Part 18

1

Bittie MacLeod, carrying a blast rifle as tall as himself, followed along behind Sir Jonnie into the main Brigante encampment.

Sir Jonnie had sent him back twice, but wasn’t the proper place of a squire to follow his knight with his weapons into a place of danger?

And Bittie admitted to himself that it did look dangerous! There must be twenty-five hundred or three thousand of these people scattered around this clearing deep in the forest.

They had landed at the top edge of the open space. The prisoners—ooh, how they had stunk up the ship!—had been held in a lump in the big marine-attack plane, well separated from their weapons, and when they landed, the prisoners had been put on the ground first. Then Sir Robert had looked over the place and made some defense dispositions to cover their possible retreat as was proper for a war chief.

Bittie had taken the opportunity of persuading Sir Jonnie into some dry clothes—all you had to do was touch him and the water splashed. The Russians had not been idle over at the dam, and seeing all this rain, they had cut up some camouflage cloth and made rain capes.

It had been hard to get Sir Jonnie to pay attention and take care of himself, to get some food down and change clothes. But Bittie had done it. He’d clasped up the rain cape with a badge with a red star on it and gotten Jonnie’s dry shirt belted with his gold buckled belt and had found a helmet liner with a white star on it to keep the rain off him, and all in all, under these circumstances, Sir Jonnie looked pretty presentable even in this rain.

Sheets of water were marching across this wide clearing, full of people. Somebody had cut down an awful lot of trees and burned them sometime past. The blackened stumps stood all about. A crop was half-grown, but these people were running all about trampling it, a thing you shouldn’t do to crops.

Bittie looked about him through the rain. These creatures did not fit into his sense of fitness of things. He had read quite a bit in his school—he liked the very old romances best—and he hadn’t ever encountered anything like this!

There were no old men or old women. There were quite a few children in various bad, unhealthy conditions—potbellies, scabs on them, dirty. Shocking! Didn’t anyone properly feed them or clean them up?

Men they passed gave them a funny salute with a raised finger. Ugly, contemptuous faces. Faces of all colors and mixed colors. And all dirty. Their clothing was a kind of joke of a uniform, and not worn with any style, just sloppy.

They seemed to speak some strange kind of English like they had oatmeal in their mouths. He knew he didn’t talk really good English, not like university men such as Sir Robert, nor as good as Sir Jonnie. But anybody could understand him when he talked and he was trying to improve so that Colonel Ivan’s English, which he helped him with, would be good. But these people didn’t seem to care if the words even got out of their stinky mouths. Bittie almost bumped into Sir Jonnie, who had stopped in front of a middle-aged man. What language was Sir Jonnie using? Ah, Psychlo! Jonnie was asking something and the Brigante nodded and pointed over to the west and said something back in Psychlo. Bittie got it. Sir Jonnie didn’t want to know anything, he just wanted to see whether the Brigante spoke Psychlo. Clever!

Where were they headed? Oh, toward that big lean-to that had a leopard-skin-sort-of-flag on a pole in front of it. Bittie saw they had been following the prisoners who were still under guard, probably being taken to their chief.

This was a pretty awful kind of people. They simply halted wherever they were, right in the path, and relieved themselves. Awful. Over there a young man had thrown a girl down and they were . . . yes, they were! Fornicating right out in public.

Bittie turned his head away and tried to purify his thoughts. But the direction he turned showed him a man making a child do something unspeakable.

He began to feel a little ill and walked much closer to Sir Jonnie’s heels. These creatures were worse than animals. Far worse.

Bittie followed Sir Jonnie into the lean-to. How the place stank! There was somebody sitting on a tree trunk they had built the lean-to over. The man was awfully fat and was yellowish with the yellow that Dr. MacKendrick said was malaria. The folds of the man’s body made deep seams of dirt. He had a funny cap on that must be made out of leather; it had a peak in front; there was something set on it—a woman’s brooch? some kind of stone—a diamond?

The creature they had captured, Arf, was standing in front of the fat man. With a fist beat on his chest, Arf was making a report. What was he calling the fat man? General Snith? Wasn’t “Snit” a Psychlo common name? Wasn’t “Smith” the common English name? Terrible hard to tell with that oatmeal accent. The general was chewing on a haunch of something and didn’t seem much impressed.

Finally the general spoke: “Didjer gitcher serplies? The sulphur?”

“Well, no,” Arf said, and tried to tell it all again.

“Didjer bring bock yer stiffs?” the general said. Stiffs? Stiffs? Oh, bodies!

This “captunk” Arf seemed to get a bit scared and back up.

The general hurled the haunch straight at him and hit him in the face with it! “Howjer oxpect ter eat, den!” screamed the general. Eat? Stiffs? Bodies? Eat? Their own dead?

Then Bittie looked down at the thrown “haunch” that had ricocheted toward him. It was a human arm!

Hurriedly Bittie got out of there and got back of the lean-to and was very sick at his stomach.

But Sir Jonnie found him in a moment and put an arm around his shoulders and wiped his mouth with a bandana. He tried to get a Russian to take Bittie back to the plane, but Bittie wouldn’t go. The place of a squire was with his knight, and Jonnie might need this blast rifle among these horrible creatures. So they let him continue to follow.

