlichtenintroduced the Terrans from the telecast-station. Then Kankad lookedat the watch he was wearing on his lower left wrist. 

"We will have plenty of time, before the ship comes, to show Paula thetown, " he suggested. "Von, you know better than I do what she wouldlike 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 KingKankad's town were the only artillery above 75-mm. On Ullr innon-Terran hands. They climbed into an open machine-gun carrier andstrapped themselves to their seats, and for two hours King Kankadshowed her the sights of the town. They visited the school, whereyoung Kragans were being taught to read Lingua Terra and studied fromtextbooks printed in Johannesburg and Sydney and Buenos Aires. Kankadshowed her the repair-shops, where two-score descendants of Kraganriver-chieftains were working on contragravity equipment, under thesupervision of a Scottish-Afrikaner and his Malay-Portuguese wife;the small-arms factory, where very respectable copies of Terran riflesand pistols and auto-weapons were being turned out; the machine-shop;the physics and chemistry labs; the hospital; the ammunition-loadingplant; 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; theprinting-shop and book-bindery; the observatory, with a big telescopeand an ingenious orrery of the Beta Hydrae system; the nuclear-powerplant, part of the original price for giving up brigandage. 

Half an hour before the ship from Konkrook was due, they had arrivedat the airport, where a gang of Kragans were clearing a berth for the_Aldebaran_. From somewhere, Kankad produced two cold bottles of CapeTown beer for Paula and von Schlichten, and a bowl of some boiling-hotblack liquid for himself. Von Schlichten and Paula lit cigarettes;between sips of his bubbling hell brew, Kankad gnawed on the stalk ofsome swamp-plant. Paula seemed as much surprised at Kankad's disregardfor the eating taboo as she had been at von Schlichten's open floutingof the convention of concealment when he had put in his geek-speaker. 

"This is the only place on Ullr where this happens, " von Schlichtentold her. "Here, or in the field when Terran and Kragan soldiers aretogether. There aren't any taboos between us and the Kragans. "

"No, " Kankad said. "We cannot eat each others' food, and because ourbodies are different, we cannot be the fathers of each others' young. But we have been battle-comrades, and work-sharers, and we havelearned from each other, my people more from yours than yours frommine. Before you came, my people were like children, shooting arrowsat little animals on the beach, and climbing among the rocks atdare-me-and-I-do, and playing war with toy weapons. But we are growingup, and it will not be long before we will stand beside you, as thegrown son stands beside his parent, and when that day comes, you willnot 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 yourworld, " Kankad said. "And some of the other young ones. And whenLittle Me is old enough to take over the rule of our people, I wouldlike 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. Thereis trouble coming, though even my spies cannot find what that troubleis. And two days ago in Keegark, two of my people died trying to learnit. 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 hisface before she turned back to him, though it was worse news than hehad expected. If Kankad thought things were bad enough to add his ownspies to those of the Company, things couldn't be much worse. In fact, anything that brought whatever it was out into the open would bebetter. 

He was still fretting over it as they said their good-byes to Kankadand boarded the _Aldebaran_ for Skilk. 

V

The last clatter of silverware and dishes ceased as the nativeservants finished clearing the table. There was a remaining clatter ofcups and saucers; liqueur-glasses tinkled, and an occasionalcigarette-lighter clicked. At the head table, the voices seemedlouder. 

". .. Don't like it a millisol's worth, " Brigadier-General BarneyMordkovitz, the Skilk military CO, was saying to the lady on hisright. "They're too confounded meek. Nowadays, nobody yells '_Zniddsuddabit!_' at you. They just stand and look at you like a farmerlooking at a turkey the week before Christmas, and that I don't like!"

"Oh, bosh!" Jules Keaveney, the Skilk Resident-Agent, at the head ofthe table, exclaimed. "If they don't bow and scrape to you and get offthe sidewalk to let you pass, you say they're insolent and need alesson. If they do, you say they're plotting insurrection. "

"What I said, " Mordkovitz repeated, "was that I expect a certainamount of disorder, and a certain minimum show of hostility toward usfrom some of these geeks, to conform to what I know to be ourunpopularity with many of them. When I don't find it, I want to knowwhy. "

"I'm inclined, " von Schlichten came to his subordinate's support, "toagree. This sudden absence of overt hostility is disquieting. ColonelCheng-Li, " he called on the local Intelligence officer andConstabulary chief. "This fellow Rakkeed was here, about a month ago. Was there any noticeable disorder at that time? Anti-Terrandemonstrations, attacks on Company property or personnel, shooting ataircars, that sort of thing?"

"No more than usual, general. In fact, it was when Rakkeed came herethat the condition General Mordkovitz was speaking of began to becomeconspicuous. "

Von Schlichten nodded. "And I might say that Lieutenant-GovernorBlount has reported from Keegark, where he is now, that the sameunnatural absence of hostility exists there. "

"Well, of course, general, " Keaveney said patronizingly, "King Orgzildhas things under pretty tight control at Keegark. He'd not allow a fewfanatics to do anything to prejudice these spaceport negotiations. "

 * * * * *

"I wonder if the idea back of that spaceport proposition isn't to getus concentrated at Keegark, where Orgzild could wipe us all out in onesurprise 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 awaywith it for just twelve months--the time it would take to get the newsto Terra and for a Federation Space Navy task-force to get here. Andthen, there'd be little bits of radioactive geek floating around thissystem as far out as the orbit of Beta Hydrae VII. "

"That's quite true, " von Schlichten agreed. "The point is, doesOrgzild 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 Schlichtenreplied. "Or, rather, the string of orbiters and artificial satellitesaround Niflheim. Where he thinks Niflheim is, I wouldn't even try toguess. "

"Yes. After he'd wiped us out, he might even consider the idea of aninvasion of Niflheim with captured contragravity ships, " HideyoshiO'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 wasstill 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 Schlichtenfinished his brandy and got out cigarette-case and lighter. "I have anidea of the sort of garbled reports these spies of his who spend ayear on Niflheim as laborers bring back. "

 * * * * *

"You know the line Rakkeed's been taking, of course, " Colonel Cheng-Liput in. "He as much as says that Niflheim's our home, and that thefarms where we raise food, here, and those evergreen plantings on KonkIsthmus and between here and Grank are the beginning of an attempt todrive all native life from this planet and make it over forourselves. "

"And that savage didn't think an idea like that up for himself; he gotit from somebody like Orgzild, " the black-bearded brigadier-generaladded. "You know, the main base off Niflheim is practicallyself-supporting, with hyproponic-gardens and animal-tissue culturevats. And it's enough bigger than one of the _City_ ships to pass fora 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 tobe 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 inamong the convicts to carry firearms. If somebody like Orgzild gothold of a nuclear bomb, even a little old First-Century H-bomb, hecould use it for a model and construct a hundred like it, with all theplutonium we've been handing out for power reactors. And there are toofew of us, and we're concentrated in too few places, to last long ifthat happened. What this planet needs, though, is a visit by afifty-odd-ship task-force of the Space Navy, just to show the geekswhat 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 toomuch of this mailed-fist-and-rattling-sabre stuff from some of thejunior officers here, without your giving countenance andencouragement to it. We're here to earn dividends for thestockholders of the Ullr Company, and we can only do that by gainingthe friendship, respect and confidence of the natives. .. . "

 * * * * *

"Mr. Keaveney, " Paula Quinton spoke. "I doubt if even you wouldseriously accuse the Extraterrestrials Rights Association of favoringwhat you call a mailed fist and rattling sabre policy. We've doneeverything in our power to help these people, and if anybody shouldhave their friendship, we should. Well, only five days ago, inKonkrook, Mr. Mohammed Ferriera and I were attacked by a mob, ournative aircar driver was murdered, and if it hadn't been for Generalvon Schlichten and his soldiers, we'd have lost our own lives. Mr. Ferriera is still hospitalized as a result of injuries he received. Itseems that General von Schlichten and his Kragans aren't trying to getfriendship and confidence; they're willing to settle for respect, inthe only way they can get it--by hitting harder and quicker than thenatives 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 towinking at Paula. Good girl, he thought; she's started playing on theArmy team, and about time!

"Well, of course. .. . " Keaveney began. Then he stopped, as a Terransergeant came up to the table and bent over Barney Mordkovitz'shoulder, whispering urgently. The black-bearded brigadier roseimmediately, taking his belt from the back of his chair and putting iton. Motioning the sergeant to accompany, he spoke briefly to Keaveneyand then came around the table to where von Schlichten sat, theResident-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 radioprintslip. "Came in ten minutes ago. "

It was an all-station priority telecast. Governor-General Harringtonhad died suddenly, in his room, at 2210; there were no details. Heglanced at his watch; it was 2243. Konkrook and Skilk were in the sametime-zone; that was fast work. He handed the slip to Mordkovitz, whogave it to Keaveney. 

"You from the telecast station, sergeant?" he asked. "All right, inthat case, let's go. "

As he hurried from the banquet-room, he could hear Keaveney tapping onhis wine-glass. 

"Everybody, please! Let me have your attention! There has just come ina piece of the most tragic news. .. . "

 * * * * *

A woman captain met him just inside the door of the big soundproofedroom of the telecast station, next to the Administration Building. 

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

Another girl, a tech-sergeant, was in the booth; on the screen was theimage of a third young woman, a lieutenant, at Konkrook station. Thesergeant rose and started to leave the booth. 

"Stick around, sergeant, " von Schlichten told her. "I'll want you totake over when I'm through. " He sat down in front of the combinationvisiscreen and pickup. "Now, lieutenant; just what happened?" heasked. "How did he die?"

"We think it was poison, general. General M'zangwe has ordered autopsyand chemical analysis. If you can wait about ten minutes, he'll beable 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 heardten pistol-shots, as fast as they could be fired semi-auto, in thegovernor's room. The door was locked, but he shot it off with his ownpistol and went in. He found Governor Harrington on the floor, wearingonly his gown, holding an empty pistol. He was in convulsions, frothing at the mouth, in horrible pain. Evidently he'd fired hispistol, which he kept on his desk, to call help; all the bullets hadgone 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, andbroken off in the middle of a word. There was a bottle and anoverturned glass on his desk. The Constabulary got there a few minuteslater, and then Brigadier-General M'zangwe took charge. A white rat, given fifteen drops from the whiskey-bottle, died with the samesymptoms in about ninety seconds. "

"Who had access to the whiskey-bottle?"

"A geek servant, who takes care of the room. He was caught, an hourearlier, trying to slip off the island without a pass; they wereholding him at the guardhouse when Governor Harrington died. He's nowbeing questioned by the Kragans. " The girl's face was bleaklyremorseless. "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 girlsaid. "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 geekchamber-valet being arrested, " von Schlichten said. "Did you getanything out of him?"

"He's admitted putting poison in the bottle, but he claims it was hisown 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 thoserabbits! Of course they'd need terrestrial animals, to find out whatwould poison a Terran! Who's in charge at Konkrook now?"

"Not much of anybody. Laviola, the Fiscal Secretary, and HansMeyerstein, the Banking Cartel's lawyer, and Howlett, the PersonnelChief, and Buhrmann, the Commercial Secretary, have made up a sort ofquadrumvirate and are trying to run things. I don't know what wouldhappen if anything came up suddenly. .. . " A blue-gray uniformed arm, with a major's cuff-braid, came into the screen, handing a slip ofpaper to M'zangwe; he took it, glanced at it, and swore. VonSchlichten waited until he had read it through. 

"Well, something has, all right, " the African said. "Just got a callfrom Jaikark's palace--a revolt's broken out, presumably headed byGurgurk; Household Guards either mutinied or wiped out by themutineers, 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. Thenative-lieutenant in charge of the Kragans just radioed in; says thesituation is desperate. "

"When a Kragan says that, he means damn near hopeless. Is this beingrecorded?" When M'zangwe nodded, he continued. "All right. Use therecording for your authority and take charge. I'm declaring martialrule 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 atKeegark. 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 onecompany of Kragans and ten airjeeps and four combat-cars, and tellthem to evacuate Jaikark and his followers and our Kragans to GongonkIsland. And alert your whole force. These geek palace revolutions arealways synchronized with street-rioting, and this thing seems to havebeen synchronized with Sid Harrington's death, too. Get our Kragansout if you can't save anybody else from the Palace, but sacrificingthirty or forty men to save twenty is no kind of business. And keepsending 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 comingin. "

 * * * * *

He rose and left the booth. If we can pull Jaikark's bacon off thefire, he was thinking, the Company can dictate its own terms to himafterward; 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 steptoward getting rid of all these geek despots. And with Eric Blount asGovernor-General. .. . 

The inner door of the soundproofed telecast-room burst open, three menhurried inside, and it slammed shut behind them. In the briefinterval, there had been firing audible from outside. One of the menhad a pistol in his right hand, and with his left arm he supported acompanion, whose shoulder was mangled and dripped blood. The third manhad a burp-gun in his hands. All were in civilian dress--shorts andlight jackets. The man with the pistol holstered it and helped hisinjured companion into a chair. The burp-gunner advanced into theroom, looked around, saw von Schlichten, and addressed him. 

"General! The geeks turned on us!" he cried. "The Tenth North Ullr'smutinied; they're running wild all over the place. They've taken theirbarracks and supply-buildings, and the lorry-hangars and themaintenance-yard; they're headed this way in a mob. Some of the ZirkCavalry's joined them. "

"Have any ammo left for that burp-gun? Come on, then; let's see whatit'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 audibleagain. The civilian with the burp-gun knew better than to let ageneral go out first; elbowing von Schlichten out of the way, hecrouched over his weapon and dashed outside. Drawing his pistol, vonSchlichten followed, pulling the door shut after him. 

 * * * * *

Darkness had fallen, while he had been inside; now the whole CompanyReservation was ablaze with electric lights. Somebody at thepower-plant had thrown on the emergency lights. There was a confusedmass of gray-skinned figures in front of Company House, reflectedlight twinkling on steel over them; from the direction of thenative-troops barracks more natives were coming on the run. On theroof of a building across the street, two machine-guns were alreadyfiring into the mob. From up the street, a hundred-odd saurian-facednative soldiers were coming at the double, bayonets fixed and riflesat high port; with them ran-several Terrans. Motioning his companionto follow, von Schlichten ran to meet them, falling in beside a Terrancaptain 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 theserag-tag Auxiliaries. That mob down there's part of them. " He waspuffing under the double effort of running and talking. "Whole thingblew up in seconds; no chance to communicate with anybody. .. . "

A Terran woman, in black slacks and an orange sweater, ran across thestreet in front of them, pursued by a group of enlisted "men" of theTenth North Ullr Native Infantry, all shrieking "_Znidd suddabit!_"The fugitive ran into a doorway across the street; before her pursuerswere aware of their danger, the Kragans had swept over them. There wasno shooting; the slim, cruel-bladed bayonets did the work. From behindhim, 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 ofthe storm-porch. There was shooting, which told him that some of thehumans who had been at the banquet were still alive. He wondered, half-sick, how many, and whether they could hold out till he couldclear the doorway, and, most of all, he found himself thinking ofPaula Quinton. Skidding to a stop within fifty yards of the mob, heflung out his arms crucifix-wise to halt the Kragans. Behind, he couldhear the Terrans and native-officers shouting commands to form front. 

"Give them one clip, reload, and then give them the bayonet!" heordered. "Shove them off the steps and then clear the porch!"

The hundred rifles let go all at once; and for five seconds theypoured a deafening two thousand rounds into the mutineers. There wassome 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 hithim, 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 stoodfirm. Even under their native-officers and sergeants, they should nothave broken as they did, but the best of these had paid for theirloyalty to the Company with their lives. At that, the Skilkanpeasantry 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 drovethe rioters from the steps or killed them there, they wiped out thosewho had gotten into the semicircle of the storm-porch. The insidedoors, von Schlichten saw, were open, but beyond them were Terrans anda dozen or so Kragans. Hideyoshi O'Leary and Barney Mordkovitz seemedto be in command of these. 

"We had about thirty seconds' warning, " Mordkovitz reported, "and theKragans in the hall bought us another sixty seconds. Of course, we allhad our pistols. .. . "

"Hey! These storm-doors are wedged!" somebody discovered. "Thosegoddam geek servants . .. !"

"Yeah; kill any of them you catch, " somebody else advised. "If wecould have gotten these doors closed. .. . "

The mob, driven from the steps, was trying to re-form and renew theattack. From up the street, the machine-guns, silent during thebayonet-fight, began hammering again. The mob surged forward to getout of their fire, and were met by a rifle-blast and a hedge ofbayonets at the steps; they surged back, and the machine-guns flailedthem again. They started to rush the building from whence theautomatic-fire came, and there was a fusilade and a shriek of "_Zniddgeek!_" from up the street. They turned and fled in the direction fromwhence they had come, bullets scourging them from three directions atonce. 

For a moment, von Schlichten and the three Terrans and eighty-oddKragans who had survived the fight stood on the steps, weapons poised, seeking more enemies. The machine-guns up the street stuttered a fewshort bursts and were silent. From behind, the beleaguered Terrans andtheir 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. Acouple of hundred more Kragans, led by Native-Major Kormork, theco-parent of young with King Kankad, came up at the double and stoppedin front of Company House. 

 * * * * *

"We were in quarters, aboard the _Aldebaran_ and in the guest-house atthe airport, " Kormork reported. "We were attacked, fifteen minutesago, by a mob. We took ten minutes beating them off, and five moregetting here. I sent Native-Captain Zeerjeek and the rest of the forceto re-take the supply-depot and the shops and lorry hangars, which hadbeen taken, and relieve the military airport, which is under attack. "

"Good enough. I hope you didn't spread yourself out too thin. What'sthe situation at the commercial airport?"

"The two ships, the _Aldebaran_ and the freighter _Northern Star_, areboth safe, " Kormork replied. "I saw them go on contragravity and riseto about a hundred feet. "

"Whose crowd is that you have?" he asked the Terran lieutenant who hadtaken 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 coupleof runners from Captain Retief of Company 4 came in with word that hewas being attacked by mutineers from the Tenth N. U. N. I. , but that hewas holding them back. So Captain Charbonneau, who was killed a fewminutes ago, left a Terran lieutenant and a Kragan native-lieutenantand a couple of native-sergeants and thirty Kragans to hold theguardhouse, and brought the rest of us here. "

Von Schlichten nodded. "You'd pass the military airport and thepower-plant, wouldn't you?" he asked. 

"Yes, sir. The military airport's holding out, and I saw thered-and-yellow danger-lights on the fence around the power-plant. "

That meant the power-plant was, for the time, safe; somebody'd turnedtwenty 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 hadcome out onto the porch from inside. "Where's Colonel Cheng-Li?"

"Here, general. " The Intelligence and Constabulary officer pushedthrough the crowd. "I was on the phone, talking to the militaryairport, the commercial airport, ordnance depot, spaceport, ship-docksand power plant. All answer. I'm afraid Pop Goode, at the citypower-plant, is done for; nobody answers there, but the TV-pickup isstill on in the load-dispatcher's room, and the place is full ofgeeks. Colonel Jarman's coming here with a lorry to get combat-carcrews; he's short-handed. Port-Captain Leavitt has all the nativelabor at the airport and spaceport herded into a repair dock; he'skeeping them covered with the forward 90-mm. Gun of the _NorthernStar_. Lorry-hangars, repair-shops and maintenance-yards don'tanswer. "

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

His command-car crew front-and-centered. 

