Part 4
1
It had been a very bad winter in the mountains; snowslides had early blocked the passes into the high meadow.
Chrissie sat quietly and forlornly in front of the council in the courthouse. The wind whined and moaned through the gaps in the walls, and the fire that had been built in the center of the room sent harried palls of smoke into the faces of the council.
Parson Staffor lay very ill in a nearby hut. The winter had sapped what little vitality he had and his place was taken by the older Jimson man they were now calling parson. Jimson was flanked by an elder named Clay and by Brown Limper Staffor, who seemed to be acting as a council member even though he was far too young and clubfooted. He had begun to sit in for Parson Staffor when he became ill and had just stayed on, grown into a council member now. The three men sat on an old bench.
Chrissie, across the fire from them, was not paying much attention. She had had a horrible nightmare two nights ago—a nightmare that had yanked her, sweating, out of sleep, and left her trembling ever since. She had dreamed that Jonnie had been consumed in fire. He had been calling her name and it still sounded in her ears.
“It’s just plain foolishness,” Parson Jimson was saying to her. “There are three young men who want to marry you and you have no right whatever to refuse them. The village population is dwindling in size; only thirty have survived the winter. This is not a time to be thinking only of yourself.”
Chrissie numbly realized he was talking to her. She made an effort to gather the words in: something about population. Two babies had been born that winter and two babies had died. The young men had not driven many cattle up from the plains before the pass closed and the village was half-starved. If Jonnie had been here . . .
“When spring comes,” said Chrissie, “I’m going down on the plains to find Jonnie.”
This was no shock to the council. They had heard her say it several times since Jonnie left.
Brown Limper looked through the smoke at her. He had a faint sneer on his thin lips. The council tolerated him because he didn’t ever say much and because he brought them water and food when meetings were too long. But he couldn’t resist. “We all know Jonnie must be dead. The monsters must have got him.”
Jimson and Clay frowned at him. He had been the one who brought to their attention the fact that Chrissie refused to marry any of the young men. Clay wondered whether Brown Limper didn’t have a personal stake in this.
Chrissie rallied from her misery. “His horses didn’t come home.”
“Maybe the monsters got them, too,” said Brown Limper.
“Jonnie did not believe there were any monsters,” said Chrissie. “He went to find the ‘Great Village’ of the legend.”
“Oh, there are monsters, all right,” said Jimson. “It is blasphemy to doubt the legends.”
“Then,” said Chrissie, “why don’t they come here?”
“The mountains are holy,” said Jimson.
“The snow,” said Brown Limper, “closed the passes before the horses could come home. That is, if the monsters didn’t get them, too.”
The older men looked at him, frowning him to silence.
“Chrissie,” said Parson Jimson, “you are to put aside this foolishness and permit the young men to court you. It is quite obvious that Jonnie Goodboy Tyler is gone.”
“When the year has gone by,” said Chrissie, “I shall go down to the plains.”
“Chrissie,” said Clay, “this is simply a suicidal idea.”
Chrissie looked into the fire. Jonnie’s scream echoed in her ears from the nightmare. It was completely true what they said: she did not want to live if Jonnie was dead. And then the sound of the scream died away and she seemed to hear him whisper her name. She looked up with a trace of defiance.
“He is not dead,” said Chrissie.
The three council members looked at each other. They had not prevailed. They would try again some other day.
They ignored her and fell to discussing the fact that Parson Staffor wanted a funeral when he died. There wouldn’t be much in the way of food and there were problems of digging in the frozen ground. Of course he was entitled to a funeral, for he had been parson and maybe even mayor for many years. But there were problems.
Chrissie realized she was dismissed, and she got up, eyes red with more than smoke, and walked to the courthouse door.
She wrapped the bearskin more tightly about her and looked up at the wintry sky. When the constellation was in that same place in spring she would go. The wind was cutting keen and she pulled the bearskin even tighter. Jonnie had given her the bearskin and she fingered it. She would get busy and make him some new buckskin clothes. She would prepare packs. She would not let them eat the last two horses.
When the time came she would be all ready to go. And she would go.
A blast of wind from Highpeak chilled her, mocked her. Nevertheless, when the time came she would go.
2
Terl was in a furious burst of activity. He hardly slept. He left the kerbango alone. The doom of years of exile on this cursed planet haunted him; each time he slowed his pace he collided with the horrible thought and it jabbed him into even greater efforts.
Leverage, leverage! He conceived himself to be a pauper in leverage.
He had a few things on employees here and there, but they were minor things: peccadillos with some of the Psychlo female clerks, drunkenness on the job leading to breakage, tapes of mutterings about foremen, personal letters smuggled into the teleportation of ore, but nothing big. This was not the kind of thing personal fortunes were easily built from. Yet here were thousands of Psychlos, and his experience as a security officer told him the odds in favor of finding blackmail material were large. The company did not hire angels. It hired miners and mining administrators, and it hired them tough; in some cases, particularly on a planet like this—no favored spot—the company even winked at taking on ex-criminals. It was a criticism of himself, no less, that he could not get more blackmail than he had.
This Numph. Now there was one. He had potential leverage on Numph, but Terl did not know what it was. He knew it had something to do with the nephew Nipe in home office accounting. But Terl could not dig out what it really was. And so he dared not push it. The risk lay in pretending to be wise to it and then, by some slip, revealing he didn’t have the data. The leverage would go up in smoke, for Numph would know Terl had nothing. So he had to use it so sparingly that it was almost no use at all. Blast!
As the days and weeks of winter went on, a new factor arose. His requests for information from the home planet were not being answered. Only that one scrap about Nipe, that was all. It was a trifle frightening. No answers. He could send green-flash urgents until he wore out his pen and there wasn’t even an acknowledgment.
He had even become sly and reported the discovery of a nonexistent hoard of arms. Actually it was just a couple of muzzle-loading bronze cannon some workman had dug up in a minesite on the overseas continent. But Terl had worded the report in such a way that it was alarming, although it could be retracted with no damage to himself: a routine, essential report. And no acknowledgment had come back. None.
He had investigated furiously to see whether other departmental reports got like treatment—they didn’t. He had considered the possibility that Numph was removing reports from the teleportation box. Numph wasn’t.
Home office knew he existed, that was for sure. They had confirmed the additional ten-year duty stretch, had noted Numph’s commendation affirmative, and had added the clause of company optional extension. So they knew he was alive, and there could not possibly be any action being taken against him or he would have intercepted interrogatories about himself. There had been none.
So, without any hope of home office cooperation, it was obviously up to Terl to dig himself out. The ancient security maxim was ever present in his mind now: where a situation is needed but doesn’t exist, make one.
His pockets bulged with button cameras and his skill in hiding them was expert. Every picto-recorder he could lay his paws on lined the shelves of his office—and he kept his door locked.
Just now he was glued to a scope, observing the garage interior. He was waiting for Zzt to go to lunch. In his belt Terl had the duplicate keys to the garage.
Open beside him was the book of company regulations relating to the conduct of personnel (Security Volume 989), and it was open to Article 34a-IV, “Uniform Code of Penalties.”
The article said: “Wherein and whereas theft viciously affects profits . . .” and there followed five pages of company theft penalties, “. . . and whereas and wherefore company personnel also have rights to their monies, bonuses and possessions . . .” and there followed one page of different aspects of it, “. . . the theft of personal monies from the quarters of employees by employees, when duly evidenced, shall carry the penalty of vaporization.”