Sir Jonnie looked into the lean-to in the edge of the trees and seemed very interested, and Bittie looked and saw a very old, very battered instruction machine like the pilots used to learn Psychlo, and this seemed to mean something to Sir Jonnie.

Who were they looking for now? The rain was coming down and these people were racing around and the blast rifle was very heavy and getting heavier. Oh, the coordinators!

They found them in another lean-to, a pair of young Scots . . . wasn’t one of them a MacCandless from Inverness? Yes, he thought he recognized him. They sat there, soaking wet even under cover, their bonnets like mops. They looked pretty white of face.

Sir Jonnie was trying to find out how they got here and they were pointing to a pile of cable—dropped by a plane.

So Sir Jonnie told them they’d better leave with them and they were saying no, it was a council order to bring these people back to the compound in America, and even though the transports were overdue they had supposed, it was trouble for the council to be finding enough pilots for the lift.

After a lot of argument about their duty—on their side—and their safety—on Sir Jonnie’s side, they were persuaded to at least come to the plane where they could be given a food package and maybe some weapons. So they all pushed their way through this mob of people back to where the Russians held a defense perimeter and got into the plane.

Sir Robert was there. He sat the two Scot coordinators down in one of the big Psychlo bucket seats.

“Was there a third one of you?” Sir Robert wanted to know.

“Well, yes,” said MacCandless. “There was Allison. But a couple of days ago he fell in a river and some scaly beast got him.”

“Did you see this?” said Sir Robert.

Well, no, they hadn’t seen it. The general had told them and there were plenty of rivers and lots of scaly beasts.

Sir Jonnie was saying something now: “Did Allison talk Psychlo?”

“He was in pilot training,” said MacCandless. “The Federation needs its own pilots sometimes. I suppose he did.”

“Yes, he did,” said the other Scot. “He could talk some Psychlo. They pulled him out of the class to come here. The order to lift these people out came very suddenly from the council and we were short—”

Sir Robert said, “Do you recall hearing him talk Psychlo to these ruffians around here?”

They thought for a while. The rain was drumming on the marine- attack plane roof and it was awfully hot.

“Aye,” said MacCandless finally. “I heard him talking to one of the officers that was finding it remarkable he talked Psychlo. They chattered away in it quite a while. I don’t speak—”

“That’s all we wanted to know,” Sir Robert was saying. He looked up at Sir Jonnie meaningfully. “Interrogation! They wanted him for interrogation!”

And Sir Jonnie was nodding.

Then Sir Robert pulled out something Bittie didn’t know he had. A tam-o’-shanter with blood on it. He handed it to the two coordinators.

They found some thread initials in it. Yes, it was Allison’s. Where’d Sir Robert get it?

Sir Robert blasted them very proper. He told them, and Bittie was shocked to learn that the Brigantes had sold Allison to the Psychlos! And the Psychlos must have wanted him for interrogation and God help Allison now. Sold Allison? A human being? To the monsters? Neither Bittie nor the coordinators could get their wits around that.

There was a dreadful row then. Sir Robert ordered the two coordinators to come along with them. The coordinators said this was their duty: to lift these people out; it was a council order! And Sir Robert thundered at them that he was the war chief of Scotland and he damned well wasn’t going to leave them here. The two coordinators tried to leave and Sir Jonnie and Sir Robert, using the cargo lashings Bittie hastily found, simply tied them up. They put them on top of the supplies at the rear of the plane.

They withdrew their defense perimeter and took off, and Bittie was not surprised to hear one of the pilots ask permission to strafe these creatures from the air. Sir Robert said no, if they tried that the creatures would just run under the trees; they weren’t equipped to handle them right now and they had other things to do; but if they’d done what they appeared to have done, they’d have a bloody feud on their filthy hands. Everybody was pretty upset about Allison.

When they had taken off and were flying back to the compound, Bittie got to pondering those people down there.

He leaned over to Sir Jonnie and said, “Sir Jonnie, how in all this rain can they be so dirty?”

2

The big marine-attack plane landed in the night near the branch mine. It was still deserted. The rain still came down. But there were quarreling sounds of animals over where the skirmish had been fought. The snarls and spits of angry leopards, the shattering barks of some other beast, the eerie cackling laughter of yet another predator. They were fighting over the bodies of the dead.

The flatbed with the flying platform and blast mortar was where it had been prepared, just inside the hangar door. There was no sign that the other flatbed had returned in retreat. It must still be following the convoy.

Jonnie looked through the deserted compound again. The lights were still on. The distant mine pumps still pounded away. Unless disturbed by some outside force, all such machinery would probably continue to run for decades.

The planetary traffic printer was still sitting there spewing out paper that recorded current traffic. Jonnie glanced through it. “MacIvor, can you please bring extra fuel to Moscow?” “This is the traffic controller at Johannesburg. Are there any planes en route this way? If not, I can close down for the night.” “Isaac, please come in, Isaac. Listen, Isaac, were there any serviceable ore freighters left in the Grozny minesite? And can they be converted for passengers? Please let me know by morning. We’re a wee bit shy of carriers right now.” “Lundy, we’re cancelling you on the Tibet run. We need you and your copilot back here to help with an airlift. Please acknowledge, laddie.” Most of it in the pilot jargon of Psychlo.