"I want you to take Colonel O'Leary up, as soon as my car's broughthere. .. . Hid, you go up and see what's going on. Drop flares wherethere isn't any light. And take a look at the native-labor camp andthe equipment-park, south of the reservation. .. . Kormork, you take allyour gang, and half these soldiers from the Eighteenth, here, and helpclear the native-troops barracks. And don't bother taking anyprisoners; we can't spare personnel to guard them. "

Kormork grinned. The taking of prisoners had always been one of thoseirrational Terran customs which no Ullran regarded with favor, or evencomprehension. 

VI

There was fresh intelligence from Konkrook, by the time he returnedto the telecast station. Mutiny had broken out there among thelaborers and native troops, who outnumbered the Terrans and theirKragan mercenaries on Gongonk Island by five thousand to five hundredand fifteen hundred respectively. The attempt to relieve Jaikark'spalace had been called off before the relief-force could be sent;there was heavy and confused fighting all over the island, and most ofthe combat contragravity and about half the Kragan Rifles had had tobe committed to defend the Company farms across the Channel, on themainland, south of the city. There had also been an urgent call forhelp from Colonel Rodolfo MacKinnon, in command of Company troops atthe Keegark Residency. 

He called Keegark; a girl, apparently one of the civilian telecasttechnicians, answered. 

"We must have help, General von Schlichten, " she told him. "The nativetroops, all but two hundred Kragans, have mutinied. They haveeverything here except Company House--docks, airport, everything. We're trying to hold out, but there are thousands of them. "

"What happened to Eric Blount and your Resident-Agent, Mr. Lemoyne?"

"We don't know. They were at the Palace, talking to King Orgzild. We've tried to call the Palace, but we can't get through. General, wemust have help. .. . "

A call came in, a few minutes later, from Krink, five hundred miles tothe north-east across the mountains; the Resident-Agent there, oneFrancis Xavier Shapiro, reported rioting in the city and an attemptedpalace-revolution against King Jonkvank, and that the Residency wasunder attack. By way of variety, it was the army of King Jonkvank thathad mutinied; the Sixth North Ullr Native Infantry and the twocompanies of Zirk cavalry at Krink were still loyal, along with theKragans. 

 * * * * *

There was a pattern to all this. Von Schlichten stood staring at thebig map, on the wall, showing the Takkad Sea area at the EquatorialZone, and the country north of it to the Pole, the area of Ullroccupied by the Company. He was almost beginning to discern theunderlying logic of the past half-hour's events when Keaveney, theSkilk Resident, blundered into him in a half-daze. 

"Sorry, general; didn't see you. " His face was ashen, and his jowlssagged. "My God, it's happening all over Ullr! Why, it's the end ofall of us!"

"It's not quite that bad, Mr. Keaveney. " He looked at his watch. Itwas now nearly an hour since the native troops here at Skilk hadmutinied. Insurrections like this usually succeeded or failed in thefirst hour. "If we all do our part, we'll come out of it all right, "he told Keaveney, more cheerfully than he felt, then turned to askBrigadier-General Mordkovitz how the fighting was going at thenative-troops barracks. 

"Not badly, general. Colonel Jarman's got some contragravity up andworking. They blew out all four of the Tenth N. U. N. I. 's barracks; theTenth and the Zirks are trying to defend the cavalry barracks. Some ofour Kragans managed to slip around behind the cavalry stables. They'releading out hipposaurs, and sniping at the rear of the cavalrybarracks. "

"That'll give us some cavalry of our own; a lot of these Kragans aregood riders. .. . How about the repair-shops and maintenance-yard andlorry-hangars? I don't want these geeks getting hold of that equipmentand using it against us. "

"Kormork's outfit are trying to take back the lorry-hangars. Jarman'sgot a couple of airjeeps and a combat-car helping them. "

". .. Won't be one of us left by this time tomorrow, " Keaveney waswailing, to Paula Quinton and another woman. "And the Company isfinished!"

Colonel Cheng-Li, the Intelligence officer, approached Keaveney andtried to quiet him. At the same time, a woman in black slacks and anorange sweater--the one whose pursuers had been overrun by the Kragansat the beginning of the fighting--approached von Schlichten. 

"General; King Kankad's calling, " she said. "He's on the screen inbooth four. "

 * * * * *

Kankad's face was looking out of the screen at him, with PhilYamazaki, the telecast operator at Kankad's Town, standing behind him. 

"Von!" The Kragan spoke almost as though in physical pain. "What can Ido to help? I have twenty thousand of my people here who are capableof bearing arms, all with firearms, but I have transport for only fivehundred. Where shall I send them?"

Von Schlichten thought quickly. Keegark was finished; the Residencystood in the middle of the city, surrounded by two hundred thousand ofKing Orgzild's troops and subjects. Sending Kankad's five hundredwarriors and his meager contragravity there would be the same asshovelling them into a furnace. The people at Keegark would have to bewritten off, like the twenty Kragans at Jaikark's palace. 

"Send them to Konkrook, " he decided. "Them M'zangwe's in command, there; he'll need help to hold the Company farms. Maybe he can findadditional transport for you. I'll call him. "

"I'll send off what force I can, at once, " Kankad promised. "How doesit go with you at Skilk?"

"We're holding, so far, " he replied. 

Captain Inez Malavez, the woman officer in charge of the station, puther head into the booth. 

"General! Immediate-urgency message from Colonel O'Leary, " she said. "Native laborers from the mine-labor camp are pouring into themine-equipment park. Colonel O'Leary's used all his rockets andmg-ammunition trying to stop them. "

"Call you back, later, " von Schlichten told Kankad. "I'll see whatThem M'zangwe can do about transport; get what force you can startedfor Konkrook at once. "

He left the booth. "Barney!" he called. "General Mordkovitz! Who's theranking officer in direct contact with the Eighteenth Rifles? MajorFalkenberg?"

"That's right. "

"Well, tell him to get as many of his Kragans as he can spare down tothe equipment-park. " He turned to Inez Malavez. "You call Jarman; tellhim what O'Leary reported, and tell him to get cracking on it. Tellhim not to let those geeks get any of that equipment ontocontragravity; knock it down as fast as they try to lift out with it. And tell him to see what he can do in the way of troop-carriers orlorries, to get Falkenberg's Rifles to the equipment-park. .. . How'sbusiness at the lorry-hangars and maintenance-yard?"

"Kormork's still working on that, " the girl captain told him. "Nothingdefinite, yet. "

 * * * * *

In one corner of the big room, somebody had thumbtacked aten-foot-square map of the Company area to the floor. Paula Quintonand Mrs. Jules Keaveney were on their knees beside it, pushing outhandfuls of little pink and white pills that somebody had brought intwo bottles from the dispensary across the road, each using abilliard-bridge. The girl in the orange sweater had a handful ofscribbled notes, and was telling them where to push the pills. Therewere other objects on the map, too--pistol-cartridges, andcigarettes, and foil-wrapped food-concentrate wafers. Paula, seeinghim, straightened. 

"The pink are ours, general, " she said. "The white are the geeks. " VonSchlichten suppressed a grin; that was the second time he'd heard heruse that word, this evening. "The cigarettes are airjeeps, thecartridges are combat-cars, and the wafers are lorries ortroop-carriers. "

"Not exactly regulation map-markers, but I've seen stranger thingsused. .. . Captain Malavez!"

"Yes, sir?" The girl captain, rushing past, her hands full ofteleprint-sheets, stopped in mid-stride. 

"What we need, " he told her, "is a big TV-screen, and a pickup mountedon some sort of a contragravity vehicle at about two to five thousandfeet directly overhead, to give us an image of the whole area. Cando?"

"Can try, sir. We have an eight-foot circular screen that ought to doall right for two thousand feet. I'll implement that at once. "

Going into a temporarily idle telecast booth, he called Konkrook, andfinally got Themistocles M'zangwe on the screen. 

"How is it, now?" he asked. 

"Getting a little better, " the Graeco-African replied. "Half an hourago, we were shooting geeks out the windows, here; now we have themcontained between the spaceport and the native-troops and laborbarracks, and down the east side of the island to the farms. We havethe wire around the farms on the island electrified, and we're usingalmost all our combat contragravity to keep the farms on the mainlandclear. " He hesitated for a moment. "Did you hear about Eric Blount andLemoyne?"

Von Schlichten shook his head. 

 * * * * *

"The whole party that were at Orgzild's palace were massacred. Some ofthem were lucky enough to get killed fighting. The geeks took Eric andHendrik alive; rolled them in a puddle of thermoconcentrate fuel andset fire to them. When we can spare the contragravity, we're going todrop something on the Kee-geek embassy, over in town. "

Von Schlichten grimaced, but he'd expected something like it. He toldM'zangwe about King Kankad's offer. "His crowd ought to be coming inin a couple of hours. What can you scrape up to send to Kankad's Townto airlift Kragans in?"

"Well, we have three hundred-and-fifty-foot gun-cutters, one 90-mm. Apiece. The _Elmoran_, the _Gaucho_, and the _Bushranger_. But they'renot much as transports, and we need them here pretty badly. Then, wehave five fertilizer and charcoal scows, and a lot of heavy transportlorries, and two one-eighty-foot pickup boats. "

"How about the _Piet Joubert?_" von Schlichten asked. "She was due inKonkrook from the east about 1300 today, wasn't she?"

M'zangwe swore. "She got in, all right. But the geeks boarded her atthe dock, within twenty minutes after things started. They tried tolift out with her, and the Channel Battery shot her down into KonkrookChannel, off the Fifty-sixth Street docks. "

"Well, you couldn't let the geeks have her, to use against us. What doyou hear from the other ships?"

"_Procyon's_ at Grank; we haven't had any reports of any kind fromthere, which doesn't look so good. The _Northern Lights_ is at Grank, too. The _Oom Paid Kruger_ should have been at Bwork, in the east, when the gun went off. And the _Jan Smuts_ and the _Christiaan DeWett_ were both at Keegark; we can assume Orgzild has both of them. "

"All right. I'm sending _Aldebaran_ to Kankad's, to pick up morereenforcements for you. "

 * * * * *

Leaving the booth, he heard, above the clatter ofcommunications-machines and the hubbub of voices, Jules Keaveneyarguing contentiously. Evidently Colonel Cheng-Li's efforts to dragthe Resident out of his despondency had been an excessive success. 

"But it's crazy! Not just here; everywhere on Ullr!" Keaveney wassaying. "How did they do it? They have no telecast equipment. "

"You have me stopped, Jules, " Mordkovitz was replying. "I know a lotof rich geeks have receiving sets, but no sending sets. "

The pattern that had been tantalizing von Schlichten took visibleshape in his mind. For a moment, he shelved the matter of the_Aldebaran_. 

"They didn't need sending equipment, Barney, " he said. "They usedours. Sid Harrington was poisoned in Konkrook. The news, of course, was sent out at once, as the geeks knew it would be, to everyresidency and trading-station on Ullr, and that was the signal they'dagreed upon, probably months in advance!"

"Well, what was our Intelligence doing; sleeping?" Keaveney demandedangrily. 

"No; they were writing reports for your civil administration blokes tostuff in the wastebasket, and being called mailed-fist-and-rattling-sabrealarmists for their pains. " He turned away from Keaveney. "Barney, whereis Dirk Prinsloo?"

"Aboard his ship. He hitched a ride to the airport with Jarman, whenhe was here picking up air-crews. "

"Call him. Tell him to take the _Aldebaran_ to Kankad's Town, at once;as soon as he arrives there, which ought to be about 1100, he's topick up all the Kragans he can pack aboard and take them to Konkrook. From then on, he'll be under Them M'zangwe's orders. "

"To Konkrook?" Keaveney fairly howled. "Are you nuts? Don't you thinkwe need reenforcements here, too?"

"Yes, I do. I'm going to try to get them, " von Schlichten told him. "Now pipe down and get out of people's way. "

He crossed the room, to where two Kragans, a male sergeant, and theubiquitous girl in the orange sweater were struggling to get a bigcircular TV-screen up, then turned to look at the situation-map. Agirl tech-sergeant was keeping Paula Quinton and Mrs. Jules Keaveneyinformed. 

"Start pushing geeks out of the Fifth Zirk Cavalry barracks, " thesergeant was saying. "The one at the north end, and the one next toit; they're both on fire, now. " She tossed a slip into the wastebasketbeside her and glanced at the next slip. "And more pink pills back ofthe barracks and stables, and move them a little to the north-west;Kragans as skirmishers, to intercept geeks trying to slip away fromthe cavalry barracks. "

 * * * * *

A young Kragan with his lower left arm in a sling and a daub ofantiseptic plaster over the back of his head came up and gave him aradioprint slip. Guido Karamessinis, the Resident-Agent at Grank, hadreported, at last. The city, he said, was quiet, but King Yoorkerk'stroops had seized the Company airport and docks, taken the _Procyon_and the _Northern Lights_ and put guards aboard them, and weresurrounding the Residency. He wanted to know what to do. 

Von Schlichten managed to get him on the screen, after awhile. 

"It looks as though Yoorkerk's trying to play both sides at once, " hetold the Grank Resident. "If the rebellion's put down, he'll comeforward as your friend and protector; if we're wiped out elsewhere, he'll yell '_Znidd suddabit!_' and swamp you. Don't antagonize him; wecan't afford to fight this war on any more fronts than we are now. We'll try to do something to get you unfrozen, before long. "

He called Krink again. A girl with red-gold hair and a dusting offreckles across her nose answered. 

"How are you making out?" he asked. 

"So far, fine, general. We're in complete control of the Company area, and all our native-troops, not just the Kragans, are with us. Jonkvank's pushed the mutineers out of his palace, and we're keepingopen a couple of streets between there and here. We airlifted all ourKragans and half the Sixth N. U. N. I. To the Palace, and we have theZirks patrolling the streets on 'saur-back. Now, we have our lorriesand troop-carriers out picking up elements of Jonkvank's loyal troopsoutside town. "

"Who's doing the rioting, then?"

She named three of Jonkvank's regiments. "And the city hoodlums, andpriests from the temples of one sect that followed Rakkeed, and thewhole passel of Skilkan fifth columnists. "

"How long do you think it'd take, with the equipment you have, toairlift all of Jonkvank's loyal troops into the city?"

"Not before this time tomorrow. "

"All right. Are you in radio communication with Jonkvank now?"

"Full telecast, audio-visual, " the girl replied. "Just a minute, general. "

 * * * * *

He put in his geek-speaker. Within a few minutes, a saurian Ullranface was looking out of it at him; a harsh-lined, elderly, face, withan old scar, quartz-crusted, along one side. 

"Your Majesty, " von Schlichten greeted him. 

Jonkvank pronounced something intended to correspond to vonSchlichten's name. "We have image-met under sad circumstances, general, " he said. 

"Sad for both of us, King Jonkvank; we must help one another. I amtold that your soldiers in Krink have risen against you, and that yourloyal troops are far from the city. "

"Yes. That was the work of my War Minister, Hurkkirk, who was in thepay of King Firkked of Skilk, may Jeels devour him alive! I haveHurkkirk's head here somewhere. I can have it found, if you want tosee it. "

"Dead-traitors' heads do not interest me, King Jonkvank, " vonSchlichten replied, in what he estimated that the Krinkan king wouldinterpret as a tone of cold-blooded cruelty. "There are too manytraitors' heads still on traitors' shoulders. .. . What regiments areloyal to you, and where are they now?"

Jonkvank began naming regiments and locating them, all at minorprovincial towns at least a hundred miles from Krink. 

"Hurkkirk did his work well; I'm afraid you killed him toomercifully, " von Schlichten said. "Well, I'm sending the _NorthernStar_ to Krink. She can only bring in one regiment at a trip, the waythey're scattered; which one do you want first?"

Jonkvank's mouth, until now compressed grimly, parted in a gleamingsmile. He made an exclamation of pleasure which sounded rather like aboy running along a picket fence with a stick. 

"Good, general! Good!" he cried. "The first should be the regimentMurderers, at Furnk; they all have rifles like your soldiers. Havethem brought to the Great Square, at the Palace here. And then, theregiment Fear-Makers, at Jeelznidd, and the regiment Corpse-Reapers, at. .. . "

"Let that go until the Murderers are in, " von Schlichten advised. "They're at Furnk, you say? I'll send the _Northern Star_ there, directly. "

"Oh, good, general! I will not soon forget this! And, as soon as thework is finished here, I will send soldiers to help you at Skilk. There shall be a great pile of the heads of those who had part in thiswickedness, both here and there!"

"Good. Now, if you will pardon me, I'll go to give the necessaryorders. .. . "

 * * * * *

As he left the booth, he saw Hideyoshi O'Leary in front of thesituation-map, and hailed him. 

"Harry and Hassan are getting the car re-ammoed; they dropped me offhere. Want to come up with us and see the show?" O'Leary asked, as hesaw the general. 

"No, I want you to go to Krink, as soon as Harry brings the car hereagain. " He told O'Leary what he intended doing. "You'll probably haveto go around ahead of the _Star_ and alert these regiments. And assoon as things stabilize at Krink, prod Jonkvank into airliftingtroops here. You're authorized, in my name, to promise Jonkvank thathe can assume political control at Skilk, after we've stuffedFirkked's head in the dustbin. "

Jules Keaveney, who always seemed to be where he wasn't wanted, heardthat and fairly screamed. 

"General von Schlichten! That is a political decision! You have noauthority to make promises like that; that is a matter for theGovernor-General, at least!"

"Well, as of now, and until a successor to Sid Harrington can be senthere from Terra, I'm Governor-General, " von Schlichten told him, mentally thanking Keaveney for reminding him of the necessity for sucha step. "Captain Malavez! You will send out an all-station telecast, immediately: Military Commander-in-Chief Carlos von Schlichten, beinginformed of the deaths of both Governor-General Harrington andLieutenant-Governor Blount, assumes the duties of Governor-General, asof 0001 today. " He turned to Keaveney. "Does that satisfy you?" heasked. 

"No, it doesn't. You have no authority to assume a civil position ofany sort, let alone the very highest position. .. . "

Von Schlichten unbuttoned his holster and took out his authority, letting Keaveney look in to the muzzle of it. 

"Here it is, " he said. "If you're wise, don't make me appeal to it. "

Keaveney shrugged. "I can't argue with that, " he said. "But I don'tfancy the Ullr Company is going to be impressed by it. "

"The Ullr Company, " von Schlichten replied, "is six and a half parsecsaway. It takes a ship six months to get from here to Terra, andanother six months to get back. A radio message takes a little overtwenty-one years, each way. " He holstered the pistol again. 

"That brings up another question, general, " one of Keaveney'ssubordinates said. "Can we hold out long enough for help to get herefrom Terra?"