That was the key to Terl’s present operation. It didn’t say theft went on record. It didn’t say a word about when it happened as related to when it was to be punished. The key items were “when duly evidenced” and “vaporization.” There was no judicial vaporization chamber on this planet, but that was no barrier. A blast gun could vaporize anyone with great thoroughness.
There were two other clauses in that book that were important: “All company executives of whatever grade shall uphold these regulations”; and “The enforcement of all such regulations shall be vested in the security officers, their assistants, deputies and personnel.” The earlier one included Numph—he could not even squeak. The latter one meant Terl, the sole and only security officer—or deputy or assistant or personnel—on this planet.
Terl had spot-watched Zzt for a couple of days now and he knew where he kept his dirty workcoats and caps.
Aha, Zzt was leaving. Terl waited to make sure the transport chief did not come back because he had forgotten something. Good. He was gone.
With speed, but not to betray himself or alarm anyone by rushing if met in the halls, Terl went to the garage.
He let himself in with a duplicate key and went directly to the washroom. He took down a dirty workcoat and cap. He let himself out and locked the door behind him.
For days now Terl had also watched, with an artfully concealed button camera, the room of the smaller Chamco brother. He had found what he wanted. After work, the smaller Chamco brother habitually changed from his mine clothes in his room and put on a long coat he affected for dinner and an evening’s gambling in the recreation area. More: the smaller Chamco brother always put and kept his cash in the cup of an antique drinking horn that hung on the wall of his room.
Terl now scanned the minesite patiently. He finally spotted the smaller Chamco brother exiting from the compound, finished with lunch, and boarding the bus to the teleportation transshipment area where he worked. Good. Terl also scanned the compound corridors. They were empty in the berthing areas during work time.
Working fast, Terl looked from a stilled picto-recorder frame of Zzt to the mirror before him and began to apply makeup. He thickened his eyebones, added length to his fangs, roughed the fur on his cheeks, and labored to get the resemblance exact. What a master of skills one had to be in security!
Made up, he donned the workcoat and cap.
He took five hundred credits in bills from his own wallet. The top one he marked: “Good luck!” very plainly. He scribbled several different names on it with different pens.
He connected a remote control to a picto-recorder that was registering the Chamco room, checked everything, and checked the mirror too.
One more look at the live view of the garage. Yes, Zzt was back, puttering around with a big motor. That would keep him busy for a while.
Terl sped down the corridors of the berthing compound. He entered the smaller Chamco brother’s room with a passkey. He checked the drinking horn on the wall. Yes, it had money in it. He put in the five hundred credits. He went back to the door. Ready!
He touched the remote control in his pocket.
Imitating the rolling walk of Zzt, he went over to the drinking horn and with stealthy movements took out the five hundred credits, looked around as though fearful of being observed, counted the money—the marked bill plainly in view—and then crept out of the room, closing and locking the door.
A berthing attendant saw him from a distance and he ducked.
He got back to his room and swiftly removed the makeup. He put the five hundred credits back in his wallet.
When the screen showed him Zzt had gone for dinner, he returned the cap and workcoat to the washroom.
Back in his own quarters, Terl rubbed his paws.
Leverage. Leverage. Stage one of this lever was done, and he was going to pull it and good.
3
It was a night that was long remembered by the employees in the recreation area of the minesite.
They were not unused to seeing Terl drunk, but tonight—well! The attendant shoveled panful after panful of kerbango at him and he took them all.
Terl had begun the evening looking depressed, and that was understandable since he wasn’t very popular lately—if he ever had been. Char had watched him slit-eyed for a while, but Terl was obviously just bent on getting drunk. Finally Terl seemed to rouse himself and did a bit of paw-gripping—a game whose object was to see which player couldn’t stand it anymore and let go—with some of the mine managers. Terl had lost in every case; he was getting drunker and drunker.
And now Terl was heckling the smaller Chamco brother into a game of rings. It was a gambling game. A player took a ring and put it on the back of the paw and then with the other paw snapped it off and sailed it at a board. The board had pegs with numbers, the bigger numbers all around the edges. The one that got the biggest number won. Then stakes were put up again and another round occurred.
The smaller Chamco brother hadn’t wanted to take him on. Terl was usually very good at rings. Then his drunken condition became too alluring and the Chamco let himself be persuaded.
They started by putting up ten-credit bets—steep enough for the recreation area. Chamco got a ninety and Terl a sixteen.
Terl insisted upon raising the bets and the Chamco couldn’t refuse, of course.
The ring shot by the smaller Chamco brother sizzled through the atmosphere and clanged over a four peg. The Chamco groaned. Anything could beat that. And lately he had been saving his money. When he got home—in just a few months now—he was going to buy a wife. And this bet had been thirty credits!
Terl went through contortions of motions, put the ring on the back of his paw, sighted across it, and then with the other paw sent it like a ray blast at the board. A three! Terl lost.
As the winner, the smaller Chamco brother couldn’t quit. And Terl had taken another pan of kerbango, leering around at the interested gallery, and upped the bets.
The onlookers placed some side bets of their own. Terl was reeling drunk. He did have a reputation with this game, which made the odds lower, but he was so obviously drunk that he even faced the wrong direction and had to be turned in the right one.
The smaller Chamco brother got fifty. Terl got two. “Ah, no, you don’t quit now,” Terl said. “The winner can’t quit.” His words were slurred. “I bet . . . I bet one hun—— . . . hundred credits.”
Well, with pay halved and bonuses gone, nobody was going to object to winning easy money, and the smaller Chamco went along.
The audience roared at Terl’s bungling as loss after loss occurred. And the smaller Chamco brother found himself standing there with four hundred fifty credits.
Terl reeled over to the attendant and got another saucepan of kerbango. As he drank it he went through his pockets, turning them out one by one. Finally he came up with a single bill, a bit crumpled and marked all over.
“My good-luck money,” sobbed Terl.
He lurched over to the firing position in front of the board. “Chamco Two, just one more crap-little bet. You see this bill?”
The smaller Chamco brother looked the bill over. It was a good-luck bill. Mine employees taking off for far places after a final party sometimes exchanged good-luck bills. Everybody signed everybody else’s bill. And this had a dozen signatures on it.
“I’m betting my good-luck bill,” said Terl. “But you got to promise you won’t spend it and that you’ll trade it back to me on payday if I . . . I lose it?”
The smaller Chamco brother had gotten money-hungry by now. He was picking up nearly two weeks’ pay, and the wage cuts had hurt. Yes, he’d promise to do that.
As winner, the smaller Chamco brother went first. He had never been very good at rings. He fired and ouch! It was a one. Anything, but anything, would beat it.
Terl stared at it. He went drunkenly forward and looked at it closely. He reeled back to the firing line, faced the wrong way, had to be turned, and then zip! He got off a sizzler.
It hit the blank wall.
With that, Terl passed out. The attendant, helped by the Chamcos and Char and couple of others, got Terl on a banquet serving trolley that groaned and bent. They wheeled him in a triumphal parade to his quarters, got the key out of his pocket, brought him in, and dumped him on the floor. They were pretty drunk, too, and they went away chanting the funeral dirge of the Psychlos in a most feeling way.