It struck Jonnie that this stream of messages would give an attacker a pretty good idea of what areas were actively operating. It was almost a catalogue of targets for Mark 32s.

If the convoy got through and these Psychlos mounted an overall attack, they could take back the planet.

He wondered whether he shouldn’t put out a general call on this set and order a seventy-two-hour radio silence. But no, the damage was done. These same messages were probably reeling out of the Lake Victoria minesite printer, too. And any transmission he made here might be picked up by the convoy, alerting it. Well, he would just have to succeed with the attack on the convoy, that was all.

He walked back through the empty, echoing levels. The Psychlos, he noticed, had mainly stripped the place of armament. They were leaving no blast guns or portable weapons behind to fall into Brigante hands. Lucky they’d overlooked the mortars in their haste.

The flatbed was out of the hangar now, waiting in the dark yard. Jonnie shut the doors of the compound—no use letting in the leopards and elephants and snakes.

He went back to the big plane and did a rapid review of the actions that were about to occur. He told them to fly in very low indeed—hugging ground—from way over to the east and come in behind the ambush point. He didn’t want that plane on convoy tank screens. Then deploy along this ridge . . . this one here that flanked the road . . . and when the convoy was well into the ravine, give them a flanking fire. What if they turned around and started back? Well, he’d be back there with a mortar on the flying platform to keep them from retreating.

What? an incredulous Robert the Fox was saying. One mortar against tanks? That’s impossible. The convoy would be able to get back into the forest and they’d never get them out. Oh. You want this plane to take off and help block that. Well, that’s all right. It is a battle plane.

“Just try to roll the tanks and trucks over without exploding them,” said Jonnie. “Use no radiation bullets. Just blast gun force. Keep your weapons on ‘Broad Blast,’ ‘No Flame,’ and ‘Stun.’ We don’t want to kill them. As soon as they’re all strung out along this ravine, block the road from the ambush. I’ll block it from the rear. The rest of you flank it from the ridge. This battle plane is to help if they get loose and head back toward the forest. Right?”

“Right, right, right.” A coordinator tried unsuccessfully to make up for the absence of the Russian coordinator, who was now with Ivan, and then said, “I’ll make sure the Russian coordinator explains it when we get to the others. . . . Oh, I’ve got it straight. I can tell them then.”

“Remember,” said Jonnie, “there’s a slim possibility that Allison is in that convoy, so keep your eye out for him and if he gets away in the fight, don’t shoot him.”

“Right, right, right.” And they’d get it explained to these Russians here when they caught up with Ivan.

“Smooth,” said Robert the Fox. “Oh, so very smooth. The bulk of our force can’t be briefed because the translator is elsewhere. What stupendous planning and coordination! I wish us luck. We will need it.”

Jonnie said, “But we’ve got the Psychlos outnumbered.”

“What?” exclaimed Robert the Fox. “There’s more than a hundred of them and only fifty or so of us.”

“That’s what I mean,” said Jonnie. “We’ve got them outnumbered one-half to one!”

They got it, and some Russians more advanced in English than the rest explained the joke to the other Russians. They all laughed. The rain had been getting them down. They felt better.

Jonnie was getting down to the flatbed where a Scot and four Russians, one of them a driver, waited, when a scurry in the plane drew his attention. It was Bittie MacLeod, all set to go with him, draped around with equipment.

This was something Jonnie did not want. The coming battle was nothing to drag the boy into. But there was a problem—the boy’s pride. Jonnie thought fast. This was almost harder to solve than the tactics!

Bittie’s world was filled with the romances of two thousand years ago, when knighthood was in flower, with flame-breathing dragons and pure knights and rescued fair damsels. Nothing wrong with that. He was a sweet little boy and his greatest ambition was to grow up and become a man like Dunneldeen or himself. Nothing wrong with that either. But his dreams risked bruising against the brutal realities of this world in which they fought, a world with its own brand of dragons. He would never live to become like “Prince” Dunneldeen or “Sir” Jonnie if he were not protected. But there was his pride. And it was showing now when he saw Jonnie’s pause, saw the search for an excuse to say no in Jonnie’s ice-blue eyes.

Hurriedly, Jonnie grabbed a mine radio from a seat and thrust it into the boy’s hands. Jonnie tapped the one in his own belt. He leaned very close to Bittie’s ear and whispered, “I need a reliable contact on this plane who can tell me, after the battle is joined, if anything is going wrong. Don’t use it until the first shot is fired. But if there’s anything amiss after that, you tell me fast.” He put a finger to his lips.

Bittie was instantly bright, if a trifle conspiratorial. He nodded. “Oh, yes, Sir Jonnie!” and he faded back into the plane.

Jonnie hobbled down the squishy road to the flatbed. It was sitting there, lights stabbing through the sheets of rain. He checked his crew, got in, and nodded to the driver.

The flatbed, with its flying mine platform and mortar, roared, drowning out the snarling fight over in the woods.

They were off in a truck to do combat with tanks.

3

Brown Limper Staffor sat in his new palatial office and stared down at the offending object on the desk. He was revolted.