"By the time help could reach us from Terra, " von Schlichten replied, "we'll either have this revolt crushed, or there won't be a liveTerran left on Ullr. " He felt a brief sadistic pleasure as he watchedKeaveney's face sag in horror. "On this planet, there's not more thana three months' supply of any sort of food a human can eat. And theships that'll be coming in until word of our plight can get to Terrawon't bring enough to keep us going. We need the farms and livestockand the animal-tissue culture plant at Konkrook, and the farms atKrink and on the plateau back of Skilk, and we need peace and nativelabor to work them. "

 * * * * *

Nobody seemed to have anything to say after that, for awhile. ThenKeaveney suggested that the next ship was due in from Niflheim inthree months, and that it could be used to evacuate all the Terrans onUllr. 

"And I'll personally shoot any able-bodied Terran who tries to boardthat ship, " von Schlichten promised. "Get this through your heads, allof you. We are going to break this rebellion, and we are going to holdUllr for the Company and the Terran Federation. " He looked around him. "Now, get back to work, all of you, " he told the group that had formedaround him and Keaveney. "Miss Quinton, you just heard me order myadjutant, Colonel O'Leary, on detached duty to Krink. I want you totake over for him. You'll have rank and authority as colonel for theduration of this war. "

She was thunderstruck. "But I know absolutely nothing about militarymatters. There must be a hundred people here who are better qualifiedthan I am. .. . "

"There are, and they all have jobs, and I'd have to find replacementsfor them, and replacements for the replacements. You won't leave anyvacancy to be filled. And you'll learn, fast enough. " He went over tothe situation-map again, and looked at the arrangements of pink andwhite pills. "First of all, I want you to call Jarman, at the militaryairport, and have an airjeep and driver sent around here for me. I'mgoing up and have a look around. Barney, keep the show going while I'mout, and tell Colonel Quinton what it's all about. "

VII

He looked at his watch, as the light airjeep let down into the street. Oh-one-fifteen--two hours and a half since the mutiny at thenative-troops barracks had broken out. The Company reservation wasstill ablaze with lights, and over the roof of the hospital anddispensary and test-lab he could see the glare of the burningbarracks. There was more fire-glare to the south, in the direction ofthe mine-equipment park and the mine-labor camp, and from thatdirection the bulk of the firing was to be heard. 

The driver, a young lieutenant, slid back the duraglass canopy for himto climb in, then snapped it into place when he had strapped himselfinto his seat, and hit the controls. 

They lifted up, the driver turning the nose of the airjeep in thedirection of the flames and explosions and magnesium-lights to thesouth and tapping his booster-button gently. The vehicle shot forwardand came floating in over the scene of the fighting. The situation-mapat the improvised headquarters had shown a mixture of pink and whitepills in the mine-equipment park; something was going to have to bedone about the lag in correcting it, for the area was entirely in thehands of loyal Company troops, and the mob of laborers and mutinoussoldiers had been pushed back into the temporary camp where theworkers had been gathered to await transportation to the Arctic. As hehad feared, the rioting workers, many of whom were trained to handlecontragravity equipment, had managed to lift up a number ofdump-trucks and power-shovels and bulldozers, intending to use them asimprovised air-tanks, but Jarman's combat-cars had gotten on the jobpromptly and all of these had been shot down and were lying inwreckage, mostly among the rows of parked mining-equipment. 

 * * * * *

From the labor-camp, a surprising volume of fire was being directedagainst the attack which had already started from the retakenequipment-park. 

Hovering above the fighting, aloof from it, he saw six longtroop-carriers land and disgorge Kragan Rifles who had been releasedby the liquidation of resistance at the native-troops barracks. Alittle later, two air-tanks floated in, and then two more, going offcontragravity and lumbering forward on treads to fire their 90-mm. Rifles. At the same time, combat-cars swooped in, banging away withtheir lighter auto-cannon and launching rockets. The titaniumprefab-huts, set up to house the laborers and intended to be takennorth with them for their stay on the polar desert, were simply wipedaway. Among the wreckage, resistance was being blown out like thelights of a candelabrum. 

He took up the hand-phone and called HQ. 

"Von Schlichten; what's the wavelength of the officer in command atthe equipment-park?"

A voice at the telecast station furnished it; he punched it out. 

"Von Schlichten, right overhead. That you, Major Falkenberg? Nicegoing, major; how are your casualties?"

"Not too bad. Twenty or thirty Kragans and loyal Skilkans, and eightTerrans killed; about as many wounded. "

"Pretty good, considering what you're running into. Get many of yourKragans mounted on those hipposaurs?"

"About a hundred; a lot of 'saurs got shot, while we were leading themout from the stables. "

"Well, I can see geeks streaming away from the labor-camp, out thesouth end, going in the direction of the river. Use what cavalry youhave on them, and what contragravity you can spare. I'll drop a fewflares to show their position and direction. "

Anticipating him, the driver turned the airjeep and started toward thedry Hoork River. Von Schlichten nodded approval and told him torelease flares when over the fugitives. 

"Right, " Falkenberg replied. "I'll get on it at once, general. "

"And start moving that mine-equipment up into the Company area. Someof it we can put into the air; the rest we can use to buildbarricades. None of it do we want the geeks getting hold of, and theequipment-park's outside our practical perimeter. I'll send people tohelp you move it. "

"No need to do that, sir; I have about a hundred and fifty loyal NorthUllrans--foremen, technicians, overseers--who can handle it. "

"All right. Use your own judgment. Put the stuff back of thenative-troops barracks, and between the power-plant and the Companyoffice-buildings, and anywhere else you can. " The lieutenant nudgedhim and pushed a couple of buttons on the dashboard. "Here go theflares, now. "

 * * * * *

Immediately, a couple of airjeeps pounced in, to strafe the fleeingenemy. Somebody must have already been issuing orders on anotherwavelength; a number of Kragans, riding hipposaurs, were gallopinginto the light of the flares. 

"Now, let's have a look at the native barracks and themaintenance-yards, " he said. "And then, we'll make a circuit aroundthe Reservation, about two-three miles out. I'm not happy about whereFirkked's army is. "

The driver looked at him. "I've been worrying about that, too, sir, "he said. "I can't understand why he hasn't jumped us, already. I knowit takes time to get one of these geek armies on the road, but. .. . "

"He's hoping our native-troops and the mine laborers will be able towipe us out, themselves, " von Schlichten said. 

There was nothing going on in the area between the native barracksand the mountains except some sporadic firing as small patrols ofKragans clashed with clumps of fleeing mutineers. All the barracks, even those of the Rifles, were burning; the red-and-yellowdanger-lights around the power-plant and the water-works and theexplosives magazines were still on. Most of the floodlights were stillon, and there was still some fighting around the maintenance-yard. Itlooked as though the survivors of the Tenth N. U. N. I. Were in a fewsmall pockets which were being squeezed out. 

There was nothing at all going on north of the Reservation; thecountryside, by day a checkerboard of walled fields and smallvillages, was dark, except for a dim light, here and there, where theoccupants of some farmhouse had been awakened by the noise of battle. 

Then, two miles east of the Reservation, he caught a new sound--theflowing, riverlike, murmur of something vast on the move. 

"Hear that, lieutenant?" he asked. "Head for it, at about a thousandfeet. When we're directly above it, let go some flares. "

"Yes, sir. " The younger man had lowered his voice to a whisper. 

"That's geeks; headed for the Reservation. "

"Maybe Firkked's army, " von Schlichten thought aloud. "Or maybe a citymob. "

 * * * * *

The noises were growing clearer, louder. He picked up the phone andpunched the wavelength of the military airport. 

"Von Schlichten; my compliments to Colonel Jarman. Tell him there's ageek mob, or possibly Firkked's regulars, on the main highway fromSkilk, two miles east of the Reservation. Get some combatcontragravity over here, at once. We'll light them up for you. Andtell Colonel Jarman to start flying patrols up and down along theHoork River; this may not be the only gang that's coming out to seeus. "

The sounds were directly below, now--the scuffing of horny-soled feeton the dirt road, the clink and rattle of slung weapons, the clickingand squeaking of Ullran voices. 

The lieutenant said: "Here go the flares, sir. "

Von Schlichten shut his eyes, then opened them slowly. The driver, upon releasing the flares, had nosed up, banked, turned, and wascoming in again, down the road toward the advancing column. VonSchlichten peered into his all-armament sight, his foot on themachine-gun pedal and his fingers on the rocket buttons. The highwaybelow was jammed with geeks, and they were all stopped dead andstaring upward, as though hypnotized by the lights. It was obviously amob. A second later, they had recovered and were shooting--not at theairjeep, but at the four globes of blazing magnesium. Then he had theclose-packed mass of non-humanity in his sights; he tramped the pedaland began punching buttons. He still had four rockets left by the timethe mob was behind him. 

"All right, let's take another pass at them. Same direction. "

The driver put the airjeep into a quick loop and came out of it infront of the mob, who now had their backs turned and were staring inthe direction in which they had last seen the vehicle. Again, vonSchlichten plowed them with rockets and harrowed them with his guns. Some of the Skilkans were trying to get over the high fences on eitherside of the road--really stockades of petrified tree-trunks. Otherswere firing, and this time they were shooting at the airjeep. It tookone hit from a heavy shellosaur-rifle, and immediately the driverbanked and turned away from the road, heading back. 

"Dammit, why did you do that?" von Schlichten demanded, lifting hisfoot from the gun-pedal. "Are you afraid of the kind of popguns thosegeeks are using?"

"I am not afraid to risk my vehicle, or myself, sir, " the lieutenantreplied, with the extreme formality of a very junior officer chewingout a very senior one. "I am, however, afraid to risk my passenger. Generals are not expendable, sir. "

He was right, of course. Von Schlichten admitted it. "I'm too old toplay cowboy, like this, " he said. "Back to the Reservation; telecaststation. "

Looking back over his shoulder, he saw eight or ten more flaresalight, and the ground-flashes of exploding shells and rockets; theair above the road was sparkling with gun-flames. Jarman must have hadsome contragravity ready to be sent off on the instant. 

 * * * * *

While he had been out, somebody had gotten a TV-pickup mounted on acontragravity-lifter and run up to two thousand feet, on the end of asteel-tough tensilon mooring-line. The big circular screen was lit, showing the whole Company Reservation, with the surroundingcountryside foreshortened by perspective to the distant lights ofSkilk. The map had been taken up from the floor, and a bigterrain-board had been brought in from the Chief Engineer's office andset up in its place. In front of the screen, Paula Quinton, BarneyMordkovitz, Colonel Cheng-Li, and, conspicuously silent, JulesKeaveney, sat drinking coffee and munching sandwiches. Half a dozenTerrans, of both sexes, were working furiously to get the markerswhich replaced the pink and white pills placed on the board, and oneof Captain Inez Malavez' non-coms, with a headset, was getting combatreports directly from the switchboard. Everything was clicking likewell-oiled machinery. 

On the TV-screen, the Residency area was ablaze with light, and sowere the ship-docks, the airport and spaceport, the shops, and themaintenance-yard. On the terrain-board, the latter was now marked ascompletely in Company hands. The ruins of the native-troops barrackswere still burning, and there was a twinkle of orange-red here andthere among the ruins of the labor-camp. Much of the equipment for thePolar mines had already been shifted into defensible ground. The restof the circle was dark, except for the distant lights of Skilk, wherethe nuclear power plant was apparently still functioning in nativehands. 

Then, without warning, a spot of white light blazed into beingsouth-east of the Company area and south-west of Skilk, followed byanother and another. Instantly, von Schlichten glanced up at the rowof smaller screens, and on one of them saw the view as picked up by apatrolling airjeep. 

The army of King Firkked of Skilk had finally put in its appearance, about three miles south of the Reservation. The Skilkan regulars hadbeen marching in formation, some on the road and some along parallellanes and paths. They had the look of trained and disciplined troops, but they had made the same mistake as the rabble that had been shot upon the north side of the Reservation. Unused to attack from the air, they had all halted in place and were gaping open-mouthed, their opalteeth gleaming in the white flare-light. 

 * * * * *

In the big screen, it could be seen that Colonel Jarman had thrownmost of his available contragravity at them, including the combat-carsthat had already started to form the second wave of the attack on themob to the north. Other flares bloomed in the darkness, and the fierytrails of rockets curved downward to end in yellow flashes on theground. 

The airjeep with the pickup circled back; the troops on the road andin the adjoining fields had broken. The former were caught between thefences which made Ullran roads such deathtraps when under air-attack. The latter had dispersed, and were running away, individually and bysquads; at first, it looked like a panic, but he could see officerssignalling to the larger groups of fugitives to open out, apparentlydirecting the flight. By this time, there were ten or twelvecombat-cars and about twenty airjeeps at work. In the moving view fromthe pickup-jeep, he saw what looked like a 90-mm. Rocket land in themiddle of a company that was still trying to defend itself withsmall-arms fire on the road, wiping out about half of them. 

"The next time they're air-struck, they won't stay bunched, "Mordkovitz stated. "A lot of them didn't stay bunched this time, ifyou noticed. And they'll keep out from between the fences. "

In the large screen, a quick succession of gun-flashes leaped up fromthe direction of the Hoork River; shells began bursting over the sceneof the attack. The screen tuned to the pickup on the airjeep wentdead; in the big screen, there was a twinkling of falling fire. Almostat once, thirty or forty rocket-trails converged on the gun-position, and, for a moment, explosions burned like a bonfire. 

"They had a 75-mm. At the rear of the column, " somebody called fromthe big switchboard. "Lieutenant Kalanang's jeep was hit; LieutenantVermaas is cutting in his pickup on the same wavelength. "

 * * * * *

The small screen lighted again. In the big screen, a cluster ofmagnesium-lights then appeared above where the Skilkan gun had been;in the small screen, there was a stubbled grain-field, pocked withcraters, and the bodies of fifteen or twenty natives, all rather badlymangled. An overturned and apparently destroyed 75-mm. Gun lay on itsside. 

"As far as we know, that was the only 75-mm. Gun Firkked had, " ColonelCheng-Li said. "He has at least six, possibly ten, 40-mm's. It's awonder we haven't seen anything of them. "

"Well, there's no way of being sure, " Jules Keaveney said, "but I havean idea they're all at or around the Palace. Firkked knows about howmuch contragravity we have. He's probably wondering why we aren'tbombing him, now. "

"He doesn't know we've sold the Palace to King Jonkvank for an army, "von Schlichten said. "And that reminds me; how much contragravitycould Firkked scrape together, for an attack on us? I've beenexpecting a geek Luftwaffe over here, at any moment. "

Colonel Cheng-Li studied the smoking tip of his cigarette for amoment. "Well, Firkked owns, personally, three ten-passenger aircars, a thing like a troop-carrier that he transports some of his courtiersaround in, four airjeeps armed with a pair of 15-mm. Machine-gunsapiece, and two big lorries. There are possibly two hundred vehiclesof all types in Skilk and the country around, but some of them are inthe hands of natives friendly to us. "

Von Schlichten nodded. "And there'll be oodles ofthermoconcentrate-fuel, and blasting explosives. Colonel Quinton, suppose you call Ed Wallingsby, the Chief Engineer, right away; havehim commissioned colonel. Tell him to get to work making this placesecure against air-attack, to consult with Colonel Jarman, and to getthose geeks Leavitt has penned in the repair-dock at the airport anduse them to dig slit-trenches and fill sandbags and so on. He can useKragan limited-duty wounded to guard them. .. . Mr. Keaveney, you'llbegin setting up something in the way of an ARP-organization. You'llhave to get along on what nobody else wants. You will also consultwith Colonel Jarman, and with Colonel Wallingsby. Better get startedon it now. Just think of everything around here that could go wrong incase of an air attack, and try to do something about it in advance. "

VIII

At 0245, an attack developed on the north-western corner of theReservation, in the direction of the explosives magazines. It turnedout to be relatively trivial. Remnants of the mob that had been brokenup by air attack on the road had gotten together and were makingrushes in small bands, keeping well spread out. Beating them off tookconsiderable ammunition, but it was accomplished with negligiblecasualties to the defenders. They finally stopped coming arounddaylight. 

In the meantime, Themistocles M'zangwe called from Konkrook. "Aboutsix hundred of Kankad's people have gotten in, already, in thedamnedest collection of vehicles you ever saw, " he reported. "Kankadmust be using every scrap of contragravity he has; it's a regularairborne Dunkirk-in-reverse. Kankad sent word that he's coming here inperson, as soon as he has things organized at his place. And thegeeks, here, have scraped together an air-force of theirown--farm-lorries, aircars, that sort of thing--and they're using themto bomb us here and at the mainland farm, mostly with nitroglycerine. We've shot down about twenty of them, but they're still coming. Theytried a boat-attack across the Channel. We've been doing some bombing, ourselves; we made a down-payment for Eric Blount and Hendrik Lemoyne. Took a fifty-ton tank off a fuel-lorry, fitted it with a detonator, filled it with thermoconcentrate, and ferried it over on the Elmoranand dumped it on the Keegarkan Embassy. It must have landed in themiddle of the central court; in about fifteen seconds, flames werecoming out every window in the place. " His face became less jovial. "We had something pretty bad happen here, too, " he said. "ThatKonkrook Fencibles rabble of Prince Jaizerd's mutinied, along with theothers; they got into the hospital and butchered everybody in theplace, patients and staff. The Kragans got there too late to saveanybody, but they wiped out the Fencibles. Jaizerd himself was theonly one they took alive, and he didn't stay that way very long. "

"How are you making out with your Civil Administration crowd?"

M'zangwe grimaced. "I haven't had to put any of them under actualarrest, so far, but we've had to keep Buhrmann away from thecommunications equipment by force. He wanted to call you up and chewyou out for not evacuating everybody in the North to Konkrook. "

"Is he crazy?"

"No, just scared. He says you're going to get everybody on Ullrmassacred by detail, when you could save Konkrook by bringing them allhere. "

"You tell him I'm going to hold this planet, not just one city. Tellhim I have a sense of my duty to the Company and its stockholders, ifhe hasn't; put it in those terms and he may understand you. "

 * * * * *

By 0330, it was daylight; the attacks against the north-west corner of theperimeter stopped entirely. Wallingsby had the three-hundred-odd Skilkanlaborers at work; he had gathered up all the tarpaulin he could find, andhad the two sewing-machines in the tentmaker's shop running on sandbags. Jules Keaveney, to von Schlichten's agreeable surprise, had taken hold ofhis ARP assignment, and was doing an efficient job in organizing forfire-fighting, damage-control and first aid. Colonel Jarman had hisairjeeps and combat-cars working in ever-widening circles over thecountryside, shooting up everything in sight that even looked likecontragravity equipment. Some of these patrols had to be recalled, around1030, when sporadic nuisance-sniping began from the side of the mountainto the west. And, along with everything else, Paula Quinton managed to geta complete digest prepared of the situation elsewhere in theTerran-occupied parts of the planet. 