When they were gone, Terl crawled to the door and closed and locked it.
He had taken counter-kerbango pills after dinner, and all he had to do now was get rid of the excess, which he did, tickling his throat with a talon over the wash basin.
Quietly then, with great satisfaction, he undressed and got into bed and had a beautiful sleep full of beautiful dreams concerning the beautiful future of Terl.
4
Jonnie heard the monster enter the cage and close the door.
In the past few weeks, Jonnie’s hands and face had healed and his hair, eyebrows and beard had grown out. His reflection in the water from the snow he had melted in a pan told him that. He couldn’t see any scars on his hands, but they still looked red where they had been burned.
He was wrapped in a robe, facing away from the door and he didn’t look around. He had worked late with the instruction machine.
“Look over here, animal,” said Terl. “See what I brought you.”
There was something different in the monster’s voice. It seemed jovial, if that were possible. Jonnie sat up and looked.
Terl was holding up four rats by their tails. Lately the nearby rat population had been cut down and Terl had been shooting rabbits and bringing them in, a very welcome change indeed. Yet here were more rats and the monster thought it was a favor.
Jonnie lay down again. Terl threw the rats over by the fire. One wasn’t quite dead and started to crawl away. Terl flashed his handgun from its holster and blew its head off.
Jonnie sat up. Terl was putting the gun away.
“Trouble with you, animal,” said Terl, “you have no sense of appreciation. Have you finished the disks on basic electronics?”
Actually, Jonnie had. Terl had brought the disks weeks ago, along with some disks on higher mathematics. He didn’t bother to answer.
“Anybody that could be fooled by remote controls couldn’t ever really operate machines,” said Terl. He had harped on this before, omitting the truth that it was he who had been fooled.
“Well, here are some other texts. And you better wrap your rat brain around them if you ever expect to handle machines—mining machines.”
Terl threw three books at him. They looked huge but they were featherweight. One hit Jonnie but he caught the other two. He looked at them. They were Psychlo texts, not Chinko translations. One was Control Systems for Beginning Engineers. Another was Electronic Chemistry. The third was Power and its Transmission. Jonnie wanted the books. Knowledge was the key out of captivity. But he put the books down and looked at Terl.
“Get those into your rat brain and you won’t be sending machines over cliffs,” said Terl. Then he came nearer and sat down in the chair. He looked closely at Jonnie. “When are you really going to start cooperating?”
Jonnie knew this was a very dangerous monster, a monster that wanted something that hadn’t been named.
“Maybe never,” said Jonnie.
Terl sat back, watching Jonnie closely. “Well, never mind, animal. I see you pretty well recovered from your burns. Your fur is growing back.” Jonnie knew Terl had no interest in that and wondered what was coming next.
“You know, animal,” said Terl, “you sure had me fooled that first day.” Terl’s eyes were watchful but he seemed to be just rambling along. “I thought you were four-legged!” He laughed very falsely. “It sure was a surprise when you fell apart into two animals.” He laughed again, amber eyes very cunning. “Wonder what happened to that horse.”
Before he could stop himself, Jonnie experienced a wave of sorrow over Windsplitter. He choked it off instantly.
Terl looked at him. Then he got up and wandered over to the cage door. To himself Terl was thinking: the horse is a key to this. He had been right. The animal was attached emotionally to that horse. Leverage, leverage. It came in many guises and its use was power.
Terl appeared to be laughing. “You sure had me fooled that first day. Well, I’ve got to be going. Get busy on those books, rat brain.” He went out. “That’s a good one: rat brain.”
Jonnie sat staring after him. He knew he had betrayed something. And he knew Terl was up to something. But what? Was Windsplitter alive?
Uneasy, Jonnie built up the fire and began to look over the books. And then he was gripped in a sudden wave of excitement: he had found “uranium” listed in the index of Electronic Chemistry.
5
Terl was not at all surprised to see the smaller Chamco brother come nervously into his office.
“Terl,” he said hesitantly. “You know that good-luck credit note you lost to me. Well, I won’t be able to exchange—”
“What are you talking about?” said Terl.
“That good-luck credit note. You lost it to me and I promised to exchange it with you. I wanted to tell you—”
“Wait a minute,” said Terl. He fished out his wallet and looked into it. “Hey, you’re right. It isn’t here.”
“You lost it to me playing rings and I promised to exchange it back. Well—”
“Oh, yes. I have some dim recollection of it. That was quite a night. I was drunk, I guess. What about it?”
The smaller Chamco brother was nervous. But Terl seemed so open and pleasant he was emboldened. “Well, it’s gone. Stolen.”
“Stolen!” barked Terl.
“Yes. Actually the five hundred credits I won and a hundred sixty-five more besides. The good-luck bill was among—”
“Hey, now. Slow up. Stolen from where?”
“My room.”
Terl got out an official pad and began to make notes. “About what time?”
“Maybe yesterday. Last night I went to get some drinking money and I found—”
“Yesterday. Hmmm.” Terl sat back thoughtfully and gnawed at the top of his pen, “You know this isn’t the first theft reported from rooms. There were two others. But you’re in luck.”
“How so?”
“Well, you realize of course that I am responsible for security.” Terl made an elaborate demonstration of searching through piles of junk on his back bench. He turned to the smaller Chamco brother. “I shouldn’t let you in on this.” He looked thoughtful, then seemed to make a sudden decision. “I can trust you to keep this secret.”
“Absolutely,” said the smaller Chamco brother.
“Old Numph worries all the time about mutinies.”
“He should after that pay cut.”
“And so—well, you understand, I wouldn’t do this on my own initiative—but it just so happened that your room was under surveillance yesterday—along with several other rooms, of course.”
This did not much shock the Chamco. The company often put work areas and quarters under surveillance.
Terl was fumbling through stacks of disks among the clutter. “I haven’t reviewed them. Actually, never intended to. Anything to keep management happy . . . ah, yes. Here it is. What time yesterday?”
“I don’t know.”
Terl put the disk on a player and turned on the screen. “You’re just lucky.”
“I should say so!”
“We’ll just scan through this disk. It was on for two or three days . . . I’ll give it a fast-forward.”
“Wait!” said the smaller Chamco brother. “Something flashed by.”
Terl obligingly reversed it. “Probably just you going in and out. I never review these things. It takes so long and there’s so much to do. Company regulations—”
“Wait! Look at that!”
Terl said, “Here?”
“Yes. Who’s that?”
Terl brightened up the screen.
“That’s Zzt!” cried the Chamco. “Look what he’s doing! Searching the room. Hah! He found it. Crap! Look at that! There’s your bill!”
“Incredible,” said Terl. “You sure are lucky there was a mutiny scare on. Where you going?”
The Chamco had made an angry dive at the door, “I’m going down and beat the crap out of that low—”
“No, no,” said Terl. “That won’t get your money back.” And it wouldn’t either, for the money was nestling in a wad under Terl’s front belt. He had taken it from the room soon after the Chamco had hidden it. “This has become an official matter because it was detected on an official disk, during an official surveillance.”
Terl opened a book of regulations, Volume 989, to Article 34a-IV. He turned several pages and then spun the book about and showed the Chamco where it said “theft of personal monies from the quarters of employees by employees” and “when duly evidenced” and “vaporization.”