Things had been moving well lately. The domed government building—some said it had been the state capitol building—had been partially restored and even its dome painted white. The halls had been refinished. A chamber had been provided for council sessions—a very ideal chamber with a high dais and bench on one end and wooden seats before it. Huge, upholstered Psychlo executive desks had been carted in to furnish separate offices for council members (they were a bit dwarfing to sit at, but if one put a man-chair on a box behind them they were all right). A hotel had been opened that provided living space for dignitaries and important visitors, and under the ministrations of a cook from Tibet, it was serving very passable meals on real plates.

The tutelage he was getting while standing in the shadows of a post over at the compound at night was truly excellent. Utterly invaluable data about government. Terl hardly deserved the extreme conditions of living in a cage. The Psychlo had repented and was doing all he could to help. How misunderstood the Psychlos were!

The fruits of such learning were already showing up. It was taking a little time and it required a considerable amount of political skill. But Terl had traveled all over the universes as one of the most trusted executives of Intergalactic Mining, and the things he knew about governments and politics were far in excess of anything else available.

Take this matter of having too numerous a council. The tribal chiefs from over the world resented having to come here and spend endless time wrangling in the chamber; they had their own tribal affairs to look after. They were also too numerous, thirty of them, to really get anything done. And it was almost with joy that they divided the world up into five continents with one representative from each. From an unwieldy throng of thirty, the council had been reduced to a more easily handled five. And when it was explained to them that their own tribal work was far more vital than this humdrum paper shuffling at the council, and that the most competent men were needed at home, they had gladly pushed some cousins and such into the five continental seats.

The five-man council, of course, was a bit unwieldy, and it was in the process now of appointing a two-man executive. With a little more work and the application of some invaluable tips Terl had given him, sometime in the coming weeks, Brown Limper would find himself the council representative with authority to act independently in the name of the council, assisted only by the council secretary who, of course, did not need to have a vote and would be required just to sign his name. It would be so much neater.

The Scots had been a bit of trouble. They had protested Scotland being included with Europe, but it was shown that it always had been. This made their representative a German from a tribe in the Alps. Well, majority votes of the old council had handled that, and now there were no more of those accursed Scots around challenging every sensible measure proposed by Brown Limper.

The tribes were satisfied. They had been given title to all the lands about them with absolute right to allocate them as they chose. They had each been given the exclusive ownership of the ancient cities and anything contained therein. This had made Brown Limper quite popular with the chiefs of most tribes—but not the Scots, of course. Nothing could please them. They had had the nerve to point out that this gave all property and the whole continent of America and everything in it to Brown Limper. But that was quashed by simply indicating that there were four tribes in America now—British Columbia, where two people had been found, the Sierra Nevada, where four people had been found, the little group of Indians to the south, and Brown Limper’s. That they all now lived in Brown Limper’s village had been quite beside the point!

The selection of a capital had been another victory. For some reason, some tribes thought the world capital should be in their area. Some even thought it should shift about. But when it was pointed out how much trouble and expense it was to maintain a capital, and that Brown Limper Staffor, out of the goodness of his heart and with philanthropy as his only motive, would let his tribe pay all the costs, there was no further argument. The world capital had been decreed to be “Denver,” although its name one of these days would be changed to “Staffor.”

The resolution of the old council, before it became only five, to establish a planetary bank, was what had started this trouble now before him.

A Scot named MacAdam had been called in, and he had advised them that the Galactic credits they had would be meaningless to Earth people at this time. Instead, he proposed that he and a German now residing in Switzerland, a German who had an awful lot of dairy cows and home cheese factories, be granted a charter. They would issue currency to a tribe to the amount of land it had in actual productive use, and in return, they would charge a small percent. It was a good idea, for any tribe could only get more currency by getting more area into productive use. The currency was then backed by “The Tribal Lands of Earth.” The bank was to be called the Earth Planetary Bank and the charter given it was quite broad and sweeping.

With amazing speed they had printed currency. The German had come in on it because he had a brother who had preserved the art of making woodcutting blocks that printed on paper. They had found warehouses full of untouched currency paper in an old ruin called London, and hand presses in a town once called Zurich. In no time at all, they were issuing currency.

The notes only had one denomination: one Earth credit. Apparently they had made one trial issue and it didn’t go. People didn’t know what to do with it. They had been bartering with horses and suchlike and they had to be taught what money was. So they had made a second issue.

It was a specimen of this second issue that was lying on Brown Limper’s desk and giving him much trouble. Not just trouble but a revulsion so deep it was making him ill. The woodblock bill was very nicely printed. It said Earth Planetary Bank. It had a figure 1 in each corner. It had One Credit spelled out in all the languages and calligraphy used by existing tribes. It had Legal Tender for All Debts, Private and Public on it, similarly repeated in the various tongues. It had Exchangeable for One Credit at the Bank Offices of Zurich and London or any Branch of the Earth Planetary Bank. It had Secured by the Tribal Lands of the Tribes of Earth as Attested in Production. It had By Charter of the Council of Earth. And it had the signatures of the two bank directors. All that was fine.

But it had, squarely in the center of it, in a big oval, a portrait of Jonnie Goodboy Tyler!

They had copied a picture of him somebody had taken with a picto-recorder. There he was in a buckskin hunting shirt, bareheaded, a silly look on his face somebody thought must be noble or something. And of all things he had a blast gun in his hand.

Worse! There was his name curled over the top of the picture: Jonnie Goodboy Tyler.