The situation at Konkrook was brightening steadily. The second wave ofKankad's improvised airlift, reenforced by contragravity fromKonkrook, had come in; there were now close to two thousand freshKragans on Gongonk Island and the mainland farms, Kankad himself withthem. The _Aldebaran_ had reached Kankad's Town, and was loadinganother thousand Kragans. .. . There was nothing more from Keegark. Amessage from Colonel MacKinnon had come in at dawn, to the effect thatthe geeks had penetrated his last defenses and that he was about toblow up the Residency; thereafter Keegark went off the air. .. . By0730, the _Northern Star_ had landed the regiment Murderers, armedwith first-quality Terran infantry-rifles and a few machine-guns andbazookas, at the Palace at Krink, and by 0845 she had returned withanother regiment, the Jeel-Feeders. The three-street lane connectingthe Palace and the Residency had been widened to six, and then toeight. .. . Guido Karamessinis, at Grank, was still at uneasy peace withKing Yoorkerk, who was still undecided whether the rebels or theCompany were going to be the eventual victors, and afraid to take anyirrevocable step in either direction. 

 * * * * *

At 1100, Paula Quinton and Barney Mordkovitz virtually ordered him toget some sleep. He went to his quarters at Company House, downed aspaceship-captain's-size drink of honey-rum, and slept until 1600. Ashe dressed and shaved, he could hear, through the open window, theslow sputter of small-arms-fire, punctuated by the occasional_whump-whump-whump_ of 40-mm. Auto-cannon or the hammering of amachine-gun. 

Returning to his command-post at the telecast station, theterrain-board showed that the perimeter of defense had been pushed outin a bulge at the north-west corner; the TV-screen pictured a crudebreastwork of petrified tree-trunks, sandbags, mining machinery, packing-cases and odds-and-ends, upon which Wallingsby's nativelaborers were working under guard while a skirmish-line of Kragans hadbeen thrown out another four or five hundred yards and were exchangingpotshots with Skilkans on the gullied hillside. 

"Where's Colonel Quinton?" he asked. "She ought to be taking a turn inthe sack, now. "

"She's taking one, " Major Falkenberg told him. "General Mordkovitzchased her off to bed a couple of hours ago, called me in to take herplace, and then went out to replace me. Colonel Guilliford's in thehospital; got hit about thirteen hundred. They're afraid he's going tolose a leg. "

More reports came in. The entire garrison of the small Residency atKwurk, the most northern of the eastern shore Free Cities, had arrivedat Kankad's Town in two hundred-foot contragravity scows and fiveaircars. Two of the aircars arrived half an hour behind the rest ofthe refugee flotilla, having turned off at Keegark to pay theirrespects to King Orgzild. They reported the Keegark Residency inruins, its central buildings vanished in a huge crater; the _JanSmuts_ and the _Christiaan De Wett_ were still in the Company docks, both apparently damaged by the blast which had destroyed theResidency. One of the aircars had rocketed and machine-gunned someKeegarkans who appeared to be trying to repair them; the other blew upKing Orgzild's nitroglycerine plant. Von Schlichten called Konkrookand ordered a bombing-mission against Keegark organized, to make surethe two ships stayed out of service. 

 * * * * *

The _Northern Star_ was still bringing loyal troops into Krink. KingJonkvank, whom von Schlichten called, was highly elated. 

"We are killing traitors wherever we find them!" he exulted. "The cityis yellow with their blood; their heads are piled everywhere! How isit with you at Skilk? Do the heads fall?"

"We have killed many, also, " von Schlichten boasted. "And tonight, wewill kill more; we are preparing bombs of great destruction, which wewill rain down upon Skilk until there is not one stone left uponanother, or one infant of a day's age left alive!"

Jonkvank reacted as he was intended to. "Oh, no, general; don't do allthat!" he exclaimed. "You promised me that I should have Skilk, on theword of a Terran. Are you going to give me a city of ruins andcorpses? Ruins are no good to anybody, and I am not a Jeel, to eatcorpses. "

Von Schlichten shrugged. "When you are strong, you can flog yourenemies with a whip; when you are weak, all you can do is kill them. If I had five thousand more troops, here. .. . "

"Oh, I will send troops, as soon as I can, " Jonkvank hastened topromise. "All my best regiments. But, now that we have stopped thissinful rebellion, here, I can't take chances that it will break outagain as soon as I strip the city of troops. "

Von Schlichten nodded. Jonkvank's argument made sense; he would havetaken a similar position, himself. 

"Well, get as many as you can over here, as soon as possible, " hesaid. "We'll try to do as little damage to Skilk as we can, but. .. . "

 * * * * *

At 1830, Paula joined him for her breakfast, while he sat in front ofthe big screen, eating his dinner. There had been light ground-actionalong the southern end of the perimeter--King Firkked's regulars, reinforced by Zirk tribesmen and levies of townspeople, all of whomseemed to have firearms, were filtering in through the ruins of thelabor-camp and the wreckage of the equipment-park--and there wasrenewed sniping from the mountainside. The long afternoon of thenorthern Autumn dragged on; finally, at 2200, the sun set, and it wasnot fully dark for another hour. For some time, there was an ominousquiet, and then, at 0030, the enemy began attacking in force, drivingherds of livestock--lumbering six-legged brutes bred by the NorthUllrans for food--to test the defenses for electrified wire andlandmines. Most of these were shot down or blown up, but a few got asfar as the wire, which, by now, had been strung and electrifiedcompletely around the perimeter. 

Behind them came parties of Skilkan regulars with long-handledinsulated cutters; a couple of cuts were made in the wire, and asection of it went dead. The line, at this point, had been ratherthinly held; the defenders immediately called for air-support, andJarman ordered fifteen of his remaining twenty airjeeps and fivecombat-cars into the fight. No sooner were they committed than theradar on the commercial airport control-tower picked up air vehiclesapproaching from the north, and the air-raid sirens began howling andthe searchlights went on. 

The contragravity which had been sent to support the ground-defense atthe south side of the Reservation turned to meet this new threat, andeverything else available, including the four heavy air-tanks, liftedup. Meanwhile, guns began firing from the ground and from rooftops. 

There had been four aircars, ordinary passenger vehicles equipped withmachine-guns on improvised mounts, and ten big lorries converted intobombers, in the attack. All the lorries, and all but one of themakeshift fighter-escort, were shot down, but not before explosive andthermoconcentrate bombs were dumped all over the place. One lorryemptied its load of thermoconcentrate-bombs on the control-building atthe airport, starting a raging fire and putting the radar out ofcommission. A repair-shop at ordnance-depot was set on fire, and aquantity of small-arms and machine-gun ammunition piled outside fortransportation to the outer defenses blew up. An explosive bomb landedon the roof of the building between Company House and the telecaststation, blowing a hole in the roof and demolishing the upper floor. And another load of thermoconcentrate, missing the power-plant, setfire to the dry grass between it and the ruins of the native-troopsbarracks. 

 * * * * *

Before the air-attack had been broken up, the soldiers of King Firkkedand their irregular supporters were swarming through the dead sectionof wire. They had four or five big farm-tractors, nuclear-powered butunequipped with contragravity-generators, which they were using likeground-tanks of the First Century. This attack penetrated to themiddle of the Reservation before it was stopped and the attackerseither killed or driven out; for the first time since daybreak, thered-and-yellow lights came on around the power-plant. 

As soon as the combined air and ground attack was beaten off, vonSchlichten ordered all his available contragravity up, flying patrolsaround the Reservation and retaliatory bombing missions against Skilk, and began bombarding the city with his 90-mm. Guns. A number of firesbroke out, and at about 0200 a huge expanding globe of orange-redflame soared up from the city. 

"There goes Firkked's thermoconcentrate stock, " he said to Paula, whowas standing beside him in front of the screen. 

Half an hour later, he discovered that he had been over-optimistic. Much of the enemy's supply of Terran thermoconcentrate had beendestroyed, but enough remained to pelt the Reservation and the Companybuildings with incendiaries, when a second and more severe air-attackdeveloped, consisting of forty or fifty makeshift lorry-bombers andfifteen aircars. 

Like the first, the second air-attack was beaten off, or, moreexactly, down. Most of the enemy contragravity was destroyed; at leasttwo dozen vehicles crashed inside the Reservation. As in the firstinstance, there was a simultaneous ground attack from the southernside, with a demonstration-attack at the north end. It was fulldaylight before the last of the attackers was either killed or drivenout. 

Five minutes later, the _Northern Star_ came bulking over themountains from the west. 

IX

Von Schlichten raced for the telecast station, to receive a call froma Colonel Khalid ib'n Talal, aboard the approaching ship. 

"I've one of Jonkvank's regiments, the Jeel-Feeders, armed with Terran9-mm. Rifles and a few bazookas; I have a company of our Zirks, withtheir mounts, and a battalion of the Sixth N. U. N. I. ; I also have four90-mm. Guns, Terran-manned, " he reported. "What's the situation, general, and where do you want me to land?"

Von Schlichten described the situation succinctly, in an ancient andunprintable military cliche. "Try landing south of the Reservation, alittle west of the ruins of the labor-camp, " he advised. "The bulk ofFirkked's army is in that section, and I want them run out as soon aspossible. We'll give you all the contragravity and fire support wecan. "

The _Northern Star_ let down slowly, firing her guns and droppingbombs; as she descended, rifle-fire spurted from all her lower-deckportholes. There was cheering, human and Ullran, from inside thebattered defense-perimeter; combat-cars, airjeeps, and improvisedbombers lifted out to strafe the Skilkans on the ground, and the fourair-tanks moved out to take position and open fire with their90-mm. 's, helping to flush King Firkked's regulars and auxiliaries outof the gullies and ruins and drive them south along the mountain, awayfrom where the ship would land and also away from the city of Skilk. The _Northern Star_ set down quickly, and troops and artillery beganto be unloaded, joining in the fighting. 

It was five hundred miles to Krink; three hours after lifting out, the_Northern Star_ was back again, with two more of King Jonkvank'sinfantry regiments, and by 1300, when the fourth load arrived fromKrink, the fighting was entirely on the eastern bank of the dry HoorkRiver. This last contingent of reenforcements was landed in theeastern suburbs of Skilk and began fighting their way into the cityfrom the rear. 

It was evident, however, that the pacification of Skilk would not beaccomplished as rapidly as von Schlichten wished--street fighting, against a determined enemy, is notoriously slow work--and he decidedto risk the _Northern Star_ in an attack against the Palace itself, and, over the objections of Paula Quinton, Jules Keaveney, and BarneyMordkovitz, to lead the attack in person. 

 * * * * *

Inside the city, he found that the Zirk cavalry from Krink had thrustup one of the broader streets to within a thousand yards of thePalace, and, supported by infantry, contragravity, and a couple ofair-tanks, were pounding and hacking at a mass of Skilkans whoseuniform lack of costume prevented distinguishing between soldiery andtownsfolk. Very few of these, he observed, seemed to be usingfirearms; with his glasses, he could see them shooting with longNorthern air-rifles and a few Takkad Sea crossbows. Either weaponwould shoot clear through a Terran or half-way through an Ullran atfifty yards, but at over two hundred they were almost harmless. Therewere a few fires still burning from the bombardment of the nightbefore--Ullran, and particularly North Ullran, cities did not burnwell--and the blaze which had consumed the bulk of Firkked's stock ofthermoconcentrate fuel had long ago burned out, leaving an area of sixor eight blocks blackened and lifeless. 

The ship let down, while the six combat-cars which had accompanied herbuzzed the Palace roof, strafing it to keep it clear, and the Kragansaboard fired with their rifles. She came to rest on seven-eightsweight reduction, and even before the gangplanks were run out, theKragans were dropping to the flat roof, running to stairheadpenthouses and tossing grenades into them. 

The taking of the Palace was a gruesome business. Knowing exactly howmuch mercy they would have shown had they been storming the Residency, Firkked's soldiers and courtiers fought desperately and had to beexterminated, floor by floor, room by room, hallway by hallway. Theyhad to fight for every inch downward. 

Driving down from above, von Schlichten and his Kragans slithered overfloors increasingly greasy with yellow Ullran blood. He had picked upa broadsword at the foot of the first stairway down; a little later, he tossed it aside in favor of another, better balanced and with abetter guard. There was a furious battle at the doorways of the ThroneRoom; finally, climbing over the bodies of their own dead and theenemy's, they were inside. 

 * * * * *

Here there was no question of quarter whatever, at least as long asFirkked lived; North Ullran nobles did not surrender under the eyes oftheir king, and North Ullran kings did not surrender their thronesalive. There was also a tradition, of which von Schlichten wasmindful, that a king must only be killed by his conqueror, in personalcombat, with steel. 

With a wedge of Kragan bayonets around him and the picked-upbroadsword in his hand, he fought his way to the throne, where Firkkedwaited, a sword in one of his upper hands, his Spear of State in theother, and a dagger in either lower hand. With his left hand, vonSchlichten detached the bayonet from the rifle of one of his followersand went forward, trying not to think of the absurdity of a man of theSixth Century A. E. , the representative of a civilized CharteredCompany, dueling to the death with swords with a barbarian king for athrone he had promised to another barbarian, or of what could happenon Ullr if he allowed this four-armed monstrosity to kill him. 

It was not as bad as it looked, however. The ornate Spear of State, in spite of its long, cruel-looking blade, was not an especially goodcombat-weapon, at least for one hand, and Firkked seemed confused bythe very abundance of his armament. After a few slashes and jabs, vonSchlichten knocked the unwieldy thing from his opponent's hand. Thisraised a fearful ullulation from the Skilkan nobility, who had stoppedfighting to watch the duel; evidently it was the very worst sort of abad omen. Firkked, seemingly relieved to be disencumbered of thething, caught his sword in both hands and aimed a roundhouse swing atvon Schlichten's head; von Schlichten dodged, crippled one ofFirkked's lower hands with a quick slash, and lunged at the royalbelly. Firkked used his remaining dagger to parry, backed a stepcloser his throne, and took another swing with his sword, which vonSchlichten parried on the bayonet in his left hand. Then, backing, heslashed at the inside of Firkked's leg with the thousand-year-old_coup-de-Jarnac_. Firkked, unable to support the weight of hisdense-tissued body on one leg, stumbled; von Schlichten ran him neatlythrough the breast with his sword and through the throat with thebayonet. 

There was silence in the throne-room for an instant, and then, with ahorrible collective shriek, the Skilkans threw down their weapons. Oneof von Schlichten's Kragans slung his rifle and picked up the Spear ofState with all four hands, taking his post ceremoniously behind thevictor. A couple of others dragged the body of Firkked to the edge ofthe dais, and one of them drew his leaf-shaped short-sword andbeheaded it. 

At mid-afternoon, von Schlichten was on the roof of the Palace, holding the Spear of State, with Firkked's head impaled on the point, while a Terran technician aimed an audio-visual recorder. 

"This, " he said, with the geek-speaker in his mouth, "is KingFirkked's Spear of State, and here, upon it, is King Firkked's head. Two days ago, Firkked was at peace with the Company, and Firkked wasKing in Skilk. If he had not dared raise his feeble hand against themight of the Ullr Company, he would still be alive, and his Spearwould still be borne behind him. So must all those who rise againstthe Company perish. .. . Cut. "

The camera stopped. A Kragan came forward and took the Spear of State, with its grisly burden, carrying it to a nearby wall and leaning itup, like a piece of stage property no longer required for this scenebut needed for the next. Von Schlichten took out his geek-speaker, wiped and pouched it, and took his cigarette case from his pocket. 

"Well, this is the limit!" Paula Quinton, who had come up during thefilming of the scene, exploded. "I thought you had to kill himyourself in order to encourage your soldiers; I didn't think youwanted to make a movie of it to show your friends. "

Von Schlichten tapped the cigarette on the gold-and-platinum case andstared at her through his monocle. 

"Sit down, colonel. " He lit the cigarette. "Your politico-militaryeducation still needs a little filling in. At Grank, we have twoships. One is the _Northern Lights_, sister ships of the _NorthernStar_. The other is the cruiser _Procyon_, the only real warship onUllr, with a main battery of four 200-mm. Guns. How King Yoorkerk wasable to get control of those ships I don't know, but there will be aboard of inquiry and maybe a couple of courts-martial, when things getstabilized to a point where we can afford such luxuries. As it is, weneed those ships desperately, and as soon as he gets in, I'm sendingHideyoshi O'Leary to Grank with the _Northern Star_ and a load ofKragan Rifles, to pry them loose. The audio-visual of which this isthe last scene is going to be one of the crowbars he's going to use. "

"But why did you have to fight Firkked, yourself?" she asked. 

"I had to kill him, myself, with a sword; according to local custom, that makes me King of Skilk. "

"Why, your Majesty!" She rose and curtsied mockingly. "But I thoughtyou were going to make Jonkvank King of Skilk. "

He shook his head. "Just Viceroy, " he corrected. "I'm handing theSpear of State _down_ to him, not up to him; he'll reign as my vassal, and, consequently, as vassal of the Company, and before long, he won'tbe much more at Krink, either. That'll take a little longer--there'llhave to be military missions, and economic missions, andtrade-agreements, and all the rest of it, first--but he's on the wayto becoming a puppet-prince. "

 * * * * *

Half an hour later, a large and excessively ornate air-launch, specially built at the Konkrook shipyards for King Jonkvank, wassighted coming over the mountain from the east. An escort ofcombat-cars was sent to meet it, and a battalion of Kragans and thesurvivors of Firkked's court were drawn up on the Palace roof. 

"His Majesty, Jonkvank, King of Krink!" the former herald of KingFirkked's court, now herald to King Carlos von Schlichten, shouted, banging on a brass shield with the flat of his sword, as Jonkvankdescended from his launch, attended by a group of his nobles and hisSpear of State, with Hideyoshi O'Leary and Francis X. Shapiroshepherding them. As the guests advanced across the roof, the heraldbanged again on his shield. 

"His Majesty, Carlos von Schlichten, "--which came out more or less asKarlok vonk Zlikdenk--"King, by right of combat, of Skilk!"

Von Schlichten advanced to meet his fellow-monarch, his own Spear ofState, with Firkked's head still grinning from it, two paces behindhim. 

Jonkvank stopped, his face contorted with saurian rage. 

"What is this?" he demanded. "You told me that I could be King ofSkilk; is this how a Terran keeps his word?"

"A Terran's word is always good, Jonkvank, " von Schlichten replied, omitting the titles, as was proper in one sovereign addressinganother. "My word was that you should reign in Skilk, and my wordstands. But these things must be done decently, according to customand law. I killed Firkked in single combat. Had I not done so, theSpear of Skilk would have been left lying, for any of the young ofFirkked to pick up. Is that not the law?"

Jonkvank nodded grudgingly. "It is the law, " he admitted. 

"Good. Now, since I killed Firkked in lawful manner, his Spear ismine, and what is mine I can give as I please. I now give you theSpear of Skilk, to carry in my name, as I promised. "

The Kragan who was carrying the ceremonial weapon tossed the head ofFirkked from the point; another Kragan kicked it aside and advanced towipe the spear-blade with a rag. Von Schlichten took the spear andgave it to Jonkvank. 