The smaller Chamco read it. He was surprised. “I didn’t know it was that stiff.”
“Well, it is. And this is official, so don’t go rushing off to take the law into your own hands.”
Terl took a blast rifle out of the rack and handed it to the smaller Chamco. “You know how to use this. It’s fully charged. You’re now a deputy.”
The smaller Chamco was impressed. He stood there fumbling with the catches and made sure the safety was on. “You mean I can kill him?”
“We’ll see. This is official.”
Terl picked up the disk and a smaller portable screen and player and the book of regulations, then looked around to see whether he had everything. “Come along. Stay behind me and say nothing.”
They went to the quarters and found an attendant. Yes, the attendant had seen Zzt coming out of Chamco’s room. Yes, he knew Zzt by sight. He didn’t recall whether it was the thirteenth or the fourteenth of the month. But he’d seen him. He was cautioned to say nothing, for “it was official and had to do with mutiny surveillance,” and the attendant obligingly signed the witness report, vowing to himself to be sure to keep quiet. He didn’t care much for executives anyway.
And so it was that Terl, followed by the smaller Chamco brother with a blast rifle in ready position, came to the maintenance area of the garage. Terl snapped a small button camera on the wall and pushed its remote.
Zzt looked up. He had a heavy wrench in his paw. He looked at the blast rifle and the set faces. Fear stirred in him.
“Put down that wrench,” said Terl. “Turn around and hold onto that chain-lift rail with both paws.”
Zzt threw the wrench. It missed. Terl’s paws batted him across three dollies. The Chamco danced around trying to get in a shot.
Terl put his boot on Zzt’s neck. He waved the Chamco back.
His body obscuring the Chamco’s view, Terl knelt and, with a rapid sleight of paw, “extracted” the wad of bills from Zzt’s rear pocket.
Terl handed them to the Chamco. “Are these your bills?”
Zzt had rolled over and stared up at them from the greasy floor.
The Chamco counted. “Six hundred fifty credits. And here’s the good-luck bill!” He was ecstatic.
Terl said, “You’re witness to the fact they were in his back pocket.”
“Absolutely!” said the Chamco.
“Show that bill to the camera on the wall,” said Terl.
“What is this?” roared Zzt.
“Back up and keep that blast rifle ready,” said Terl to the Chamco. Then, keeping himself out of the fire path to Zzt, he laid the things he had carried on the bench. He opened the book of regulations and pointed it out to Zzt.
Zzt angrily read it aloud. He faltered toward the end and turned to Terl. “Vaporize! I didn’t know that!”
“Ignorance is no excuse, but few employees know all the regulations. That you didn’t know it is probably why you did it.”
“Did what?” cried Zzt.
Terl turned on the disk. Zzt looked at it, confused, incredulous. He saw himself stealing the money!
Before Zzt could recover, Terl showed him the attendant’s signed statement.
“Do I vaporize him now?” begged the Chamco, waving the rifle about and fumbling off the safety catch.
Terl waved a conciliatory paw. “Chamco, we know you have every right—no, actually the duty—to carry out the execution.” He looked at Zzt, who was standing there stunned. “Zzt, you’re not going to do this sort of thing again, are you?”
Zzt was shaking his head, not in answer but in dumbfounded confusion.
Terl turned back to Chamco. “You see? Now listen, Chamco, I can understand your anger. This is a first-time mistake for Zzt. You’ve got your money back—and by the way, we’ll exchange that bill now. I’ll need it for the evidence file.”
The Chamco took the note Terl offered and handed over the good-luck bill. Terl held the bill up to the wall camera running on remote and then laid it down on the statement.
“You see, Chamco,” said Terl, “I can keep this file open, but in a safe place where it can be found if anything happens to either of us. It can be activated at any time. And would be activated if further offenses occurred.” His voice took on a pleading tone. “Zzt has been a valuable fellow in the past. As a favor to me, lay aside your revenge and let it lie.”
The Chamco was thoughtful, his bloodlust cooling.
Terl glanced at Zzt and saw no attack signals. He put out his paw to the Chamco. “Give me the rifle.” The Chamco did and Terl put on the safety slide. “Thank you,” said Terl. “The company is indebted to you. You can go back to work.”
The Chamco smiled. This Terl was sure a fair and efficient Psychlo. “I sure appreciate your getting my money back,” said the Chamco and left.
Terl turned off the camera he had put on the wall and restored it to his pocket. Then he picked up the things on the bench and made them into a neat package.
Zzt was standing there restraining the tremble that threatened to engulf him. The aura of death had gripped him all too nearly. Stark terror flared in his eyes as he looked at Terl. He was not seeing Terl. He was seeing the most diabolical devil ever drawn in the mythology of the Psychlos.
“All right?” said Terl quietly.
Zzt sank slowly down on a bench.
Terl waited a bit but Zzt didn’t move. “Now to business,” said Terl. “I want certain things assigned to my department. A Mark III ground car, executive. Two battle planes, unlimited range. Three personnel freighters. And fuel and ammunition without inventory. And a few other things. In fact, I just happen to have the requisitions right here for you to sign. Oh, yes, there are some blank ones, too. All right?”
Zzt did not resist the pen as it was pushed between his claws. The thick sheaf of requisitions was slipped onto his knee. Lifelessly he began to sign each one.
That night a very cheerful Terl, who said he felt lucky even though a bit drunk, won all six hundred fifty credits back from the smaller Chamco brother in a very narrowly contested game of rings.
Terl even bought kerbango for the whole crowd out of his winnings as a good-night gesture. They cheered him when he happily rumbled off to a well-earned sleep.
He dreamed beautiful dreams wherein leverage made him wealthy, crowned him king, and got him far away from this accursed planet.
6
Jonnie laid down his book and stood, stretching. There was more than a smell of spring in the air. The snow had run off and only lingered in shady places. The air was crystal, the sky a beautiful blue. There was a surging tension in his limbs and muscles. It was one thing to be cooped up in winter. It was quite another to sit in a cage in spring.
He saw what had distracted him a few moments before. Terl drove up to the cage gate in a long, sleekly gleaming black tank. It purred quietly, hiding awesome power behind its gun muzzles and slitted ports.
Terl bounded out and the ground shook. He was very jovial. “Get your clothes on, animal. We’re going for a drive.”
Jonnie was dressed in buckskin.
“No, no, no,” said Terl. “Clothes! Not hides. You’ll stink up my new ground car. How do you like it?”
Jonnie was suddenly alert. Terl asking for opinion or admiration was not the Terl he knew. “I’m dressed,” said Jonnie.
Terl was unhooking the leash from the cage. “Oh, well. What’s the difference? I can stand it if you can. Get your air mask. You’ll be inside, and I am damned if I’ll drive around in one. Bring your clubs, too.”
Now Jonnie was alert. He put on a belt and a pouch with flints and the bits of glass for cutting. He put the thong of the kill-club over his wrist.
Terl checked the air bottles and playfully snapped the elastic of Jonnie’s mask as he put it on him. “Now get in, animal. Get in. Some ground car, eh?”
Indeed it was, thought Jonnie, as the gunner’s seat engulfed him. Blazing purple fabric, gleaming instrument panel and shining control buttons.