And even worse! On the scroll under the picture it said, Conqueror of the Psychlos.

Nauseating. Awful.

But how could the bank make such a blunder?

Not fifteen minutes ago, he had finished a conversation with MacAdam on the radio. MacAdam had explained that the first issue was not popular at all. So they had instantly gotten out this second issue. It seemed people might not know what money was, but they could comprehend Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, and in some places they were not using it as money, but putting it up on their walls, even framing it. Yes, bundles of it now had gone to every tribe. No, they couldn’t be recalled, for it would hurt the bank’s credit.

Brown Limper had tried to explain that this was totally against the council’s intentions in chartering the bank. There had been a unanimous council resolution that there must be no more war. The resolution had meant “War between tribes is hereby forbidden,” but Brown Limper had seen that it was worded so as to include all war everywhere including interplanetary.

This bank note, he had explained with all the logic he could bring to bear, was contrary to that antiwar resolution. They had this . . . this . . . fellow brandishing a weapon and they were actually inciting war in the future against the Psychlos and who knew who else.

MacAdam had been sorry and so had the German in Zurich, but they really didn’t sound sorry. They had their charter, and if the council wanted to ruin its own credit, it would be unfortunate if funds were cut off to America in the future, so the charter must stay valid and unchanged and the bank must do what it saw fit to do in order to carry on its business. And it would be too bad when the world court, now in planning, convened, if it had as its first suit a member of the bank against the council for breach of trust and corollary expenses.

No, Brown Limper thought gloomily. They didn’t sound sorry.

He would take no more advice from council members about this. He would go down and get some while standing in the shadows of the post near the cage. But he didn’t have any real hope.

“Jonnie Goodboy Tyler. Conqueror of Psychlos.” Brown Limper spat on the bill.

He suddenly seized the bill and tore it frantically into little pieces.

Then he threw the pieces around with angry gestures.

After that he gathered them all up again and, with a set, malevolent expression on his face, burned them.

Then he pulverized the ashes with his fist. But somebody came in soon after and said with a delighted smile, “Have you seen the new bank note?” And waved one!

Brown Limper rushed out of the room and found a place to vomit.

Later, calmer, he determined that even though they were all against him, he would continue to do his very best for Earth. He would really get that Tyler.

4

The flatbed rumbled and jarred through the soaking wet night. The ground drive of these things was supposed to keep them floating one to three feet off the ground. But when the ground varied eight to ten feet from level every few feet, the effect was far from floating. It was bone jarring.

The teleportation-type drive sought to automatically adjust itself to the sensed ground distance. It corrected and recorrected and the result was a whining, racing, dying, racing combination of rumbles and screeches that hurt the ears.

No wheeled vehicle could have traveled this “road” at all; so gullied and rock strewn a “highway” was fit only for wandering beasts, if that. The ore trucks that had traversed it for hundreds of years had worsened it, rather than otherwise, as they blew off the humus, the only thing that protected it from the gutting of the rain.

Jonnie was trying to get some sleep. He was dead tired. His left arm ached from constant use of the cane. His palm was calloused now but even it had rubbed raw. Four days of floundering through this forest, four days of constant sweating from the heat, four days of walking with a cane, and four nights full of insects, had taken their toll. If he wanted to fight a battle with any degree of success, he had better get some sleep.

The seat was, of course, huge. But it was not very cushioned. And when there weren’t bumps and jolts, there were stops. Like right now.

He opened his eyes to look through the windscreen. The rumps of elephants! Tails twitching in the headlights, bedewed with rain, they were strolling along, used to these trucks and owning the road for themselves. Psychlo trucks had no car horns but they had bullhorns and the Russian driver was using one now. He was telling those elephants to get off the road. He was repeating some word that sounded like “suk-in-sin” and Jonnie divined it did not mean “elephant.” He went back to sleep, bullhorn and all.

The next time he opened his eyes, a leopard was blocking the way. It had killed a mouse deer and was using the road for a dinner table. Jonnie took it that the leopard did not like its meals interrupted. The fangs and glaring green orbs of the eyes indicated it was ready to take on any number of trucks. The bullhorn was going again. Somewhere they had changed drivers and the Scot was at the controls. The leopard heard the Scot battle cry and leaped straight up and off the road and was gone. They passed over the dead mouse deer, once more on their way.

A flatbed could do eighty on the flat. It was straining now to get eight! No wonder it took days to get from the branch compound to the main minesite! Testimony that Psychlos didn’t do it any faster lay in the little round-domed roadside houses that occurred every few miles.

Jonnie had stopped at the first one they came to. It was ideal for ambush, and even though he didn’t think the Psychlos would leave anybody behind, one should know what lay ahead. But it was just a dome, big enough for four or five Psychlos to stretch out and rest or wait for a repair truck or have lunch. It was bare; a shelter that kept out wild animals and rain, nothing more.

There was no sign of the other flatbed and its crew, so they were still following the convoy up ahead.

Toward morning Jonnie woke to find the truck stopped. The lights were on. The rain was still coming down. The driver was tapping Jonnie’s shoulder and pointing to the road ahead. Jonnie sat up.

Somebody had hacked some vines and made a sign on the road. It was an arrow. From the clean cuts it appeared to have been done with a claymore or a bayonet. Psychlos would have shot the vines in two. So it was their own people. They’d left them a sign.