"This is not good!" one of the Skilkan nobles protested. "That youshould rule over us, yes. You killed Firkked in single combat, and youare the soldier of the Company, which is mighty, as all here haveseen. But that this foreigner be given the Spear of Skilk, that is notat all good!"

Some of the others, emboldened by his example, were jabberingagreement. 

"Listen, all of you!" von Schlichten shouted. "Here is no question ofKrink ruling over Skilk. Does it matter who holds the Spear of Skilk, when he does so in my name? And King Jonkvank will be no foreigner. Hewill come and live among you, and later he will travel back and forthbetween Krink and Skilk, and he will leave the Spear of Krink inKrink, and the Spear of Skilk in Skilk, and in Skilk he will be aSkilkan. That is how it must be. "

 * * * * *

That seemed to satisfy everybody except Jonkvank, and he had witenough not to make an issue of it. He even had the Spear of Krinkcarried back aboard his launch, out of sight, and when he accompaniedvon Schlichten, an hour later, to see Hideyoshi O'Leary off for Grank, he had the Spear of Skilk carried behind him. When he was alone withvon Schlichten, in the room that had been King Firkked's bedchamber, however, he exploded. 

"What is all this foolishness which you promised these people in myname and which I must now carry out? That I am to leave the Spear ofSkilk in Skilk and the Spear of Krink in Krink, and come here tolive. .. . "

"You wish to hold Skilk?" von Schlichten asked. 

"I intend to hold Skilk. To begin with, there shall be a great killinghere. A very great killing: of all those who advised that fool of aFirkked to start this business; of those who gave shelter to the falseprophet, Rakkeed, when he was here; of the faithless priests who gaveear to his abominable heresies and allowed him to spew out hisblasphemies in the temples; of those who sent spies to Krink, tocorrupt and pervert my soldiers and nobles; of those who. .. . "

"All that is as it should be, " von Schlichten agreed. "Except that itmust be done quickly and all at once, before the memories of thesecrimes fade from the minds of the people. And great care must be takento kill only those who can be proven to be guilty of something; thusit will be said that the justice of King Jonkvank is terrible toevildoers but a protection and a shield to those who keep the peaceand obey the laws. And when the priests are to be killed, it should bedone under the direction of those other priests who were faithful tothe gods and whom King Firkked drove out of their temples, and it mustbe done in the name of the gods. Thus will you be esteemed a pious, and not an impious, king. It must not be allowed to seem that the cityhas come under foreign rule. And you must not change the laws, unlessthe people petition you to do so, nor must you increase the taxes, andyou must not confiscate the estates of those who are put to death, forthe death of parents is always forgiven before the loss ofpatrimonies. And you should select certain Skilkan nobles, and becomethe father of their young, and above all, you must leave none of theyoung of Firkked alive, to raise rebellion against you later. "

Jonkvank nodded, deeply impressed. "By the gods, Karlok vonk Zlikdenk, this is wisdom! Now it is to be seen why the likes of Firkked cannotprevail against you, or against the Company as long as you are theCompany's upper sword-arm!"

Honesty tempted von Schlichten, for a moment, to disclaim originalityfor the principles he had just enunciated, even at the price of tryingto pronounce the name of Niccolo Machiavelli with a geek-speaker. 

 * * * * *

The sun slid lower and lower toward the horizon behind them as theaircar bulleted south along the broad valley and dry bed of the HoorkRiver, nearing the zone of equal day and night. Hassan Bogdanoff drovewhile Harry Quong finished his lunch, then changed places to begin hisown. Von Schlichten got two bottles of beer from the refrigeratedsection of the lunch-hamper and opened one for Paula Quinton and onefor himself. 

"What are we going to do with these geeks, "--she was using the nastyand derogatory word unconsciously and by custom, now--"after this isall over? We can't just tell them, 'Jolly well played; nice game, wasn't it?' and go back to where we were Wednesday evening. "

"No, we can't. There's going to have to be a Terran seizure ofpolitical power in every part of this planet that we occupy, and assoon as we're consolidated around the north of Takkad Sea, we're goingto have to move in elsewhere, " he replied. "Keegark, Konkrook, and theFree Cities, of course, will be relatively easy. They're in armsagainst us now, and we can take them over by force. We had to makethat deal with Jonkvank, or, rather, I did, so that will be a slowerprocess, but we'll get it done in time. If I know that pair as well asI think I do, Jonkvank and Yoorkerk will give us plenty of pretexts, before long. Then, we can start giving them government by law insteadof by royal decree, and real courts of justice; put an end to thehead-payment system, and to these arbitrary mass arrests andtax-delinquency imprisonments that are nothing but slave-raids by thegeek princes on their own people. And, gradually, abolish serfdom. Ina couple of centuries, this planet will be fit to admit to theFederation, like Odin and Freya. "

"Well, won't that depend a lot on whom the Company sends here to takeHarrington's place?"

"Unless I'm much mistaken, the Company will confirm me, " he replied. "Administration on Ullr is going to be a military matter for a longtime to come, and even the Banking Cartel and the mercantile interestsin the Company are going to realize that, and see the necessity fortaking political control. And just to make sure, I'm sending HidO'Leary to Terra on the next ship, to make a full report on thesituation. "

"You think it'll be cleared up by then? The _City of Montevideo_ isdue in from Niflheim in a little under three months. "

"It'll have to be cleared up by then. We can't keep this war goingmore than a month, at the present rate. Police-action, and mopping-up, yes; full-scale war, no. "

"Ammunition?" she asked. 

 * * * * *

He looked at her in pleased surprise. "Your education has beenprogressing, at that, " he said. "You know, a lot of professionalofficers, even up to field rank in the combat branches, seem to thinkthat ammo comes down miraculously from Heaven, in contragravitylorries, every time they pray into a radio for it. It doesn't; it hasto be produced as fast as it's expended, and we haven't been doingthat. So we'll have to lick these geeks before it runs out, because wecan't lick them with gun-butts and bayonets. "

"Well, how about nuclear weapons?" Paula asked. "I hate to suggestit--I know what they did on Mimir, and Fenris, and Midgard, and whatthey did on Terra, during the First Century. But it may be our onlychance. "

He finished his beer and shoved the bottle into the waste-receiver, then got out his cigarettes. "There isn't a single nuclear bomb on theplanet. The Company's always refused to allow them to be manufacturedor stockpiled here. "

"I don't think there'd be any criticism of your making them, now, general. And there's certainly plenty of plutonium. You could makeA-bombs, at least. "

"There isn't anybody here who even knows how to make one. Most of ournuclear engineers could work one up, in about three months, when we'deither not need one or not be alive. "

"Dr. Gomes, who came in on the _Pretoria_, two weeks ago, can makethem, " she contradicted. "He built at, least a dozen of them onNiflheim, to use in activating volcanoes and bringing ore-bearing lavato the surface. "

Von Schlichten's hand, bringing his lighter to the tip of hiscigarette, paused for a second. Then he completed the operation, snapped it shut, and put it away. 

"When did all this happen?"

She took time out for mental arithmetic; even a spaceship officer hadto do that, when a question of interstellar time-relations arose. 

"About three-fifty days ago, Galactic Standard. They'd put off thefirst shot, six bombs, before I got in from Terra. I saw the secondshot a day or so before I left Niflheim on the _Canberra_. Dr. Gomeshad to stay over till the _Pretoria_ to put off the third shot. Why?"

"Did you run into a geek named Gorkrink, while you were on Nif?" heasked her. "And what sort of work was he doing?"

 * * * * *

"Gorkrink? I don't seem to remember. .. . Oh, yes! He was helping Dr. Murillo, the seismologist. His year was up after the second shot; hecame to Ullr on the _Canberra_. Dr. Murillo was sorry to lose him. Heunderstood Lingua Terra perfectly; Dr. Murillo could talk to him, theway you do with Kankad, without using a geek-speaker. "

"Well, but what sort of work . .. ?"

"Helping set and fire the A-bombs. .. . _Oh! Good Lord!_"

"You can say that again, and deal in Allah, Shiva, and Kali, " vonSchlichten told her. "Especially Kali. .. . Harry! See if you can getsome more speed out of this can. I want to get to Konkrook while it'sstill there!"

It wouldn't be there long, the way things looked. King Orgzild hadfour tons of plutonium, and with Prince Gorkrink probably able tobuild A-bombs, Keegark would be set to bring Ullr its first taste ofnuclear warfare. Von Schlichten shuddered as he pictured thathappening. At the moment, shuddering was about the only thing he coulddo. 

X

[Illustration]

It was full dark when Konkrook came in view beyond the East KonkMountains, a lurid smear on the underside of the clouds, and atGongonk Island and at the Company farms to the south, a couple ofbunches of searchlights were fingering about in the sky. When vonSchlichten turned on the outside sound-pickup, he could hear thedistant tom-tomming of heavy guns, and the crash of shells and bombs. Keeping the car high enough to be above the trajectories of incomingshells, Harry Quong circled over the city while Hassan Bogdanofftalked to Gongonk Inland on the radio. 

The city was in a bad way. There were seventy-five to a hundred bigfires going, and a new one started in a rising ball of thermoconcentrateflame while they watched. The three gun-cutters, _Elmoran_, _Gaucho_ and_Bushranger_, and about fifty big freight lorries converted to bombers, were shuttling back and forth between the island and the city. The RoyalPalace was on fire from end to end, and the entire waterfront andindustrial district were in flames. Combat-cars and air jeeps werediving in to shell and rocket and machine-gun streets and buildings. Hesaw six big bomber-lorries move in dignified procession to unload, oneafter the other, on a row of buildings along what the Terrans calledSouth Tenth Street, and on the roofs of buildings a block away, red andblue flares were burning, and he could see figures, both human andUllran, setting up mortars and machine-guns. 

Landing on the top stage of Company House, on the island, they weremet by a Terran whom von Schlichten had seen, a few days ago, bossingnative labor at the spaceport, but who was now wearing a major'sinsignia. He greeted von Schlichten with a salute which he must havelearned from some movie about the ancient French Foreign Legion. VonSchlichten seriously returned it in kind. 

"Everybody's down in the Governor-General's office, sir, " he said. "Your office, that is. King Kankad's here with us, too. "

He accompanied them to the elevator, then turned to a telephone; whenvon Schlichten and Paula reached the office, everybody was crowded atthe door to greet them: Themistocles M'zangwe, his arm in a sling;Hans Meyerstein, the Johannesburg lawyer, who seemed to have even moreBantu blood than the brigadier-general; Morton Buhrmann, theCommercial Superintendent; Laviola, the Fiscal Secretary; a dozen orso other officers and civil administrators. There was a hubbub ofgreetings, and he was pleased to detect as much real warmth from thecivil administration crowd as from the officers. 

"Well, I'm glad to be back with you, " he replied, generally. "And letme present Colonel Paula Quinton, my new adjutant; Hideyoshi O'Leary'son duty in the North. .. . Them, this was a perfectly splendid piece ofwork, here; you can take this not only as a personal congratulation, but as a sort of unit citation for the whole crowd. You've all behavedabove praise. " He turned to King Kankad, who was wearing a pair ofautomatics in shoulder-holsters for his upper hands and another pairin cross-body belt holsters for his lower. "And what I've said foranybody else goes double for you, Kankad, " he added, clapping theKragan on the shoulder. 

"All he did was save the lot of us!" M'zangwe said. "We were hangingon by our fingernails here till his people started coming in. Andthen, after you sent the _Aldebaran_. .. . "

"Where is the _Aldebaran_, by the way? I didn't see her when I camein. "

"Based on Kankad's, flying bombardment against Keegark, and keeping aneye out for those ships. Prinsloo caught the _De Wett_ in the docksthere and smashed her, but the _Jan Smuts_ got away, and we haven'tbeen able to locate the _Oom Paul Kruger_, either. They're probablyboth on the Eastern Shore, gathering up reenforcements for Orgzild, "M'zangwe said. 

"Our ability to move troops rapidly is what's kept us on top thislong, and Orgzild's had plenty of time to realize it, " von Schlichtensaid. "When we get _Procyon_ down here, I'm going to send her out, with a screen of light scout-vehicles, to find those ships and get ridof them. .. . How's Hid been making out, at Grank, by the way? I didn'thave my car-radio on, coming down. "

That touched off another hubbub: "Haven't you heard, general?" . .. "Oh, my God, this is simply out of this continuum!" . .. "Well, tell him, somebody!" . .. "No, get Hid on the screen; it's his story!"

Somebody busied himself at the switchboard. The rest of them sat downat the long conference-table. Laviola and Meyerstein and Buhrmann wereespecially obsequious in seating von Schlichten in Sid Harrington'sold chair, and in getting a chair for Paula Quinton. After awhile, thejumbled colors on the big screen resolved themselves into an image ofHideyoshi O'Leary, grinning like a pussycat beside an emptygoldfish-bowl, licking its chops. 

"Well, what happened?" von Schlichten asked, after they had exchangedgreetings. "How did Yoorkerk like the movies? And did you get the_Procyon_ and the _Northern Lights_ loose?"

"Yoorkerk was deeply impressed, " O'Leary replied. "His story is thathe is and always was the true and ever-loving friend of the Company;he acted to prevent quote certain disloyal elements unquote fromharming the people and property of the Company. _Procyon's_ on the wayto Konkrook. I'm holding _Northern Lights_ here and _Northern Star_ atSkilk; where do you want them sent?"

"Leave _Northern Star_ at Skilk, for the time being. Tell theCompany's great and good friend King Yoorkerk that the Company expectshim to contribute some soldiers for the campaign here and againstKeegark, when that starts; be sure you get the best-armed andbest-trained regiments he has, and get them down here as soon aspossible. Don't send any of your Kragans or Karamessinis' troops here, though; hold them in Grank till we make sure of the quality ofYoorkerk's friendship. "

"Well, general, I think we can be pretty sure, now. You see, he turnedRakkeed the Prophet over to me. .. . "

"_What_?" Von Schlichten felt his monocle starting to slip and took afirmer grip on it. "Who?"

"Pay me, Them; he didn't drop it, " Hideyoshi O'Leary said. "Why, Rakkeed the Prophet. Yoorkerk was holding our ships and our people incase we lost; he was also holding Rakkeed at the Palace in case wewon. Of course, Rakkeed thought he was an honored guest, right up tillYoorkerk's guards dragged him in and turned him over to us. .. . "

"That geek, " von Schlichten said, "is too smart for his own good. Someof these days he's going to play both ends against the middle and bothends'll fold in on him and smash him. " A suspicion occurred to him. "You sure this is Rakkeed? It would be just like Yoorkerk to try tosell us a ringer. "

O'Leary shook his head solemnly. "I thought of that, right away. Thisis the real article; Karamessinis' Constabulary and Intelligenceofficers certified him for me. What do you want me to do, send himdown to Konkrook?"

Von Schlichten shook his head. "Get the priests of the locallyvenerated gods to put him on trial for blasphemy, heresy, impersonating a prophet, practicing witchcraft without a license, orany other ecclesiastical crimes you or they can think of. Then, afterhe's been given a scrupulously fair trial, have the soldiers of KingYoorkerk behead him, and stick his head up over a big sign, in allnative languages, 'Rakkeed the False Prophet. ' And have audio-visualsmade of the whole business, trial and execution, and be sure that thepriests and Yoorkerk's officers are in the foreground and our peoplestay out of the pictures. "

"Soap and towels, for General Pontius von Pilate!" Paula Quintoncalled out. 

"That's an idea; I was wondering what to give Yoorkerk as atestimonial present, " Hideyoshi O'Leary said. "A nice thirty-piecesilver set!"

"Quite appropriate, " von Schlichten approved. "Well, you did a first-classjob. I want you back with us as soon as possible--incidentally, you're nowa brigadier-general--but not till the situation Grank-Krink-Skilk isstabilized. And, eventually, you'll probably have to set up permanentheadquarters in the North. "

 * * * * *

After Hideyoshi O'Leary had thanked him and signed off, and the screenwas dark again, he turned to the others. 

"Well, gentlemen, I don't think we need worry too much about theNorth, for the next few days. How long do you estimate this operationagainst Konkrook's going to take, to complete pacification, Them?"

"How complete is complete pacification, general?" ThemistoclesM'zangwe wanted to know. "If you mean to the end of organizedresistance by larger than squad-size groups, I'd say three days, giveor take twelve hours. Of course, there'll be small groups holding outfor a couple of weeks, particularly in the farming country and back inthe forest. .. . "

"We can forget them; that's minor-tactics stuff. We'll need to keepsome kind of an occupation force here for some time; they can dealwith that. We'll have to get to work on Keegark, as soon as possible;after we've reduced Keegark, we'll be able to reorganize for acampaign against the Free Cities on the Eastern Shore. "

"Begging your pardon, general, but reduce is a mild word for what weought to do to Keegark, " Hans Meyerstein said. "We ought to raze thatcity as flat as a football field, and then play football on it withKing Orgzild's head. "

"Any special reason?" von Schlichten asked. "In addition to theBlount-Lemoyne massacre, that is?"

"I should say so, general!" Themistocles M'zangwe backed Meyersteinup. "Bob, you tell him. "

Colonel Robert Grinell, the Intelligence officer, got up and took thecigar out of his mouth. He was short and round-bodied and bald-headed, but he was old Terran Federation Regular Army through and through. 

"Well, general, we've been finding out quite a bit about the genesisof this business, lately, " he said. "From up North, it probably lookedlike an all-Rakkeed show; that's how it was supposed to look. But thewhole thing was hatched at Keegark, by King Orgzild. We've managed tocapture a few prominent Konkrookans"--he named half a dozen--"who'vebeen made to talk, and a number of others have come in voluntarily andfurnished information. Orgzild conceived the scheme in the beginning;Rakkeed was just the messenger-boy. My face gets the color of theCompany trademark every time I think that the whole thing was plannedfor over a year, right under our noses, even to the signal that was totouch the whole thing off. .. . "

"The poisoning of Sid Harrington, and our announcement of his death?"von Schlichten asked. 

"You figured that out yourself, sir? Well, that was most of it. "

Grinell went on to elaborate, while von Schlichten tried to keep theimpatience out of his face. Beside him, Paula Quinton was fidgeting, too; she was thinking, as he was, of what King Orgzild and PrinceGorkrink were doing now. "And I know positively that the order for thepoisoning of Sid Harrington came from the Keegarkan Embassy, here, andwas passed down through Gurgurk and Keeluk to this geek here whoactually put the poison in the whiskey. "

"Yes. I agree that Keegark should be wiped out, and I'd like to havean immediate estimate on the time it'll take to build a nuclear bombto do the job. One of the old-fashioned plutonium fission A-bombs willdo quite well. "

Everybody turned quickly. There was a momentary silence, and thenColonel Evan Colbert, of the Fourth Kragan Rifles, the senior officerunder Themistocles M'zangwe, found his voice. 