“I checked her all out for remotes,” said Terl. He laughed and laughed at his joke as he climbed in. “You know what I’m referring to, rat brain. No over the cliff on fire today.” He hit a button and the doors closed and sealed. He turned on the breathe-gas louvers and the atmosphere changed in a blink. “Crap, were you stupid!” he laughed some more.
The ground car went hurtling toward the open, four feet above the earth, accelerating to two hundred miles per hour in a breath, almost breaking Jonnie’s spine.
Terl unsnapped his face mask and threw it aside. “You see those doors? Don’t ever hit a latch or try to open one when I’m not wearing a mask, animal. This thing would wreck with no driver.”
Jonnie looked at the latches and buttons and noted the information carefully. What a good idea.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Oh, just a drive, just a drive. Seeing the sights.”
Jonnie doubted that. He was watching every control action Terl was making. He could identify most of the levers and buttons already.
They sped north and then in a long curve headed south of west. Despite the blur of speed, Jonnie could see they were following some ancient, grass-overgrown highway. By the sun he marked their course.
Through the heavily plated gunner’s slits he could see a mass of ancient buildings and a field. A high mountain lay beyond. A range lay to the west. The ground car slowed and drew up a distance from the largest building. Jonnie looked at the desolate scene of ruin.
Terl reached into the ground car bar and drew himself a small pan of kerbango. He drank it off and smacked his mouthbones and belched. Then he put on his face mask and hit the door button. “Well, get out, get out and see the sights.”
Jonnie shut off his air and removed his mask. Terl flipped the leash to give it length and Jonnie got out. He looked around. In a nearby field there were some mounds of what had been machines, perhaps. The structures before him were impressive. Near where they stood was a sort of trench, long overgrown, curving. The grass was tall and the wind from the mountains moaned lonesomely.
“What was this place?” said Jonnie.
Terl stood with his elbow braced against the top of the car, indolent, very casual. “Animal, you are looking at the primary defense base of this planet during the days of man.”
“Yes?” prompted Jonnie.
Terl reached into the car and brought out a Chinko guidebook and threw it at him. A page was marked. It said, “A short distance from the minesite lies an impressive military ruin. Thirteen days after the Psychlo attack, a handful of men stood off a Psychlo tank for over three hours, using primitive weapons. It was the last resistance that was overcome by the Psychlos.” That was all it said.
Jonnie looked around.
Terl pointed at the curved trench. “It happened right here,” he said, with a sweep of his paw. “Look.” He dealt out more leash.
Jonnie crept over to the trench. It was hard to see where it began and ended. It had some stones in front of it. The grass was very tall, moving in the wind.
“Look good,” said Terl.
Jonnie moved down into the trench. And then he saw it. Although a great time had passed, there were scraps of metal that had been guns. And there were scraps of uniforms, mainly buried, hardly more than impressions.
Suddenly he was gripped by the vision of desperate men, fighting valiantly, hopelessly. He glanced across the field before the trench and could almost see the Psychlo tank coming on, withdrawing, coming on, battering them at last to death.
Jonnie’s heart rose, swelled in his chest. Blood hammered in his ears.
Terl leaned indolently against the car. “Seen enough?”
“Why have you shown me this?”
Terl barked a laugh behind his mask. “So you won’t get any ideas, animal. This was the number-one defense base of the planet. And just one measly Psychlo tank knocked it to bits in a wink. Got it?”
That wasn’t what Jonnie had gotten. Terl, who couldn’t read English had not read the still-plain letters on the building. Those letters said United States Air Force Academy.
“Well, put on your mask and get in. We have other things to do today.”
Jonnie got in. It had not been the “primary defense base.” It was just a school. And that handful of men had been schoolboys, cadets. And they’d had the guts to stand off a Psychlo tank, outgunned, hopeless, for three hours!
As they moved off, Jonnie looked back at the trench. His people. Men! He found it hard to breathe. They had not died tamely. They had fought.
7
Terl drove straight north, following the overgrown bed of an old highway. For all his joviality he was thinking very hard. Fear and leverage. If you didn’t have leverage you could make fear work. He felt he had already accomplished a little bit: the animal had seemed impressed back there. But he had a lot to do to get both fear and leverage and get enough of them to break this animal and cow it completely.
“Comfortable?” asked Terl.
Jonnie snapped out of his daydream and became instantly alert. This was not the Terl he knew. Casual. Chatty even. Jonnie was on his guard.
“Where are we going?” he said.
“Just a little drive. New ground car. Doesn’t she run well?”
The tank ran well all right. The plate on the panel said:
“Is ‘Faro’ part of Intergalactic?” said Jonnie.
Terl took his eyes off driving for a moment and looked suspiciously at Jonnie. Then he shrugged, “Don’t you bother your little rat brain about the size of Intergalactic, animal. It’s a monopoly that stretches across every galaxy. It’s a size and scope you couldn’t grasp if you had a thousand rat brains.”
“It’s all run from home planet, isn’t it?”
“Why not?” said Terl. “Something wrong with that?”
“No,” said Jonnie. “No. Just seems an awfully big company to be run from one planet.”
“That isn’t all Psychlo runs,” said Terl. “There’s dozens of companies the size of Intergalactic and Psychlo runs them all.”
“Must be a big planet,” said Jonnie.
“Big and powerful,” said Terl. Might as well add a little more fear. “Psychlo can and has crushed every opposition that ever stood in her path. One imperial check mark on an order and a whole race can go phuttt!”
“Like the Chinkos?” said Jonnie.
“Yes.” Terl was bored.
“Like the human race here?”
“Yes, and like one rat-brained animal will go phuttt if it doesn’t shut up,” said Terl in sudden irritation.
“Thank you,” said Jonnie.
“That’s better. Even becoming properly polite!” Terl’s good humor returned, but it wouldn’t have had he realized that the “thank you” had been for vital information.
Abruptly their headlong pace swept them into the outskirts of the city.
“Where are we?” said Jonnie.
“They called it ‘Denver.’”
Aha, thought Jonnie. The Great Village had been named Denver. If it had a name to itself, that implied that there were other Great Villages. He reached for the Chinko guidebook of the area and was just reading about the library when the ground car came to a stop.
“Where’s this?” inquired Jonnie, looking around. They were at the eastern edge of the town and slightly to the south.
“Knew you had a rat brain,” said Terl. “This is where you”—he laughed suddenly and that made it hard to talk—“where you attacked a tank!”
Jonnie looked around. It was indeed the place. He looked through all the slits, taking in the area. “What are we doing here?”
Terl grinned in what he was quite certain was his most friendly grin. “We’re looking for your horse! Isn’t that nice?”
Jonnie thought fast. There was more to this. He had better be very calm. He saw no bones but that meant nothing, for wild animals would have been at work. He looked at Terl and realized the brute actually believed a horse would wait around. Windsplitter most probably had trotted on after them a while and then wandered back toward home in the mountains.
“There are countless animals out in the open here,” said Jonnie. “Picking out those two horses—”
“Rat brain, you don’t have a grip on machines. It shows. Look here.” Terl turned on a large screen set into the instrument panel. The immediate vicinity showed up on it. Terl turned a knob and the scene was viewable from different directions.
Then Terl pushed a button and there was a dull pop like a small explosion in the top of the car. Looking up through the overhead port Jonnie saw a spinning object fly up in the air a hundred feet. Terl pushed a lever up and the object went up. Terl pulled the lever down and the object came lower. What it was seeing registered on the viewscreen.