It was pointing to a roadside rest hut.

There was a clatter of weapons in the back as his crew made ready in case they dismounted. Jonnie pulled the rain cape around him, checked his belt gun, and picked up a mine lamp and his cane.

The rain drizzled down his neck as he got out.

The only thing different about the mine hut was evidence of recent foot traffic in front of it and a door slightly ajar. Jonnie pushed it open with his cane. The smell of human blood hit him!

There was a scurry of something in there. Jonnie drew his belt gun. But it was only a large rat that came charging out.

The Scot was behind him with an assault rifle. Two Russians were coming up.

Jonnie flooded the mine-lamp light into the place. There was something lying against the far wall. He could not make it out for a moment and stepped forward to find he was walking in blood.

He turned the mine lamp fully on the object. He went closer. It was hard to tell what it was beyond a mangle of shredded flesh. Then he saw a piece of cloth. Part of a . . . kilt!

It was Allison.

The Scot and the Russians stood petrified.

A closer examination showed that every artery and major vein had been left unsevered. Careful Psychlo claws had ripped away the flesh around them, slice by slice. The whole body had been shredded in such a fashion.

It must have taken hours for him to die.

They had left the throat and jaws until last and much of them still remained. Interrogation, Psychlo-style!

There was something in the remains of the hand. A sharp-edged tool Psychlos often carried in their pockets to clean motor points. A major artery on the inside of the leg was parted.

Allison had effected his own death. He must have seized the tool from an unguarded pocket and finished himself.

Could they have rescued him? Not in this forest and on this road, Jonnie thought sadly. The Psychlos must have started his torture at the compound and finished it here when they feared he might be dying. And they would have learned nothing of any help for their own convoy.

Allison had not even known of their own expedition. Ah, but Allison possibly could have told them the numbers and disposition of bases the humans now had. And Allison had probably talked, for there are limits to human endurance.

No, the remaining teeth were chipped with grinding, the jaws seemed to be frozen shut. Possibly Allison had not talked.

But it didn’t matter whether he had talked or not. The convoy was doomed. It was doomed in the narrowed eyes of the Russians. It was doomed in the angry clench of the Scot’s fist on a claymore.

After a little, the Scot went out and got a tarp and laid it gently over the mess that had been Allison. The Scot said, “We’ll be back for ye, laddie. With blood on our blades, never fear!”

Jonnie walked back out into the rain. It came to him suddenly that the Brigantes now had a blood feud with Scotland.

The Psychlos? He was not too sure he wanted them alive now, and he had to make himself be very rational about it.

5

In the midmorning twilight of the forest, they caught up with the other flatbed. It was the small beginning of the string of mishaps that were to dog them that day.

Running in the dark, the other flatbed had come to a river, one of the many that wandered through this forest on a more or less westerly course. Their own direction of travel had been to the east of south. The driver, possibly overly tired, had not slacked speed. These ground drives could run on water, if it were reasonably smooth, as the sensors under them could sense water as well as ground. A teleportation drive didn’t rest the weight of a vehicle on the surface but held it suspended. But the driver must have hit a bump on the bank and had an unlevel vehicle when he reached the water, and there it sat, nose submerged in the water, disabled.

The crew was sitting there now on the flying mine platform, back in under the trees. They had flown it and the mortar off, and put themselves in a posture of defense. They were very happy to see Jonnie. Crocodiles were all over the river bank in front of them and a ring of the beasts were circling around the flying platform—nobody had dared shoot for fear of pulling the convoy back on them.

Jonnie made room for the second platform on his own flatbed and they flew theirs the short distance. The roar of the motors and the bellow and roar of the crocs were deafening, and Jonnie was afraid they might be close enough to the convoy tail to attract attention.

They left the half-submerged flatbed where it lay, and double-loaded with two platforms and two mortars, they crossed the river and continued their pursuit.

Shortly after, the road got better, due possibly to a change of soil. They picked up speed. They had had about a twelve-to-fifteen hour travel gap between the tail and themselves. But a convoy tends to be slower than a single vehicle, particularly in such rough terrain.

They were traveling so fast by early afternoon that they did not see that it was getting lighter ahead. Abruptly they burst out of the forest and onto a wide savannah.

Three miles ahead, there was the convoy tail!

With a prayer they had not been seen, they did a U-turn and got back in the trees.

Jonnie directed them eastward within the thin border of the forest over very rough going. Then they stopped.

The savannah before them was covered with grass and some shrub. Here and there cactuslike plants dotted the wide expanse.

Jonnie got up on the cab to get a better look. Aha! The defile of the ambush was just ahead of the convoy. The lead tank was entering it now. That ravine seemed to be a cut through the southern shoulder of a range of mountains.

Mountains! Up to the northeast, their crowns above the clouds, reared two peaks, enormously tall. Was that ice and snow?

There was something else strange. Then Jonnie had it. It wasn’t raining! There was cloud, it was very hot and humid, there was not much sun, but it wasn’t raining!