"If that's an order, general, we'll get it done. But I'd like toremind you, first, of the Company policy on nuclear weapons on thisplanet. "

"I'm aware of that policy. I'm also aware of the reason for it. We'vebeen compelled, because of the lack of natural fuel on Ullr, to set upnuclear power reactors and furnish large quantities of plutonium tothe geeks to fuel them. The Company doesn't want the natives herelearning of the possibility of using nuclear energy for destructivepurposes. Well, gentlemen, that's a dead issue. They've learned it, thanks to our people on Niflheim, and unless my estimate is entirelywrong, King Orgzild already has at least one First-CenturyNagasaki-type plutonium bomb. I am inclined to believe that he had atleast one such bomb, probably more, at the time when orders were sentto his embassy, here, for the poisoning of Governor-GeneralHarrington. "

With that, he selected a cigarette from his case, offered it to Paula, and snapped his lighter. She had hers lit, and he was puffing on hisown, when the others finally realized what he had told them. 

"That's impossible!" somebody down the table shouted, as though thatwould make it so. Another--one of the civil administrationcrowd--almost exactly repeated Jules Keaveney's words at Skilk: "Whatthe hell was Intelligence doing; sleeping?"

"General von Schlichten, " Colonel Grinell took oblique cognizance ofthe question. "You've just made, by implication, a most grave chargeagainst my department. If you're not mistaken in what you've justsaid, I deserve to be court-martialled. "

"I couldn't bring charges against you, colonel; if it were acourt-martial matter, I'd belong in the dock with you, " von Schlichtentold him. "It seems, though, that a piece of vital information waspossessed by those who were unable to evaluate it, and until thisafternoon, I was ignorant of its existence. Colonel Quinton, supposeyou repeat what you told me, on the way down from Skilk. "

"Well, general, don't you think we ought to have Dr. Gomes do that?"Paula asked. "After all, he constructed those bombs on Niflheim, andit'll be he who'll have to build ours. "

 * * * * *

Von Schlichten nodded in instant agreement. 

"That's right. " He looked around. "Where's Dr. Lourenço Gomes, thenuclear engineer who came in on the _Pretoria_, two weeks ago? Sendout for him, and get him in here to me at once. "

There was another awkward silence. Then Kent Pickering, the chief ofthe Gongonk Island power-plant, cleared his throat. 

"Why, general, didn't you know? Dr. Gomes is dead. He was killedduring the first half hour of the uprising. "

XI

He flinched inwardly, and tightened his eye-muscles on the edge of themonocle to keep them from flinching physically as well, trying tofreeze out of his face the consternation he felt. 

"That's bad, Kent, " he said. "Very bad. I'd been counting heavily onDr. Gomes to design a bomb of our own. "

"Well, general, if you please. " That was Air-Commodore LeslieHargreaves. "You say you suspect that King Orgzild has developed anuclear bomb. If that's true, it's a horrible danger to all of us. ButI find it hard to believe that the Keegarkans could have done so, withtheir resources and at their technological level. Now, if it had beenthe Kragans, that would have been different, but. .. . "

"Paula, you'd better carry on and explain what you told me, and addanything else you can think of that might be relevant. .. . Is thatsound-recorder turned on? Then turn it on, somebody; we want thistaped. "

 * * * * *

Paula rose and began talking: "I suppose you all understand whatconditions are on Niflheim, and how these Ullran native workers areemployed; however, I'd better begin by explaining the purpose forwhich these nuclear bombs were designed and used. .. . "

He smiled; she realized that he needed time to think, and she wasstalling to provide it. He drew a pencil and pad toward him and begandoodling in a bored manner, deliberately closing his mind to what shewas saying. There were two assumptions, he considered: first, thatKing Orgzild already possessed a nuclear bomb which he could use whenhe chose, and, second, that in the absence of Dr. Gomes, such a bombcould only be produced on Gongonk Island after lengthy experimentalwork. If both of these assumptions were true, he had just heard thedeath-sentence of every Terran on Ullr. The first he did not for amoment doubt. The reasons for making it were too good. He dismissed itfrom further consideration and concentrated on the second. 

". .. What's known as a Nagasaki-type bomb, the first type ofplutonium-bomb developed, " Paula was saying. "Really, it's atechnological antique, but it was good enough for the purpose, and Dr. Gomes could build it with locally available materials. .. . "

That was the crux of it. The plutonium bomb, from a militarystandpoint, was as obsolete as the flintlock musket had been at thetime of the Second World War. He reviewed, quickly, the history ofweapons-development since the beginning of the Atomic Era. Theemphasis, since the end of the Second World War, had all been onnuclear weapons and rocket-missiles. There had been the H-bomb, itselfobsolescent, and the Bethe-cycle bomb, and the subneutron bomb, andthe omega-ray bomb, and the negamatter bomb, and then the end ofcivilization in the Northern Hemisphere and the rise of the newcivilization in South America and South Africa and Australia. Today, the small-arms and artillery his troops were using were merely slightrefinements on the weapons of the First Century, and all the modernnuclear weapons used by the Terran Federation were produced at theSpace Navy base on Mars, by a small force of experts whose skills werealmost as closed to the general scientific and technical world as thesecrets of a medieval guild. The old A-bomb was an historicalcuriosity, and there was nobody on Ullr who had more than a layman'sknowledge of the intricate technology of modern nuclear weapons. Therewere plenty of good nuclear-power engineers on Gongonk Island, but howlong would it take them to design and build a plutonium bomb?

". .. Gorkrink also has a good understanding of Lingua Terra, " Paulawas saying. "He and Dr. Murillo conversed bi-lingually, just as I'veheard General von Schlichten and King Kankad talking to one another. Ihaven't any idea whether or not Gorkrink could read Lingua Terra, or, if so, what papers or plans he might have seen. "

"Just a minute, Paula, " he said. "Colonel Grinell, what does yourbranch have on this Gorkrink?"

"He's the son of King Orgzild, and the daughter of Prince Jurnkonk, "Grinell said. "We knew he'd signed on for Nif, two years ago, but thestory we got was that he'd fallen out of favor at court and had beenexiled. I can see, now, that that was planted to mislead us. As towhether or not he can read Lingua Terra, my belief is that he can. Weknow that he can understand it when spoken. He could have learned toread at one of those schools Mohammed Ferriera set up, ten or fifteenyears ago. "

"And Dr. Gomes and Dr. Murillo and Dr. Livesey left papers and planslying around all over the place, " Paula added. "If he went to Niflheimas a spy, he could have copied almost anything. "

"Well, there you have it, " von Schlichten said. "When Gorkrink foundout that plutonium can be used for bombs, he began gathering all theinformation he could. And as soon as he got home, he turned it allover to Pappy Orgzild. "

"That still doesn't mean that the Kee-geeks were able to do anythingwith it, " Air-Commodore Hargreaves argued. 

"I think it does, " von Schlichten differed. "As soon as Orgzild wouldhear about the possibility of making a plutonium bomb, he'd set up anA-bomb project, and don't think of it in terms of the old FirstCentury Manhattan Project. There would be no problem of producingfissionables--we've been scattering refined plutonium over this planetlike confetti. "

"Well, an A-bomb's a pretty complicated piece of mechanism, even ifyou have the plans for it, " Kent Pickering said. "As I recall, therehave to be several subcritical masses of plutonium, or U-235, orwhatever, blown together by shaped charges of explosive, all of whichhave to be fired simultaneously. That would mean a lot of electricalfittings that I can't see these geeks making by hand. "

"I can, " Paula said. "Have you ever seen the work these nativejewelers do? And didn't you tell me about a clockwork thing they haveat the university, here, to show the apparent movements of thesun. .. . "

"That's right, " von Schlichten said. "And what they couldn't make, they could have bought from us; we've sold them a lot of electricalequipment. "

"All right, they could have built an A-bomb, " Buhrmann said. "But didthey?"

"We assume they tried to. Gorkrink got back from Nif on the_Canberra_, three months ago, " von Schlichten said. "If Orgzilddecided to build an A-bomb, he wouldn't give the signal for thisuprising until he either had one or knew he couldn't make one, and hewouldn't give up trying in only three months. Therefore, I think wecan assume that he succeeded, and had succeeded at the time he sentGorkrink here to get that four tons of plutonium we let him have, and, incidentally, to tell his ambassador to pass the word to have SidHarrington poisoned according to plan. "

"Then why didn't he just use it on us at the start of the uprising?"Meyerstein wanted to know. 

"Why should he? Getting rid of us is only the first step in Orgzild'splan, " Grinell said. "Back as far as geek history goes, the Kings ofKeegark have been trying to conquer Konkrook and the Free Cities andmake themselves masters of the whole Takkad Sea area. Let Konkrookwipe us out, and then he can move in his troops and take Konkrook. Or, if we beat off the geeks here, as we seem to be doing, he can bomb usout and then move in on Konkrook. I think that as long as we'refighting, here, he'll wait. The more damage we do to Konkrook, theeasier it'll be for him. "

"Then we'd better start dragging our feet on the Konkrook front, "Laviola said. "And get busy trying to build a bomb of our own. "

 * * * * *

Von Schlichten looked up at the big screen, on which the battle ofKonkrook was being projected from an overhead pickup. 

"I'll agree on the second half of it, " von Schlichten said. "And we'llalso have to set up some kind of security-patrol system againstbombers from Keegark. And as soon as _Procyon_ gets here, we'll haveto send her out to hunt down and destroy those two Boer-classfreighters, the _Jan Smuts_ and the _Kruger_. And we'll have toarrange for protection of Kankad's Town; that's sure to be another ofOrgzild's high-priority targets. As to the action against Konkrook, I'll rely on your advice, Them. Can we delay the fall of the city forany length of time?"

M'zangwe shook his head. "When we divert contragravity tosecurity-patrol work, the ground action'll slow up a little, ofcourse. But the geeks are about knocked out, now. "

"The hell with it, then. I doubt if we'd be able to buy much time fromOrgzild by delaying victory in the city, and we'll probably need thetroops as workers over here. " He turned to Pickering. "Dr. Pickering, what sort of a crew can you scrape together to design a bomb for us?"he asked. 

"Well, there's Martirano, and Sternberg, and Howard Fu-Chung, and Pietvan Reenen, and. .. . " He nodded to himself. "I can get six or eight ofthem in here in about twenty minutes; I'll have a project set up andworking in a couple of hours. There has to be somebody qualified onduty at the plant, all the time, of course, but. .. . "

"All right; call them in. I want the bomb finished by yesterdayafternoon. And everybody with you, and you, yourself, had betterrevert to civilian status. This isn't something you can do by thenumbers, and I don't want anybody who doesn't know what it's all aboutpulling rank on your outfit. Go ahead, call in your gang, and let meknow what you'll be able to do, as soon as--sooner than--it'spossible. "

He turned to Hargreaves. "Les, you'll have charge of flying thesecurity patrols, and doing anything else you can to keep Orgzild frombombing us before we can bomb him. You'll have priority on everythingsecond only to Pickering. "

Hargreaves nodded. "As you say, general, we'll have to protectKankad's, as well as this place. It's about five hundred miles fromhere to Kankad's, and eight-fifty miles from Kankad's to Keegark. .. . "

 * * * * *

He stopped talking to von Schlichten, and began muttering to himself, running over the names of ships, and the speeds and pay-loadcapacities of airboats, and distances. In about five minutes, he wouldhave a program worked out; in the meantime, von Schlichten could onlybe patient and contain himself. He looked along the table, and caughtsight of a thin-faced, saturnine-looking man in a green shirt with acolonel's three concentric circles marked on the shoulders insilver-paint. Emmett Pearson, the communications chief. 

"Emmett, " he said, "those orbiters you have strung around this planet, two thousand miles out, for telecast rebroadcast stations. How much ofa crew could be put on one of them?"

Pearson laughed. "Crew of what, general? White mice, or trainedcockroaches? There isn't room inside one of those things for anythingbigger to move around. "

"Well, I know they're automatic, but how do you service them?"

"From the outside. They're only ten feet through, by about twenty inlength, with a fifteen-foot ball at either end, and everything's insections, which can be taken out. Our maintenance-gang goes up in athing like a small spaceship, and either works on the outside inspacesuits, or puts in a new section and brings the unserviceable onedown here to the shops. "

"Ah, and what sort of a thing is this small spaceship, now?"

"A thing like a pair of fifty-ton lorries, with airlocks between, andconnected at the middle; airtight, of course, and pressurized andinsulated, like a spaceship. One side's living' quarters for a six-mancrew--sometimes the gang's out for as long as a week at a time--andthe other side's a workshop. "

That sounded interesting. With contragravity, of course, terms like"escape-velocity" and "mass-ratio" were of purely antiquarianinterest. 

"How long, " he asked Pearson, "would it take to fit that vehicle witha full set of detection instruments--radar, infrared and ultravioletvision, electron-telescope, heat and radiation detectors, the wholeworks--and spot it about a hundred to a hundred and fifty miles aboveKeegark?"

"That I couldn't say, general, " Emmett Pearson replied. "It'd have tobe a shipyard job, and a lot of that stuff's clear outside mydepartment. Ask Air-Commodore Hargreaves. "

"Les!" he called out. "Wake up, Les!"

"Just a second, general. " Hargreaves scribbled frantically on his pad. "Now, " he said, raising his head. "What is it, sir?"

"Emmett, here, has a junior-grade spaceship that he used to servicethose orbital telecast-relay stations of his. He'll tell you what it'slike. I want it fitted with every sort of detection device that can becrammed into or onto it, and spotted above Keegark. It should, ofcourse, be high enough to cover not only the Keegark area, butKonkrook, Kankad's, and the lower Hoork and Konk river-valleys. "

"Yes, I get it. " Hargreaves snatched up a phone, punched out acombination, and began talking rapidly into it in a low voice. Afterawhile, he hung up. "All right, Mr. Pearson--Colonel Pearson, I mean. Have your space-buggy sent around to the shipyard. My boys'll fix itup. " He made a note on another piece of paper. "If we live throughthis, I'm going to have a couple of supra-atmosphere ships in serviceon this planet. .. . Now, general; I have a tentative set-up. We'regoing to need the _Elmoran_ for patrol work south and east ofKonkrook, and the _Gaucho_ and _Bushranger_ to the north andnorth-east, based on Kankad's. We'll keep the _Aldebaran_ at Kankad's, and use her for emergencies. And we'll have patrols of lightcontragravity like this. " He handed a map, with red-pencil andblue-pencil markings, along to von Schlichten. "Red are Kankad-based;blue are Konkrook-based. "

"That looks all right, " von Schlichten said. "There's another thing, though. We want scout-vehicles to cover the Keegark area withradiation-detectors. These geeks are quite well aware ofradiation-danger from fissionables, but they're accustomed to theordinary industrial-power reactors, which are either very lightlyshielded or unshielded on top. We want to find out where Orgzild'sbomb-plant is. "

"Yes, general; as soon as we can get radiation detectors sent out toKankad's, we'll have a couple of fast aircars fitted with them forthat job. "

"We have detectors, at our laboratory and reaction-plant, " Kankadsaid. "And my people can make more, as soon as you want them. " Hethought for a moment. "Perhaps I should go to the town, now. I couldbe of more use there than here. "

Kent Pickering, who had been talking with his experts at a tableapart, returned. 

"We've set up a program, general, " he said. "It's going to be a lotharder than I'd anticipated. None of us seem to know exactly what wehave to do in building one of those things. You see, the uranium orplutonium fission-bomb's been obsolete for over four hundred years. Itwas a classified-secret matter long after its obsolescence, because ithadn't been rendered any the less deadly by being superseded--therewas that A-bomb that the Christian Anarchist Party put together atBuenos Aires in 378 A. E. , for instance. And then, after it wasdeclassified, it had been so far superseded that it was of onlyantiquarian interest; the textbooks dealt with it only in generalterms. The principles, of course, are part of basic nuclear science;the secret of the A-bomb was just a bag of engineering tricks that wedon't have, and which we will have to rediscover. Design of tampers, design of the chemical-explosive charges to bring subcritical massestogether, case-design, detonating mechanism, things like that. 

"The complete data on even the old Hiroshima and Nagasaki types isstill in existence, of course. You can get it at places like theUniversity of Montevideo Library, or Jan Smuts Memorial Library atCape Town. But we don't have it here. We're detailing a couple ofjunior technicians to make a search of the library here on GongonkIsland, but we're not optimistic. We just can't afford to pass up anychance, even when it approaches zero-probability. "

Von Schlichten nodded. "That's about what I'd expected, " he said. "Isuppose Gomes got his data out of one of the dustier storage-stacks atJan Smuts or Montevideo, in the first place. .. . Well, I still wantthat bomb finished by yesterday afternoon, but since that'simpractical, you'll have to take a little--but as little aspossible--longer. "

"What are we going to do about publicity on this?" Howlett, thepersonnel man. Asked. "We don't want this getting out in garbledform--though how it could be made worse by garbling I couldn'tguess--and having the troops watching the sky over their shoulders andgoing into a panic as soon as they saw something they didn'tunderstand. "

"No, we don't. I've seen a couple of troop-panics, " von Schlichtensaid. "There can't be anything much worse than a panic. "

"I think the Terrans ought to be told the worst, " Hargreaves said. "And told that our only hope is to get a bomb of our own built anddropped first. As to the Kragans. .. . What do you think, King Kankad?"

"Tell them that we are building a bomb to destroy Keegark; that we arerunning short of ammunition, and that it is our only hope of finishingthe war before the ammunition is gone, " Kankad said. "Tell themsomething of what sort of a bomb it is. But do not tell them that KingOrgzild already has such a bomb. Old Kankad, who made me out ofhimself, told me about how our people fled in panic from the weaponsof the Terrans, when your people and mine were still enemies. Thisthing is to the weapons they faced then as those weapons were to theold Kragans' spears and bows. .. . And when the geeks from Grank comehere, tell them that we are winning and that if they fight well, theycan share the loot of Konkrook and Keegark. "

Von Schlichten looked up at the big screen. Already, ThemistoclesM'zangwe had ordered the Channel Battery to reduce fire; the big gunswere firing singly, in thirty-second-interval salvos. There was lessbombing, too; contragravity was being drawn out of the battle. 

"Well, we all have things to do, " he said, "and I think we'vediscussed everything there is to discuss. Anybody think of anythingwe've forgotten?. .. Then we're adjourned. "

He and Paula Quinton took the elevator to the roof, and sat side byside, silently watching the conflagration that was raging across thechannel and the nearer flashes of the big guns along the island's cityside. 

"Wednesday night, I thought we were all cooked, " Paula told him. "Cleaning up the North in two days seemed like an impossibility, too. Maybe you'll do it again. "

"If I pull this one out of the fire, I won't be a general; I'll be amagician, " he said. "Pickering'll be a magician, I mean; he's the boywho'll save our bacon, if it's saveable. " He looked somberly acrossthe flame-reflecting water. "Let's not kid ourselves; we're justkicking and biting at the guards on the way up the gallows-steps. "

[Illustration]

"Well, why stop till the trap's sprung?" she asked. "What'll happen tothese people on this planet, after we're atomized?"