“That’s why you can’t get away,” said Terl. “Look.” He changed a lever on the screen and the image became enlarged. He pushed a button marked “Heat search” and the screen and spinner above went onto automatic.
Jonnie watched as groups of animals were zeroed in, enlarged, reduced; other groups found and inspected up close; more animals spotted and examined . . .
“Just sit and watch that,” said Terl, “and tell me if you see your horse.” He laughed. “Security chief of Earth running a lost-and-found department for an animal owned by an animal.” He laughed more loudly at his own joke.
There were cattle and cattle and cattle. There were wolves—small ones from the nearby mountains and huge ones down from the north. There were coyotes. There was even a rattler. There were no horses at all.
“Well,” said Terl, “we’ll just drive along to the south. You keep your eyes open, animal, and you’ll get your horse back.”
They drove at a leisurely pace. Jonnie watched the scope. Time went on. Still no horses, none at all.
Terl began to get irritated. Leverage, leverage. His luck was out today!
“No horses,” said Jonnie. And he knew very well that if he had seen Windsplitter he would have kept still.
Terl finally looked at the scope. Ahead of them was a small hill, rocky on top, with a lot of trees distributed around it and darkness in among the trees. There were cattle, some with rather big horns just to the north of it in the open. Fear, then. The day wouldn’t be wasted. He swerved the car into the trees and stopped.
“Get out,” said Terl. He put on his breathe-mask and hit the door buttons. He threw out the leash and then reached into the huge compartment under the seat and drew out a blast rifle along with a bag of grenades.
Jonnie stood in the open and took off his mask. He switched tanks before he put it on the seat. It had been a long drive.
Terl took a position at the edge of the trees, the rocks behind him, the open plain in front. “Come here, animal,” he said.
The leash was trailing. Jonnie walked over to Terl. He wasn’t going to give the monster a chance to gun him down.
“I’m going to give you a little exhibition,” said Terl. “I was top shot in my school. You ever notice how neat the rat heads were blown off? Some of them were fifty paces away. You’re not listening, animal.”
No, Jonnie was not listening. He had caught a whiff of something and he looked at the rocks behind them. There was an opening in them. A cave? There was the whiff again.
Terl reached down and jerked the leash, almost snapping Jonnie off his feet. Jonnie got up from his knees and looked again toward the cave. He gripped the kill-club in his fist.
With an expert motion, Terl snapped a grenade onto the end of the blast rifle. “Watch this!”
There were a half-dozen cattle about eighty paces out on the plain. Two of them were heavy horned bulls, old and tough. The other four were cows.
Terl lifted the blast rifle muzzle-high and fired. The grenade soared in a long arc over the top of the cattle and landed well beyond them. It exploded in a bright green flash. One cow went down, hit by a fragment.
The others leaped and began to run. They ran away from the sound and straight toward Terl.
Terl leveled the blast rifle. “Those hoofs are moving,” he said. “So you won’t think it’s an accident.”
The bulls were coming on in a headlong rush, the cows behind them. The ground shook. The distance was closing quickly.
Terl began to fire in quick single shots.
He broke the legs of the following cows and they tumbled to earth, bawling.
He broke the right front leg of the farthest bull. The other was almost upon them.
One final shot and Terl broke the right front leg of the nearest bull, which skidded to a crumbled heap, mere feet in front of them.
The air was shattering with the bawls of pain from the cattle.
Terl grinned as he looked at them. Jonnie looked back at him in horror. That grin behind the faceplate was of pure joy.
Jonnie felt revulsion for the monster. Terl was—Jonnie suddenly realized there was no word for “cruel” in the Psychlo language. He turned toward the cattle.
Walking out in front with his kill-club to put them out of their agony, he heard a new sound, a rustling rumble.
Jonnie whirled. Coming away from the cave, awakened and angered by all the racket, charging straight at Terl’s back, was the biggest grizzly bear Jonnie had ever seen.
“Behind you!” he yelled. But his voice was drowned in the bawling of the cattle. Terl just stood there grinning.
A moment later the bear roared.
Terl heard it and started to turn. But he was too late.
The grizzly hit him in the back with an impact that sent out a shock wave.
The blast rifle, driven from Terl’s paws, soared into the air toward Jonnie. He caught it in his left hand.
But Jonnie wasn’t thinking of the blast rifle as any more than a club. And he had his own kill-club up and striking before the bear could aim a second blow at Terl. The kill-club caught the grizzly square on the brain pan. The bear staggered, distracted and stunned.
Jonnie sailed in again.
The bear struck out with a massive clawed blow. Jonnie went under it. The kill-club hit again on the brain pan.
The bear reared up and struck at the kill-club as it came in again. The thong snapped.
Jonnie grasped the rifle by the barrel. The grizzly came at him with gaping jaws.
The rifle stock crashed into the bear’s teeth.
Jonnie struck again on the brain pan.
With a dwindling roar the bear went down.
It stayed down, its limbs twitching in death.
Jonnie backed up. Terl was lying on his side, conscious. His mask was in place. His eyes behind the faceplate were wide and staring.
Jonnie backed up farther. Thank god the leash hadn’t caught on anything and tripped him during the fight. He snapped the leash to him. Then he turned his attention to the gun. It had little labels on its controls. The safety catch was off. There was a charge under the trigger. It was scratched but not otherwise damaged.
Jonnie looked at Terl. Terl looked back, his claws flexing and unflexing, waiting. He was certain the animal would level the gun and kill him. His paw stole down to his belt gun.
If Jonnie saw the movement toward the belt gun he ignored it. He turned his back on Terl. He located the sights on the blast rifle and then, with six shots, put the crippled cattle out of their misery.
Jonnie put on the safety catch. He reached into his pouch and got a piece of sharp-edged glass and walked over to the bear and began to skin it.
Terl lay and looked at him. At length he realized he had better check himself out. A pain in his back, a rip in his collar, a bit of green blood on his paw. He tested his back. It was nothing serious. He went over to the car and sat down on a seat with the doors open and hunched there, still looking at Jonnie.
“You’re not going to carry that hide inside this car,” said Terl.
Jonnie didn’t look up from his skinning. “I’ll lash it on top.”
At length Jonnie bundled up the hide and went over to the youngest cow. Working deftly with the sharp glass, he took out the tenderloin and tongue, cut a haunch, and wrapped them in the bear hide.
Jonnie took some thongs from his pouch and lashed the hide with its meat to a gunmount on the car top.
Then he handed the blast rifle to Terl. “The safety is on,” he said. He was cleaning himself up with handfuls of grass.
Terl looked at him. Fear? Fear be damned. This animal had no fear in him.
Leverage. It had to be leverage. Lots of it!
“Get in,” said Terl. “It’s getting late.”
8
The following day, Terl was again a blur of activity. He was getting ready for another interview with Numph.
He rushed about doing mutiny interviews, recording each one on a type of tape that could be cut and spliced. It was a very artful task, requiring the greatest care. He approached numbers of employees on the job, inside the compound and out.
The interviews went very smoothly and rapidly.
Terl would ask, “What company regulations do you know concerning mutiny?” The employees, sometimes startled, always suspicious, would quote what they knew or thought they knew concerning mutiny.