The Russians were buzzing, looking at the convoy. It was impressive. Over fifty vehicles, most of them flatbeds loaded to the last pound with ammunition, fuel and breathe-gas, were crawling along like some enormous black snake. Three, no, five tanks! The one in the lead was a Basher “Bash Our Way to Glory.” A nearly impregnable armored vehicle. There was another tank in the middle and three tanks at the end. Now that their own motor was off, the roar of that convoy even at this distance was like thunder.

If the ambush were in place, the ball would open when that whole convoy was in the defile and the mortar up front closed the road in front of them.

Jonnie turned to the Russian officer he had brought. The man spoke hardly any English at all, but with signs and a little relief map drawn in the dirt, Jonnie got across what he wanted him to do. The southern side of the defile ended in a knoll. The right side of the defile was a steep hill, a cliff in fact. If one of the flying platforms could just get behind that knoll and wait until all those vehicles were in the ravine, it could lob mortar shells into this end of the cliff and start an avalanche that would close the back door.

The Russian got it. He and his crew took off in the flying mine platform, flew along inside the border of the trees, and vanished.

Jonnie watched the convoy intently. It was struggling along into the ravine. This was a “set-piece battle,” the kind he’d read of in old man-books. When the whole convoy got into that defile, the ambush would avalanche the road closed in front of them, and the mortar he’d just sent would close the road behind them. They would have a soaring slope on their right and cliffs on their left. They wouldn’t be able to turn around. And one had only to fly over them and tell them to surrender and it would all be over, just like that. But set-piece battles seldom come off, as they were about to discover.

They waited for the convoy to enter fully. There was just a momentary glimpse of the platform they had sent in as it settled into position. Perfect. Now all they had to do was wait for the last tank to enter. The head of the convoy was now out of Jonnie’s sight. Nearly all the convoy was in the ravine.

Then BLAM! The ambush mortar let go. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

But the last three tanks were not yet in the gap.

Jonnie dove for the console of the flying platform. His four-man crew scrambled up to hold on.

The flying platform soared into the air, Jonnie’s fingers dancing on its rudimentary keyboard. He took it up a thousand feet, south of the road and near the forest edge.

He could see the head of the convoy now. A roaring avalanche was falling across the road in front of the Basher tank. He could see some Russians in a reserve group back of the ambush point. He spotted three Russians along the crest to the convoy’s right, hundreds of feet above the vehicles.

The Basher sought to climb the roadblock. Its guns would not elevate high enough. It backed and then charged the dust-geysering rock pile. The tank’s nose lifted and it began to fire.

Blast after blast arced up from the tank. It must be firing explosive shells! They soared in a glowing curve up and dropped in the area where the ambush command post must be. But the mortar up there was still firing down.

The last three tanks in the convoy were backing up. There was no way this end could be sealed!

Jonnie took the flying platform halfway between the convoy tail and the woods. The end tanks were now turning around. Let loose on this savannah they would be very hard to handle even with planes. Yes, they were also Bashers. No, a plane couldn’t handle them.

At the head of the convoy the tank charged the rock barrier again, probably to elevate its gun muzzles. The tank in the center of the convoy was firing toward the ambush point but could not fire up the steep slope to the crest.

Jonnie yelled to the Scot, “Start felling trees across their road!”

The Scot got it and angled the mortar around. The Russians, holding on to the thin, tilting platform, began to drop mortar shells into the stubby barrel.

They landed a shell beside a giant tree near the road back into the forest and it began to topple.

Mortar blast after mortar blast flashed at the forest edge. Trees began to fall amid towering columns of dust. Jonnie was sighting the mortar in by tilting the platform.

The three tanks saw the road back closing in front of them. They knew they could not get through and into the forest. They started to fan out on the savannah. Their guns opened up, trying to hit the flying platform.

Jonnie dodged their misused vehicle about. It had no armor. It was really just a flat plate. There was even hardly anything to hold on to.

Dunneldeen flashed down with the battle plane. He must have been up there thousands of feet and out of sight.

Gouts of flame and dirt began to pound around the three Basher tanks.

Suddenly, the convoy in the ravine began to close up. Evidently thinking it was moving again, the three tanks swerved and raced back to the convoy tail, mindful of their duty to protect it. They stubbed right onto the trail. Then they too halted. They were trying to fire up at the ambush point. They could not elevate to reach the crest of the slope to their left.

The other flying platform opened up.

Blast mortar shells crashed into the cliff behind the last tank. The rocks and dirt flashed into the air. An avalanche roared down and closed the back door.

The lead Basher tried another charge at the rockslide blocking their forward progress. Just at the instant its nose reared up, a mortar struck under it.

The lead Basher flew up, rolled over in a back summersault, and lay upside down in the road, helpless.

Jonnie drew a deep breath. He was just about to tell Dunneldeen to open up on a bullhorn and demand surrender and was reaching for his belt mine radio to do so, when their fortunes reversed.

6

Debacle!

Cutting in through the chatter of Psychlos in the convoy, but clearly heard because of its high pitch, the piping voice of Bittie said, “There’s nobody left here speaks Russian! Sir Jonnie! There’s nobody to tell the Russians anything!”

“What’s happened?” barked Jonnie.

“Sir Jonnie, the tank shots wiped out the command post here! Sir Robert and Colonel Ivan and the coordinators are knocked out! I was under a tarpaulin pile. I would have told you sooner but”—a wail—“I couldn’t find my radio!”