"That I don't want to think about. Kankad's Town will get the secondbomb; Orgzild won't dare leave the Kragans after he's wiped us out. Yoorkerk and Jonkvank, in the North, will turn on Keaveney and Shapiroand Karamessinis and Hid O'Leary and wipe them out. And when the nextship gets in here and they find out what happened, they'll send theFederation Space Navy, and this planet'll get it worse than Fenrisdid. They'll blast anything that has four arms and a face like alizard. .. . "

Half a dozen aircars lifted suddenly from the airport and streakedaway to the north-east. As they went past, in the light of theburning-city, he could see that at least three of them had multiplerocket-launchers on top. In a matter of seconds, a gun-cutter racedafter them, and a second, which had been over Konkrook, jettisoned abomb and turned away to follow. 

"Maybe that's it, " Paula said. 

"Well, if it is, we won't be any better off anywhere else than here, "he told her. "Let's stay where we are and watch. "

After what seemed like a long time, however, a twinkle of lightsshowed over the East Konk Mountains. They weren't the flashes ofexplosions; some were magnesium flares, and some were the lights of aship. 

"That's _Procyon_, from Grank, " he said. "Everybody gets a good markfor this--detection stations, interceptors, gun-cutters. If that hadbeen it, there'd have been a good chance of stopping it. " He feltbetter than he had since Pickering had told him that Lourenço Gomeswas dead. "It's a good thing Gorkrink didn't pick up any dope onguided missiles, while he was at it. As long as they have to deliverit with contragravity, we have a chance. "

They rose from the balustrade where they had been sitting, and, forthe first time, he discovered that he had had his left arm over hershoulder and that she had had her right hand resting on the point ofhis right hip, just above his pistol. He picked up the folder ofpapers she had been carrying, and put her into the elevator ahead ofhim, and it was only when they parted on the living-quarters levelthat he recalled having followed the older protocol of gallantryrather than the precedence of military rank. 

XII

He woke with a guilty start and looked up at the clock on the ceiling;it was 0945. Kicking himself free of the covers, he slid his feet tothe floor and sprinted for the bathroom. While he was fussing to getthe shower adjusted to the right temperature, he bludgeoned hisconscience by telling himself that a wide-awake general is more goodthan a half-asleep general, that there was nothing he could do buthope that Hargreaves' patrols would keep the bomb away from Konkrookuntil Pickering's brain-trust came up with one of their own, and thatthe fact that the commander-in-chief was making sack-time would bemuch better for morale than the spectacle of him running around incircles. He shaved carefully; a stubble of beard on his chin mightbetray the fact that he was worried. Then he dressed, put his monoclein his eye, and called the headquarters that had been set up in SidHarrington's--now his--office. A girl at the switchboard appeared onhis screen, and gave place to Paula Quinton, who had been up for thepast two hours. 

"The _Northern Lights_ got in about three hours ago, general, " shetold him. "She had four of King Yoorkerk's infantry regimentsaboard--the Seventh, Glorious-and-Terrible, the Fourth, Firm-in-Adversity, the Second, Strength-of-the-Throne, and theTwelfth, Forever-Admirable. They're the sorriest looking rabble I eversaw, but Hideyoshi says they're the best Yoorkerk has, and they allhave Terran-style rifles. General M'zangwe broke them into battalions, and put a battalion in with each of the Kragan regiments. I thinkthey're more afraid of the Kragans than they are of the rebels. "

He nodded. That was probably the best way to employ them, within theexisting situation. The trouble was, Them M'zangwe was incurablytactical-minded. Put those geeks of Yoorkerk's in with the Kragans andthey'd be most useful in conquering Konkrook, but the trouble wasthat, after associating with Kragans, they might develop intoreasonably good troops, themselves, to the undesired improvement ofKing Yoorkerk's army. On the other hand, maybe not. Keep them inCompany service long enough, and they might want to forget aboutYoorkerk and stay there. 

"How's the situation over in town?" he asked. 

"Well, it's slowing up, since we began pulling contragravity out, " shetold him, "but the geeks are breaking up rapidly. .. . Oh, there wassomething funny about that hassle, last evening, when the Procyon camein. Two contragravity vehicles, an aircar and an air-lorry, that wentout to meet the ship, are unaccounted for. "

"You mean two of our vehicles are missing?"

She shook her head, frowning in perplexity. "Well, no. All thevehicles that answered that unidentified-aircraft alert returned, butthere were these two that went out that we haven't any record of. Colonel Grinell is investigating, but he can't find out anything. .. . "

"Tell him not to waste any more time, " he said. "Those two wereprobably geeks from Konkrook. You know, that's how the von Schlichtenfamily got out of Germany, in the Year Three--flew a bomber to Spain. The Konkrook war-criminals are getting out before the Army ofOccupation moves in. "

"Well, the posts at the old Kragan castles report some contragravity, and parties riding 'saurs, moving west from the city, " she told him. "There are a lot of refugees on the roads. And combat reports fromKonkrook agree that resistance is getting weaker every hour. .. . Andthe supra-atmosphere observation-craft--they're beginning to call herthe Sky-Spy--is up a hundred and fifty miles over Keegark. We haveradar and vision screens and telemetered radiation and other detectorshere, tuned to her. They're installing a similar set on the _NorthernLights_ at the shipyard. By the way, Air-Commodore Hargreaves wants toknow if he can take a pair of 155-mm rifles from the Channel Batteryand mount them on the _Lights_. "

"Yes, of course; he can have anything he wants, as long as it isn'turgently needed for the bomb project. "

"_Sky-Spy_ reports normal contragravity traffic between Keegark andthe farming-villages around--aircars, lorries, a few scows--butnothing suspicious. No trace of either of the Boer-class ships. Kankad's people are building receiving sets to install on the_Procyon_ and the _Aldebaran_, and another set for Kankad's Town. Pickering and his people are still working, but they all look prettyfrustrated. They have Major Thornton, at the ammunition plant, doingexperimental work on chemical-explosive charges to bring thesubcritical masses together and hold them together till an explosioncan be produced; they're using most of the skilled electrical andelectronics people to work up a detonating device. That's whyKankad's people are doing most of the detection-device work. Hargreaves is fitting a lot of small craft--combat-cars and civilianaircars--with radar sets, to use for patrolling. "

"That sounds good, " von Schlichten said. "I'll be around and see howthings are, after I've had some breakfast. "

He had breakfast at the main cafeteria, four floors down; there wasn'tas much laughing and talking as usual, but the crowd there seemed ingood spirits. He spent some time at headquarters, watching Keegark byTV and radar. So far, nothing had been done about directreconnaissance over Keegark with radiation-detectors, but Hargreavesreported that a couple of privately-owned aircars were being fittedfor the job. 

He made a flying inspection trip around the island, and visited thefarms south of the city, on the mainland, and, finally, made a sweepin his command-car over the city itself. Reconnaissance in person wasan archaic and unprogressive procedure, and it was a good way to getgenerals killed, but one could see a lot of things that would bemissed on TV. He let down several times in areas that had already beentaken, and talked to company and platoon officers. For one thing, KingYoorkerk's flamboyantly-named regiments weren't quite as bad as Paulahad thought. She'd been spoiled by the Kragans in her appreciation ofother native troops. They had good, standard-quality, Volund-madearms; they were brave and capable; and they had been just enoughinsulted by being integrated into Kragan regiments to try to make agood showing. 

By noon, resistance in the city was beginning to cave in. Surrenderflags were appearing on one after another of the Konkrookan rebelstrong-points, and at 1430, after he had returned to the Island, adelegation, headed by the Konkrookan equivalent of Lord Mayor andcomposed largely of prominent merchants, came across the channel undera flag of truce to surrender the city's Spear of State, with abjectapologies for not having Gurgurk's head on the point of it. Gurgurk, they reported had fled to Keegark by air the night before, whichexplained the incident of the unaccountable aircar and lorry. TheChannel Battery stopped firing, and, with the exception of anoccasional spatter of small-arms fire, the city fell silent. 

At 1600, von Schlichten visited the headquarters Pickering had set upin the office building at the power-plant. As he stepped off the lifton the third floor, a girl, running down the hall with her arms fullof papers in folders, collided with him; the load of papers flew inall directions. He stooped to help her pick them up. 

"Oh, general! Isn't it wonderful?" she cried. "I just can't believeit!"

"Isn't what wonderful?" he asked. 

"Oh, don't you know? They've got it!"

"Huh? They have?" He gathered up the last of the big envelopes andgave them to her. "When?"

"Just half an hour ago. And to think, those books were around here allthe time, and. .. . Oh, I've got to run!" She disappeared into the lift. 

Inside the office, one of Pickering's engineers was sitting on themiddle of his spinal column, a stenograph-phone in one hand and a bookin the other. Once in a while, he would say something into themouthpiece of the phone. Two other nuclear engineers had similar booksspread out on a desk in front of them; they were making notes andlooking up references in the Nuclear Engineers' Handbook, and makingcalculations with their slide-rules. There was a huddle around thedrafting-boards, where two more such books were in use. 

"Well, what's happened?" he demanded, catching Pickering by the arm ashe rushed from one group to another. 

"Ha! We have it!" Pickering cried. "Everything we need! Look!"

He had another of the books under his arm. He held it out to vonSchlichten, and von Schlichten suddenly felt sicker than he had everfelt since, at the age of fourteen, he had gotten drunk for the firsttime. He had seen men crack up under intolerable strain before, butthis was the first time he had seen a whole roomful of men blow theirtops in the same manner. 

The book was a novel--a jumbo-size historical novel, of some seven oreight hundred pages. Its dust-jacket bore a slightly-more-than-bust-lengthpicture of a young lady with crimson hair and green eyes and jade earringsand a plunging--not to say power-diving--neckline that left heraffiliation with the class of Mammalia in no doubt whatever. In thebackground, a mushroom-topped smoke-column rose, and away from itsomething intended to be a four-motor propeller-driven bomber of the FirstCentury was racing madly. The title, he saw, was _Dire Dawn_, and theauthor was one Hildegarde Hernandez. 

"Well, it has a picture of an A-bomb explosion an it, " he agreed. 

"It has more than that; it has the whole business. Casespecifications, tampers, charge design, detonating device, everything. Why, end-papers even have diagrams: copies of the originalNagasaki-bomb drawing. Look. "

Von Schlichten looked. He had no more than the average intelligentlayman's knowledge of nuclear physics--enough to recharge or repair aconversion-unit--but the drawings looked authentic enough. They seemedto be copies of ancient blueprints, lettered in First Century English, with Lingua Terra translations added, and marked TOP SECRET and U. S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS and MANHATTAN ENGINEERING DISTRICT. 

"And look at this!" Pickering opened at a marked page and showed it tohim. "And this!" He opened where another slip of paper had beeninserted. "Everything we want to know, practically. "

"I don't get this. " He wasn't sick, any more; just bewildered. "I readsome reviews of this thing. All the reviewers panned hell out ofit--'World War II Through a Bedroom Keyhole'; 'Henty in Black LacePanties'--that sort of thing. "

"Yeh, yeh, sure, " Pickering agreed. "But this Hernandez has illusionsof being a great serious historical novelist, see. She won't try towrite a book till she's put in years of research--actually, about sixmonths' research by a herd of librarians and college-juniors and othersuch literary coolies--and she boasts that she never yet has beencaught in an error of historical background detail. 

"Well, this opus is about the old Manhattan Project. The heroine is asort of super-Mata-Hari, who is, alternately and sometimessimultaneously, in the pay of the Nazis, the Soviets, the Vatican, Chiang Kai-Shek, the Japanese Emperor, and the Jewish InternationalBankers, and she has affairs with everybody from Joe Stalin to JoeMcCarthy, and of course, she is in on every step of the A-bombproject. She even manages to stow away on the Enola Gay, with the helpof a general she's spent fifty incandescent pages seducing. 

"In order to tool up for this production-job, La Hernandez did herresearching just where Lourenço Gomes probably did his--University ofMontevideo Library. She even had access to the photostats of the oldU. S. Data that General Lanningham brought to South America after thedebacle in the United States in A. E. 114. Those end-papers are part ofthe Lanningham stuff. As far as we've been able to checkmathematically, everything is strictly authentic and practical. We'llhave to run a few more tests on the chemical-explosive charges--wedon't have any data on the exact strength of the explosives they usedthen--and the tampers and detonating device will need to be tested alittle. But in about half an hour, we ought to be able to startdrawing plans for the case, and as soon as they're finished, we'llrush them to the shipyard foundries for casting. "

Von Schlichten handed the book back to Pickering, and sighed deeply. "And I thought everybody here had gone off his rocker, " he said. "Wewill erect, on the ruins of Keegark, a hundred-foot statue of SeñoritaHildegrade Hernandez. .. . How did you get onto this?"

Pickering pointed to a young man with dull brick colored hair, who waspunching out some kind of a problem on a small computing machine. 

"Piet van Reenen, over there; he has a girl-friend whose taste runs tothis sort of literary bubble-gum. She told him it was all in a bookshe'd just read, and showed him. We descended in force on the bookshopand grabbed every copy in stock. We are now running a sort ofgaseous-diffusion process, to separate the nuclear physics from thepornography. I must say, Hildegarde has her biological data very wellin hand, too. "

"I'll bet she'd have fun writing a novel about these geeks, " vonSchlichten said. "Well, how soon do you think you can have a bomb madeup and all ready for us?"

"Casting the cases is going to slow us down the most, " Pickering said. "But, even with that, we ought to have one ready in three days, at themost. By two weeks, we'll be turning them out on an assembly-line. "

"I hope we don't need more than one. But you'd better produce at leasthalf a dozen. And have some practice-bombs made up, out of concrete oranything, as long as they're the right weight and airfoil and havesome way of releasing smoke. Get them done as soon as you have yourcase designed. We want to be able to make a couple of practice drops. "

There was no use, he thought, of raising hopes which might provepremature. He told Paula Quinton, of course, and ThemistoclesM'zangwe, and, by telecast on sealed beam, King Kankad andAir-Commodore Hargreaves. Beyond that, there was nothing to do butwait, and hope that Hargreaves could keep Orgzild's bombers away fromGongonk Island and Kankad's Town and that Hildegarde Hernandez hadbeen playing fair with her public. He visited the city, where a fewpockets of die-hard resistance were being liquidated, and whereeverybody who had not been too deeply and publicly involved in the_znidd suddabit_ conspiracy was now coming forward and claiming tohave been a lifelong friend of the Terrans and the Company. VonSchlichten returned to Gongonk Island, debating with himself whetherto declare a general amnesty or to set up a dozen guillotines in thecity and run them around the clock for a week. There were cogentarguments for and against either procedure. 

By 2100, the last organized resistance had been wiped out, a curfewhad been imposed, and peace of a sort restored. There was still thethreat from Keegark, but it was looking less ominous now than it hadthe evening before. Von Schlichten and Paula were having dinner in theBroadway Room, confident that there was nothing left to do that theycould do anything about, when the extension phone that had beenplugged in at their table rang. 

"Colonel Quinton here, " Paula identified herself into it, and listenedfor a moment. "There has? When?. .. Well, where did it come from?. .. Isee. And the direction?. .. Anything else?"

Apparently there was nothing else. She hung up, and turned to vonSchlichten. 

"The _Sky-Spy_ just detected a ship lifting out from Keegark, presumedone of the Boer-class freighters, either the _Jan Smuts_ or the _OomPaul Kruger_. It was first picked up on contragravity at about ahundred feet, rising vertically from near the Palace. The suppositionis the geeks had her camouflaged since the time Commander Prinsloofirst bombarded Keegark with the _Aldebaran_. That was about twentyminutes ago; at last report, she's fifty miles north of Keegark, headed up the Hoork River. "

Von Schlichten started thinking aloud: "That could be a feint, to drawour ships north after her, and leave the approach to Konkrook orKankad's open, but that would be presuming that they know about the_Sky-Spy_, and I doubt that, though not enough to take chances on. They know we have ground and ship-radar, and they may think they canslip down the Konk Valley either undetected or mistaken for one of ourships from North Ullr. "

He picked up the phone. "Get me through on telecast to Air-CommodoreHargreaves, aboard the _Procyon_, " he said. "I'll take it in theoffice; I'll be up directly. " He rose. "Finish your dinner, and havethe rest of mine sent up, " he told Paula. 

Leaving the elevator, he rushed into the big headquarters room just ascontact was established with the _Procyon_, on station over thenorth-western corner of Takkad Sea, between Kankad's Town and Keegark. The Aldebaran, he knew, was west of Keegark; the _Northern Lights_, now fitted with a pair of 155-mm guns, in addition to her 90's, hadjust arrived at Kankad's. He had the _Aldebaran_ sent north along thecrest of the mountain-range between the Hoork and Konk river-valleys, where she could cover both with her own radar and otherdetection-devices and exchange information with the _Sky-Spy_, and the_Gaucho_ sent in what looked like the right course to intercept theBoer-class freighter from Keegark. The _Northern Lights_, also withscreens tuned to the _Sky-Spy_, was sent to take over the Aldebaran'sregular station. Finally, he called Skilk and had the _Northern Star_sent south down the Hoork Valley. 

After that, there was nothing to do but wait, and watch the screens. Paula Quinton put in an appearance shortly after he had finishedcalling Skilk, pushing a cocktail-wagon on which their interrupteddinners had been placed. They finished eating, and drank coffee, andsmoked. Most of the rest of his staff who were not busy on thebomb-project or at the shipyards or with the occupation of Konkrookdrifted in; they all sat and stared from one to another of thescreens, which told, in radar-patterns and direct vision andtelescopic vision and heat and radiation detection, the story of whatwas going on to the north-east of them. 

Keegark was dark, on the vision-screen; evidently King Orgzild hadinvented the blackout, too. Not that it did him any good; theradar-screen showed the city clearly, and it was just as clear on theradiation and heat screens. The Keegarkan ship was completely blackedout, but the radiations from her engines and the distinctiveradiation-pattern of her contragravity-field showed clearly, andthere was a speck that marked her position on the radar-screen. Thesame position was marked with a pin-point of light on the visionscreen--some device on _Sky-Spy_, synchronized with the detectors, kept it focused there. The Company ships and contragravity vehiclesall were carrying topside lights, visible only from above, whichflashed alternate red and blue to identify them. 

Time crawled slowly around the clock-face on the wall, thesixty-five-second minutes of Ullr dragging like hours. The spots thatmarked the enemy ship and her hunters crawled, too; seen from thehundred-and-fifty-mile altitude of the _Sky-Spy_, even thesix-hundred-mile speed of the _Gaucho_ was barely visible. They drankcoffee till the stuff revolted them; they smoked until their throatsand mouths were dry, they watched the screens until they thought thatthey would see them in their dreams forever. Then the _Gaucho_reported radar-contact with the Keegarkan ship, which had begun toturn in a hairpin-shaped course and was coming south down the KonkValley. 

After that, the _Gaucho_ began reporting directly, and her topsideidentification-light went out. 