The security chief would then request, “In your own words, tell me your opinion of mutiny.” The employees would of course get long-winded and reassuring: “Mutiny is a very bad thing. Executives would cause vaporizations wholesale and no one would be safe. I sure never intend to advocate or take part in any mutiny.”
The interviews went on and on through the day, Terl rushing about, mask on outside, mask off inside. Recording, recording, recording. He always wound up an interview shaking his head and smiling and saying it was just routine and they knew how it was with management being what it was, and he, Terl, was on the employee’s side. But he left a bit of worry in his wake, employees vowing to themselves to have nothing whatever to do with any mutiny, pay cut or no pay cut.
From time to time, passing through his office, Terl would look at the image of the cage where the high button cameras still performed their guard duty. Curiosity and a vague unease made him keep checking.
The animal seemed very industrious. It had been up with first light. It had worked and worked, scraping the bear hide clean, and had taken old ashes and worked them into it. The hide was now hanging, pinned to the bars.
Then the fire had been built up and an odd network of branches, sort of racks, had been made, around the fireplace. The beef was cut into long, thin strips and hung on the racks near the fire. Leaves from the chopped-up trees kept being put on the fire, creating a great deal of smoke, and the smoke was winding around the meat.
Terl could not quite make out what the animal was really doing. But toward the end of the day he thought he knew. The animal was observing some kind of religious ritual having to do with spring. He had read something about this in the Chinko guidebooks. They had dances and other silly things. The smoke was supposed to carry the spirits of slain animals to the gods. Yesterday they had certainly slain enough animals. The thought of it made Terl’s back twinge.
He had never believed any of these Earth creatures could actually hurt a Psychlo, but that grizzly bear had shaken his confidence slightly. It had been an awfully big bear—it weighed almost as much as Terl himself.
Probably come sunset, the animal down there in the cage would build the fire up and begin to dance or something. He concluded it wasn’t up to anything dangerous and kept on with his headlong interviewing.
That night the recreation hall saw nothing of Terl. And he also forgot to see whether the animal danced. He was too busy with his tapes.
Working with an expertise only a trained security chief cherished, Terl was editing tapes, slicing out single words and even phrases and juggling them about.
By his readjusting of word positions and scrapping of whole paragraphs, employees began to say things on the reels that were building up that could hang them.
A typical answer would become, “I intend to advocate mutiny. In any mutiny it would be safe to vaporize executives.” It was painstaking work. And the reels built up.
Finally he copied them onto new, clean disks that would show no sign of editing or splicing, and with the east graying he sat back, finished.
Yawning, he puttered around, cleaning up, destroying the originals and the scraps, waiting for breakfast time. He realized he had forgotten to keep an eye on the animal to see whether it danced.
Terl decided he needed sleep more than breakfast and laid himself down for a short nap. His appointment with Numph was not until after lunch.
Later he was to tell himself that it was because he had missed both breakfast and lunch that he made the blunder.
The interview began well enough. Numph was sitting at his upholstered desk sucking at an after-lunch saucepan of kerbango. He was his usual bumbling self.
“I have the results of the investigation you requested,” Terl began.
“What?”
“I interviewed a lot of local employees.”
“About what?”
“Mutiny.”
Numph was immediately alert.
Terl put the disk player on Numph’s desk and made ready to play the “interviews,” saying, “These are all very secret, of course. The employees were told that no one would hear about it and they did not know the interviews were recorded.”
“Wise. Wise,” said Numph. He had laid the saucepan aside and was all attention.
Terl let the disks spin one after another. The effect was everything he had hoped for. Numph looked grayer and grayer. When the disks were finished Numph poured himself a saucepan full of kerbango and sucked it down in one whoosh. Then he just sat there.
If ever he had seen guilt, Terl decided, he was seeing it now. Numph’s eyes were hunted.
“Therefore,” said Terl, “I advise that we keep all this secret. We must not let them know what each is actually thinking, for it would lead them to conspire and actually mutiny.”
“Yes!” said Numph.
“Good,” said Terl. “I have prepared certain papers and orders about this.” He put the sheaf on Numph’s desk. “The first one is an order to me to take what measures I deem necessary to handle this matter.”
“Yes!” said Numph and signed it.
“The second one is to strip all arsenals of all minesites and keep all weapons under lock and key.”
“Yes!” said Numph and signed it.
“This next one is to retrieve any battle planes from other minesites and localize them under seals, except those I might need.”
“Yes,” said Numph and signed it.
Terl removed that which had been signed and left Numph staring at the next one.
“What’s this?” said Numph.
“Authority to round up and train man-animals on machine operation so that company ore shipments can be kept rolling in event of deaths of company employees or refusals to work.”
“I don’t think it’s possible,” said Numph.
“It’s only a threat to force employees back to work. You know and I know it is not really feasible.”
Numph signed it doubtfully and only because it said: “Emergency plan, strategic alternative ploy. Objective: employee dissuasion from strike.”
And then Terl made his blunder. He took the signed authorization and added it to the rest. “It permits us to handle forced reduction of employees,” he commented. Afterward he realized he need not have said a thing.
“Oh?” said Numph.
“And I am sure,” Terl had gone on, confirming his blunder, “I am very certain that your nephew Nipe would heartily approve of it.”
“Approve of what?”
“Reduction of employee numbers,” Terl rattled on.
And then Terl saw it. There was a relieved look on Numph’s face—a knowing look—a look of realization that gave Numph great satisfaction.
Numph gave Terl an almost amused glance. Relief seemed to soak into him. Confidence took the place of fear.
Terl knew he had messed it up. He had had only a hint of the leverage connected to Nipe. And right now he had been guilty of exposing that he was only pretending he knew. Numph knew that Terl really didn’t know. And Terl never had really known what Numph was up to. A real blunder.
“Well,” said Numph, suddenly expansive, “you just run along now and do your job. I’m sure everything will work out just fine.”
Terl stopped outside the door. What the blast was the leverage? What was the real story behind it? Numph was no longer afraid. Terl could hear him chuckling.
The security chief threw off the black cloud that threatened. He moved off. At least he had the animals and he could carry on. And when he had finished with them he could vaporize them. He wished he could also vaporize Numph!
Leverage, leverage. He had none on Numph. And he had none at all on the animal.
Terl would have to get busy.
9
The transshipment air was a loud clatter of hurtling shapes under the spring sun. A freighter had just roared in and the ore it spilled was racketing onto the field. The blade machines were nudging about, hurrying the ore to the conveyors. The giant buckets clanked and rattled, halting jerkily to spill their contents on the conveyor belt. Huge fans roared to blast dust in the air. A fall of ore flowed onto the transshipment platform.
Jonnie sat amid the din, chained to the controls of the dust analyzer, sprayed with fanned dirt and half-deafened from the clamor.
What he was doing was cross-testing the consecutive loads on the belt for uranium. The fans beat a fog of ore particles into the air at this point in the progressive steps. It was Jonnie’s job to throw a lever that sent beams through the whirlwind, check the panel to see whether a purple or a red light went on, and throw levers that sent the ore on for transshipment (purple), or dumped it to the side and sounded an alarm (red). When the red came on, it was urgent to dump.
He was not operating independently. He was closely supervised by Ker, the assistant operations officer of the minesite. Ker was protected by domed headgear. Jonnie was catching the hurricane of dust and din full in the eyes and face. He did not even have goggles. Ker walloped him on the shoulder to indicate that this bucketful could be sent on, and Jonnie thrust at the levers.
Ker had been carefully chosen by the security chief as the very fellow to instruct the animal in the operation of minesite machinery. And Terl had his reasons.
A midget for a Psychlo, Ker was only seven feet tall. He was a “geysermouth,” as they called it, since he chattered incessantly; nobody bothered to listen to him. He had no friends but tried to make them. He was reputedly dimwitted even though he knew his machines well. If these reasons were not enough, Terl had leverage: he had caught Ker in a compromising situation involving two female Psychlo clerks in an out-of-bounds operations office. Terl had picto-recorded but not reported it, and Ker and the females had been very grateful. There were other things: Ker was a habitual criminal who had taken employment on Earth one jump ahead of arrest, and Terl had fixed up a name change. Before the animal idea had occurred to Terl, he had tried to work out something involving Ker, but it would have been impossible for a Psychlo to go into those mountains, and he had been forced to abandon taking Ker into his confidence.
But Ker had his uses. He was chattering away now, voice dimmed by the helmet he wore and by the din. “You have to be sure to detect every scrap of radiation dust. Not one isotope must get through to the platform.”
“What would it cause?” shouted Jonnie.
“There’d be a spark-flash on the home planet, like I told you. The teleportation platform there would get disrupted and we’d catch blazes. It’s just the dust. You have to make sure there’s none in the dust. No uranium!”
“Has it ever happened?” shouted Jonnie.
“Blast, no!” roared Ker. “And it never will.”
“Just dust?” said Jonnie.
“Just dust.”
“What about a solid piece of uranium?”
“You won’t detect that.”
“Would anything detect it?”
“We never ship it!”
They got along pretty well. At first Ker had thought the animal was a peculiar thing. But it seemed friendly and Ker didn’t have any friends. And the animal asked questions constantly and Ker loved to talk. Better an animal audience than none at all. Besides, it was a favor to Terl and staved off possible disclosures.
Terl brought the man-thing down each morning, tied it up to the machine it would operate, and picked it up each night. Ker, much cautioned and threatened with the consequences if Jonnie got loose, had the right to untie the animal and put it on another machine.
The regular operator this morning was glad of a break. The post was extremely dangerous and had killed several Psychlos in past decades. One usually got danger pay for it, but that was now suspended with the economy wave.
The freighter load was handled. The last bucketful went by on the conveyor belt position and the whole area drifted down to momentary idleness. The regular operator came back, looking suspiciously at his equipment.
“Did it break anything?” said the regular operator with a talon jerk at Jonnie.
“It hasn’t broke anything around here yet,” said Ker defensively.
“I heard it blew up a blade scraper.”
“Oh, that scraper was one that had already blown up,” said Ker. “You know the one a few months ago that got Waler.”
“Oh, that one. The one that got a hairline crack in its canopy?”
“Yeah,” said Ker. “That one.”
“I thought this animal blew it up.”
“That’s just that Zzt making excuses for lack of maintenance.”
Nevertheless the regular operator carefully checked over his uranium detection station.
“Why are you so nervous about it?” said Jonnie.
“Hey,” said the regular operator, “it talks Psychlo!”
“He could have a leak in his helmet,” explained Ker to Jonnie. “Or you could have left some dust on the controls.”
Jonnie looked at the regular operator. “You ever have a helmet blow up?”
“Blazes, no! I’m still alive, ain’t I? And I ain’t going to have any breathe-gas blow up around me. Get off my machine. Another freighter is coming in.”
Ker untied the animal and led it over to the shade of a power pylon. “That about completes you on the transshipment machinery. Tomorrow I’m going to start you on actual mining.”
Jonnie looked around. “What’s that little house over there?”
Ker looked. It was a small domed structure with a bunch of cooling coils on the back of it. “Oh, the morgue. Company orders require all dead Psychlos to get returned to home planet.”
Jonnie was interested. “Sentiment? Families?”
“Oh, no. Blazes, no. Nothing silly like that. They got some dumb idea that if an alien race had dead Psychlos to fool around with they could work out the metabolism and get up to mischief. Also, it’s a sort of nose count. They don’t want names riding on a payroll after a guy is dead—somebody else could collect the pay. It used to be done.”
“What happens with them—the corpses?”
“Oh, we let them collect and then schedule their teleportation back, just like any other package. When they get them home they bury them. The company has its own cemetery on Psychlo.”
“Must be quite a planet.”
Ker glowed with a smile. “You can say that! None of these damned helmets or canopies. Unlimited breathe-gas! The whole atmosphere is breathe-gas. Wonderful. Good gravity, not thin like this. Everything a gorgeous purple. And females aplenty! When I get out of here, maybe—if Terl fixes it so I can—I’m going to have ten wives and just sit all day chomping kerbango and rolling the females.”
“Don’t they have to import all the breathe-gas here?”
“Yes, indeed. You can’t make it on other planets. It takes certain elements that seldom exist off Psychlo.”
“I should think the home planet would run out of atmosphere.”
“Oh, no!” said Ker. “The elements are in the rocks and even the core and it just makes more and more. See those drums over there?”
Jonnie looked at a pyramid of drums that had evidently just come in on reverse teleportation from Psychlo. Trucks with lifts were loading them. And just as he looked, a truck was shifting some barrels aboard the last freighter in.
“Those drums are going back overseas,” said Ker.
“How many minesites are there?” said Jonnie.
Ker scratched where his dome met his collar. “Sixteen, I think.”
“Where are they located?” said Jonnie, being very casual.
Ker started to shrug and then had a happy thought. He reached into a rear pocket and brought out a sheaf of papers. He had used the back of a map to make some work assignment notes on. He unfolded it. Although it was covered with creases and dirt it was quite plain. It was the first time Jonnie had seen a map of the whole planet.
With a searching talon, Ker counted. “Yep. Sixteen with two substations. That’s the lot.”
“What’s a substation?”
Ker pointed up at the pylon. Other pylons marched southwest into the distance until they were dwindling specks. “That power line comes in from a hydroelectric installation several hundred miles from here. It’s an ancient dam. The company changed all the machinery in it and it gives us all our power here for transshipment. It’s a substation.”
“Any workers there?”
“Oh, no. All automatic. There’s another substation on the overseas south continent. It’s not manned either.”
Jonnie looked at the map. He was excited but showed none of it. He counted five continents. Every minesite was precisely marked.
He reached over and took a pen out of Ker’s breast pocket. “How many machines do I still have to be checked out on?” asked Jonnie.
Ker thought about it. “There’s drillers . . . hoist . . . ”
Jonnie reached over and took the map and folded it so there was a fresh blank space on the back. He began to list the machines as Ker called them out.
When the list was finished, Jonnie gave Ker his pen but casually put the map in his pouch.
Jonnie stood up and stretched. He hunkered back down and said, “Tell me some more about Psychlo. Sure must be an interesting place.”
The assistant operations officer chattered on. Jonnie listened intently. The data was a valuable flood and the map in his pouch crackled comfortingly.
When just one man was taking on the whole empire of the Psychlos in the hope of freeing his people, every scrap of information had value beyond price.
The engulfing roar of company operations thundered around them in enormous power.