". .. Doused our lights; we're down in the valley, altitude about athousand feet. We're trying to get a glimpse of her against the sky, "a voice came in. "We're cutting in our forward TV-pick-up. " The voicerepeated, several times, the wavelength, and somebody got an auxiliaryscreen tuned in. There was nothing visible in it but the darkness ofthe valley, the star-jeweled sky, and the loom of the East KonkMountains. "We still can't see her, but we ought to, any moment; radarshows her well above the mountains. Ah, there she is; she justobscured Beta Hydrae V; she's moving toward that big constellation tothe east of it, the one they call Finnegan's Goat. Now she'll be rightin the center of the screen; we're going straight for her. We're goingto try to slow her down till _Aldebaran_ can get here. .. . "

The enemy ship was vaguely visible, now, becoming clearer in thestarlight. She was a Boer-class freighter, all right. Probably the_Jan Smuts_; the _Oom Paul Kruger_ had last been reported at Bwork, and there was little chance that she had slipped into Keegark sincethe uprising had started. For all anybody knew, she could have beendestroyed in the fighting before the Bwork Residency fell. 

"All right, we have her spotted; we're going to open up on her, " thevoice from the _Gaucho_ announced. "She has two 90's to our one; we'lltry to disable them, first. " The vision-screen lit with the indirectglare of the gun-flash, and the image in it jiggled violently as theship shook to the recoil, then steadied again, with the enemy shipvisible in the middle of it, growing larger and larger as the _Gaucho_rushed toward her. The gun fired again and again, flooding the screenwith momentary yellow light and disturbing the image as the recoilshook the gun-cutter. The enemy ship began firing in reply; the shotswere all wide misses. Apparently the geek gun-crew didn't know how tosynchronize the radar sights, and were ignorant of the correct settingfor the proximity-fuzes. The _Gaucho's_ searchlights came on, bathingher quarry in light. It was the _Jan Smuts_; the name, and thefigure-head-bust of the old soldier-philosopher, were plainly visible. Her forward gun had been knocked out, and she was trying to swingabout to get a field of fire for her stern-gun. 

"We're going to give her a rocket-salvo, " the voice said. "Watch this, now!"

The rockets leaped forward, from the topside racks, four and four andfour and four, at half-second intervals. The first four hit the Smutsamidships and low, exploding with a flare that grew before it coulddie away as the second four landed. Nobody ever saw the third andfourth four land. The _Jan Smuts_ vanished in a blaze of light thatblinded everybody in the room; when they could see again, after somethirty seconds, the screen was dark. 

In the direct-vision screen from the _Sky-Spy_, the whole countrysideof the Konk Valley, five hundred miles north of Konkrook, was lighted. The heat and radiation detectors were going insane. And in theshifting confusion on the radar-screen, there was no trace either ofthe _Jan Smuts_ or the _Gaucho_. 

"Well, the geeks did have an A-bomb, " Themistocles M'zangwe said, atlength. "I'd been trying to kid myself that we were just preparingagainst a million-to-one chance. I wonder how many more they have. "

"Paula, find out who was in command of the _Gaucho_; he'd be ajunior-grade lieutenant. Fix up orders promoting him to navy captain, as of now. It's probably the only thing we can do for him, any more. And promotions of the same order for everybody else aboard thatcutter. Authority Carlos von Schlichten, acting Governor-General. " Hepicked up a phone. "Get me Commander Prinsloo, on _Aldebaran_. .. . "

He ordered Prinsloo to launch airboats and make a search; cautionedhim to be careful of radiation, but to take no chances on any of the_Gaucho's_ complement being still alive and in need of help. Whilethat was going on, the _Sky-Spy_ reported another ship coming over herhorizon to the east, from the direction of Bwork. That would be the_Oom Paul Kruger_. Hargreaves had already learned of the advent of thesecond freighter. He was unwilling to take the _Procyon_ off herstation until the _Aldebaran_ returned from the Konk Valley. In this, von Schlichten concurred. 

Somebody suggested that a drink would be in order. They had justwatched the all-but-certain death of three Terran officers, fifteenTerran airmen, and ten Kragans, but they had all been living in tooclose companionship with death in the past three days--or was it threecenturies--to be too deeply affected. And they had also watched, atleast for a day or so, the removal of the threat that had hung overtheir heads. And they had seen proof that they had a defense againstKing Orgzild's bombs. 

They were still mixing cocktails when Pickering phoned in. 

"Some good news, general, from Operation 'Hildegarde. ' We ought tohave at least one bomb ready to drop by 1500 tomorrow; four or fivemore by next mid-night, " he said. "We don't need to have cases cast. We got our dimensions decided, and we find that there are a lot of bigempty liquid-oxygen flasks, or tanks, rather, at the spaceport, that'll accommodate everything--fissionables, explosive-charges, tampers, detonator, and all. "

"Well, go ahead with it. Make up a few of them; as many as you canbetween now and 2400 Sunday. " He thought for a moment. "Don't wastetime on those practice bombs I mentioned. We'll make a practice dropwith a live bomb. And don't throw away the design for the cast case. We may need that, later on. "

XIII

The Company fleet hung off Keegark, at fifteen thousand feet, in abelt of calm air just below the seesawing currents from the warmingAntarctic and the cooling deserts of the Arctic. There was the_Procyon_, from the bridge of which von Schlichten watched themovements of the other ships and airboats and the distant horizon. The_Aldebaran_ was ten miles off, to the west, her metal sheathingglinting the red light of the evening sun. There was the _NorthernStar_, down from Skilk, a smaller and more distant twinkle ofreflected light to the north of _Aldebaran_. The _Northern Lights_ wasoff to the east, and between her and _Procyon_ was a fifth ship;turning the arm-mounted binoculars around, he could just make out, onher bow, the figure-head bust of a man in an ancient top-hat and afringe of chin-beard. She was the _Oom Paul Kruger_, captured by the_Procyon_ after a chase across the mountains north-east of Keegark theday before. And, remote from the other ships, to the south, a tinyspeck of blue-gray, almost invisible against the sky, and a smallertwinkle of reflected sunlight--a garbage-scow, unflatteringly butsomewhat aptly rechristened _Hildegarde Hernandez_, which had beenaltered as a bomb-carrier, and the gun-cutter _Elmoran_. With theglasses, he could see a bulky cylinder being handled off the scow andloaded onto the improvised bomb-catapult on the _Elmoran's_ stern. Shortly thereafter, the gun-cutter broke loose from the tender andbegan to approach the fleet. 

"General, I must protest again against your doing this, " Air-CommodoreHargreaves said. "There's simply no sense in it. That bomb can bedropped without your personal supervision aboard, sir, and you'reendangering yourself unnecessarily. That infernal-machine hasn't beentested or anything; it might even let go on the catapult when you tryto drop it. And we simply can't afford to lose you, now. "

"No, what would become of us, if you go out there and blow yourself upwith that contraption?" Buhrmann supported him. "My God, I thought DonQuixote was a Spaniard, instead of a German!"

"Argentino, " von Schlichten corrected. "And don't try to sell me thatIrreplaceable-Man, either. Them M'zangwe can replace me, Hid O'Learycan replace him, Barney Mordkovitz can replace him, and so on down towhere you make a second lieutenant out of some sergeant. We've beenall over this last evening. Admitted we can't take time for a longstring of test-shots, and admitted we have to use an untested weapon;I'm not sending men out under those circumstances and staying here onthis ship and watch them blow themselves up. If that bomb's our onlyhope, it's got to be dropped right, and I'm not going to take a chanceon having it dropped by a crew who think they've been sent out on asuicide mission. What happened to the _Gaucho_ when she blew the_Smuts_ up is too fresh in everybody's mind. But if I, who orderedthe mission, accompany it, they'll know I have some confidence thatthey'll come back alive. "

 * * * * *

"Well, I'm coming along, too, general, " Kent Pickering spoke up. "Imade the damned thing, and I ought to be along when it's dropped, onthe principle that a restaurant-proprietor ought to be seen eating hisown food once in a while. "

"I still don't see why we couldn't have made at least one test shot, first, " Hans Meyerstein, the Banking Cartel man, objected. 

"Well, I'll tell you why, " Paula Quinton spoke up. "There's a goodchance that the geeks don't know we have a bomb of our own. They maybelieve that it was something invented on Niflheim for miningpurposes, and that we haven't realized its military application. There's more than a good chance that the loss of the _Jan Smuts_ hastemporarily demoralized them. Personally, I believe that both KingOrgzild and Prince Gorkrink were aboard her when she blew up. That'ssomething we'll never know, positively, of course. That ship andeverything and everybody in her were simply vaporized, and theparticles are registering on our geigers now. But I'm as sure as I amof anything about these geeks that one or both of them accompaniedher. "

"Paula knows what she's talking about, " King Kankad jabbered in theTakkad Sea language which they all understood. "Just like Von sayingthat he has to go on our cutter, to encourage the crew. They alwaysinsist that their kings and generals go into battle, particularly ifsomething important is to be done. They think the gods get angry ifthey don't. "

"And we have to hit them now, " von Schlichten said. "They still have acouple of bombs left. We haven't been able to locate them withdetectors, but those geeks Kankad's men caught on that commando-raid, last night, say that there were at least three of them made. We can'ttake a chance that some fanatic may load one into an aircar and make akamikaze-raid on Gongonk Island. "

 * * * * *

The _Elmoran_ ran alongside, with her Masai-warrior figure-head andthe black cylinder on her catapult aft. Somebody had painted, on thebomb: DIRE DAWN _by Hildegarde Hernandez. Compliments of the author toH. M. King Orgzild of Keegark. _ A canvas-entubed gangway was run outto connect the ship with the cutter. Von Schlichten and Kent Pickeringwent down the ladder from the bridge, the others accompanying them. As he stepped into the gangway, Paula Quinton fell in behind him. 

"Where do you think you're going?" he demanded. 

"Along with you, " she replied. "I'm your adjutant, I believe. "

"You definitely are not going along. Personally, I don't believethere's any danger, but I'm not having you run any unnecessaryrisks. .. . "

"Von, I don't know much about the way Terrans think, except aboutfighting and about making things, " Kankad told him. "And I don't knowanything at all about the kind of Terrans who have young. But Ibelieve this is something important to Paula. Let her go with you, because if you go alone and don't come back I don't think she willever be happy again. "

He looked at Kankad curiously, wondering, as he had so often before, just what went on inside that lizard-skull. Then he looked at Paula, and, after a moment, he nodded. 

"All right, colonel; objection withdrawn, " he said. 

Aboard the _Elmoran_, they gave the bomb a last-minute inspection andchecked the catapult and the bomb-sight, and then went up on thebridge. 

"Ready for the bombing mission, sir?" the skipper, a Lieutenant (j. G. )Morrison, asked. 

"Ready if you are, Lieutenant. Carry on; we're just passengers. "

"Thank you, sir. We'd thought of going in over the city at about fivethousand for a target-check, turning when we're half way back to themountains, and coming back for our bombing-run at fifteen thousand. Isthat all right, sir?"

Von Schlichten nodded. "You're the skipper, lieutenant. You'd bettermake sure, though, that as soon as the bomb-off signal is flashed, your engineer hits his auxiliary rocket-propulsion button. We want tobe about fifteen miles from where that thing goes off. "

The lieutenant (j. G. ) muttered something that sounded unmilitarilylike, "You ain't foolin', brother!"

"No, I'm not, " von Schlichten agreed. "I saw the _Jan Smuts_ on theTV-screen. "

 * * * * *

The _Elmoran_ pointed her bow, and the long blade of the figure-headwarrior's spear, toward Keegark. The city grew out of the ground-mist, a particolored blur at the delta of the dry Hoork River, and then acolor-splashed triangle between the river and the bay and the hills onthe landward side, and then it took shape, cross-ruled with streetsand granulated with buildings. As they came in, von Schlichten, whohad approached it from the air many times before, could distinguishthe landmarks--the site of King Orgzild's nitroglycerine plant, now acrater surrounded by a quarter-mile radius of ruins; the Residency, another crater since Rodolfo MacKinnon had blown it up under him; thesmashed _Christian De Wett_ at the Company docks; King Orgzild'spalace, fire-stained and with a hole blown in one corner by the_Aldebaran's_ bombs. .. . Then they were past the city and over opencountry. 

"I wish we had some idea where the rest of those bombs are stored, sir, " Lieutenant Morrison said. "We don't seem to have gotten anythingsignificant when we flew reconnaissance with the radiation detectors. "

"No; about all that was picked up was the main power-plant, and theradiation-escape from there was normal, " Pickering agreed. "The bombsthemselves wouldn't be detectable, except to the extent that, say, anuclear-conversion engine for an airboat would be. They probably havethem underground, somewhere, well shielded. "

"Those prisoners Kankad's commandos dragged in only knew that theywere in the city somewhere, " von Schlichten considered. "How aboutmidway between the Palace and the Residency for our ground-zero, lieutenant? That looks like the center of the city. "

The cutter turned and started back, having risen another ten thousandfeet. Morrison passed the word to the bombardier. The city, with thesea beyond it now, came rushing at them, and von Schlichten, standingat the front of the bridge, discovered that he had his arm aroundPaula's waist and was holding her a little more closely than wasmilitary. He made no attempt to release her, however. 

"There's nothing to worry about, really, " he was assuring her. "Pickering's boys built this thing according to the best principles ofengineering, and the stuff they got out of that big-economy-sizeshilling-shocker all checked mathematically. .. . "

The red light on the bridge flashed, and the intercom shouted "_Bomboff!_" He forced Paula down on the bridge deck and crouched besideher. 

"Cover your eyes, " he warned. "You remember what the flash was like inthe screen, when the _Jon Smuts_ blew up. And we didn't get the worstof it; the pickup on the _Gaucho_ was knocked out too soon. "

He kept on lecturing her about gamma-rays and ultraviolet rays andX-rays and cosmic rays, trying to keep making some sort of intelligentsounds while they clung together and waited, and, with the other halfof his mind, trying not to think of everything that could go wrongwith that jerry-built improvisation they had just dumped onto Keegark. If it didn't blow, and the geeks found it, they'd know that anotherone would be along shortly, and. .. . 

 * * * * *

An invisible hand caught the gun-cutter and hurled her end-over-end, sending von Schlichten and Paula sprawling at full length on the deck, still clinging to one another. There was a blast of almost palpablesound, and a sensation of heat that penetrated even the airtightsuperstructure of the _Elmoran_. An instant later, there was another, and another, similar shock. Two more bombs had gone off behind them, in Keegark; that meant that they had found King Orgzild's remainingnuclear armament. There were shattering sounds of breaking glass, andheavy thumps that told of structural damage to the cutter, and hoarseshouts, and lurid cursing as Morrison and his airmen struggled withthe controls. The cutter began losing altitude, but she was back on areasonably even keel. Von Schlichten rose, helping Paula to her feet, and found that they had been kissing one another passionately. Theywere still in each other's arms when the pitching and rolling of thecutter ceased and somebody tapped him on the shoulder. 

He came out of the embrace and looked around. It was Lieutenant (j. G. )Morrison. 

"What the devil, lieutenant?" he demanded. 

"Sorry to interrupt, sir, but we're starting back to _Procyon_. Andhere; you'll want this, I suppose. " He held out a glass disc. "I neverexpected to see it, but at that it took three A-bombs to blow youloose from your monocle. "

"Oh, that?" Von Schlichten took his trade mark and set it in his eye. "I didn't lose it, " he lied. "I just jettisoned it. Don't you know, lieutenant, that no gentleman ever wears a monocle while he's kissinga lady?"

He looked around. They were at about eight hundred to a thousand feetabove the water, with a stiff following wind away from the explosionarea. The 90-mm gun, forward, must have been knocked loose and carriedaway; it was gone, and so was the TV-pickup and the radar. Something, probably the gun, had slammed against the front of the bridge--themetal skeleton was bent in, and the armor-glass had been knocked out. The cutter was vibrating properly, so the contragravity-field had notbeen disturbed, and her jets were firing. 

"It was the second and third bombs that did the damage, sir, " Morrisonwas saying. "We'd have gone through the effects of our own bomb withnothing more than a bad shaking--of course, on contragravity, we'reweightless relative to the air-mass, but she was built to stand thewinds in the high latitudes. But the two geek bombs caught us offbalance. .. . "

"You don't need to apologize, lieutenant. You and your crew behavedsplendidly, lieutenant-commander; best traditions, and all that sortof thing. It was a pleasure, commander; hope to be aboard with youagain, captain. "

They found Kent Pickering at the rear of the bridge, and joined him, looking astern. Even von Schlichten, who had seen H-bombs andBethe-cycle bombs, was impressed. Keegark was completely obliteratedunder an outward-rolling cloud of smoke and dust that spread out forfive miles at the bottom of the towering column. 

 * * * * *

There had been a hundred and fifty thousand people in that city, evenif their faces were the faces of lizards and they had four arms andquartz-speckled skins. What fraction of them were now alive, he couldnot guess. He had to remind himself that they were the people who hadburned Eric Blount and Hendrik Lemoyne alive; that two of the threebombs that had contributed to that column of boiling smoke had beenmade in Keegark, by Keegarkans, and that, with a few casual factorsaltered, he was seeing what would have happened to Konkrook. Perhapsevery Terran felt a superstitious dread of nuclear energy turned tothe purposes of war; small wonder, after what they had done on theirown world. 

For one thing, he thought grimly, the next geek who picks up the ideaof soaking a Terran in thermoconcentrate and setting fire to him willdrop it again like a hot potato. And the next geek potentate who triesto organize an anti-Terran conspiracy, or the next crazycaravan-driver who preaches _znidd suddabit_, will be lynched on thespot. But this must be the last nuclear bomb used on Ullr. .. . 

Drunkard's morning-after resolution! he told himself contemptuously. The next time, it will come easier, and easier still the time afterthat. After you drop the first bomb, there is no turning back, anymore than there had been after Hiroshima, four-hundred-and-fifty-oddyears ago. Why, he had even been considering just where, against themountains back of Bwork, he would drop a demonstration bomb as aprelude to a surrender demand. 

You either went on to the inevitable catastrophe, or you realized, intime, that nuclear armament and nationalism cannot exist together onthe same planet, and it is easier to banish a habit of thought than apiece of knowledge. Ullr was not ready for membership in the TerranFederation; then its people must bow to the Terran Pax. The Kraganswould help--as proconsuls, administrators, now, instead ofmercenaries. And there must be manned orbital stations, and theResidencies must be moved outside the cities, away from possibleblast-areas. And Sid Harrington's idea of encouraging the natives toown their contragravity-ships must be shelved, for a long time tocome. Maybe, in time. .. . 

Kankad had a good idea, at that; a most meritorious idea. He was soldon it, already, and he doubted if it would take much salesmanship withPaula, either. Already, she was clinging to his arm with obviouspossessiveness. Maybe their grandchildren, and the Kankad of thattime, would see Ullr a civilized member of the Federation. .. . 

They paused, as the gun-cutter nuzzled up to the _Procyon_ and thecanvas-entubed gangway was run out and made fast, looking back at thefearful thing that had sprouted from where Keegark had been. 

"You know, " Paula was saying, echoing his earlier thought, "but forthe female pornographer, that would have been Konkrook. "

He nodded. "Yes. I hope you won't mind, but there will always be aplace in my heart for Hildegarde. "

Then they turned their backs upon the abomination of Keegark'sdesolation and went up the gangway together, looking very little likea general and his adjutant. 

 * * * * *