Then static and a babble of Psychlo voices on the same wavelength.

Jonnie swung the flying platform north of the ravine and behind it, using it for protection.

Below in the ravine the jammed convoy clogged the road. It couldn’t turn. It couldn’t escape. But neither could they fire into all that ammunition and fuel and breathe-gas without blowing the whole thing a mile high.

There were only a few shots being fired down by the Russian soldiers. Only three of them were on the crest. The Psychlos must have thought the crest was not held.

There was a battery of commands on the mine radio.

Suddenly the Psychlos unloaded from their vehicles, grabbing blast rifles. They lined up along the bottom of the slope, breathe-gas masks in place.

More Psychlo commands.

The line of huge bodies surged forward all along the slope bottom. It was four hundred yards or more, very steep yards, up to the crest. They were going to storm the crest!

But no real disaster yet. Dunneldeen was in place up in the sky. It was very obvious that all he had to do was wait for those Psychlos to get halfway up that slope and then set his guns on stun and knock them flat and unconscious.

Then Bittie’s voice again. “The Russians don’t understand! They’re rushing up to the crest!”

Jonnie lifted the platform a little higher to see. Bittie himself seemed confused. There was nothing wrong with the Russians manning that long top of the ravine’s left side. In fact, they’d better.

Yes, the reserve group of about thirty Russians were sprinting from in back of the crest, their assault rifles ready. The upcoming line of Psychlos was about a hundred yards up now and still had three hundred yards of very steep slope to climb.

In just a few moments now, when those Psychlos were far enough up from their trucks, Dunneldeen could make a pass with guns and stun them flat.

Bittie’s voice, “These Russians are awful mad about Colonel Ivan! They think he’s dead! They’re not listening!”

Jonnie slammed the flying platform down behind the Russians and jumped off. He started toward the cliff. The Russians had reached it. Several were firing down at the Psychlos.

“Hold off!” Jonnie yelled at them. “That plane will knock them down!”

Not one Russian face turned in his direction. He looked wildly about for one of their officers. He saw one. But the man was yelling something down the slope at the Psychlos and firing a pistol at them.

The officer roared something at his men. They rose up—good Lord! They were going to charge!

Before Dunneldeen could make his firing pass, the downslope was loaded with charging, shouting Russians. They were angry, berserk! They stopped, fired, ran, stopped, fired!

The slope was a roaring sheet of flame going both up and down!

Psychlos tried to stem this avalanche of ferocity. Assault rifles were hammering and flaming. Blast guns were roaring.

Dunneldeen, unable to shoot without killing Russians, hung helplessly in despair. One pass and those Psychlos would be knocked into unconsciousness.

The Russians were in among the Psychlos, firing ceaselessly!

The remaining Psychlos tried to run back to their vehicles. The Russians were right on top of them!

Huge bodies went tumbling down the slope. Isolated groups tried to stand their ground. Assault rifles racketed into solid sheets of sound. Then one last Psychlo almost made it to the cab of a truck. A Russian knelt, sighted, and cut him in two.

A cheer went up from the Russians.

The slope went quiet.

Jonnie surveyed the ruin.

Over a hundred Psychlo bodies. Three dead Russians.

Smoke drifting up from clothing that still burned.

Disaster! They had been there to capture Psychlos!

Jonnie went plunging down the slope. He found the Russian officer standing there, obviously intending to shoot any Psychlo that twitched.

“Find some alive!” Jonnie shouted at him. “Don’t finish off the wounded. Find some alive!”

The Russian looked at him with battle-glazed eyes. Seeing it was Jonnie, he began to unwind a bit. He fished about for some English. “That show Psychlo! They kill colonel!”

Jonnie finally got it across that he wanted them to find any live ones. Neither the officers nor the rest of the Russians thought this very sensible. They did finally understand it. They went poking among the recumbent Psychlos to find any that were still breathing, a fact that could be determined by a flutter of a breathe-mask valve.

They finally located about four that were shot up but still alive. They couldn’t move the thousand-pound bodies very much but they straightened them out.

MacKendrick put in an appearance, walking, half-sliding down the slope. He looked at the four and shook his head. “Maybe. I don’t know much about Psychlo anatomy, but I can stop that green blood oozing out.”

One of them had a different tunic from the rest. An engineer? “Do all you can!” he told MacKendrick and hobbled up the slope toward the ambush point.

Bittie was beckoning to him from the top of a rock, then scrambled down and vanished behind it.

Jonnie came up and surveyed the scene. The command post they had chosen was a hollow in the rocks and it was a mess. The Basher tank had scored a hit just above it.

The gear was all smashed up. Their radio was in bits.

Bittie was kneeling beside Sir Robert, lifting his head. The old veteran’s eyes were blinking. He was coming to.

They were stunned with concussion. Some blood was coming out of their ears and noses. Jonnie walked closer. Probably some broken fingers, lots of bruises. None of it serious.

With water from a canteen on a bandana, he went about the work of bringing them around. Robert the Fox, Colonel Ivan, two coordinators and a Scot radioman.

Jonnie clambered up on a rock and looked down the defile. The convoy was all there. Nothing had blown up, so the Russians must have been using plain, not radioactive, slugs. But they hadn’t been after the material. They’d been after live Psychlos.

Three Russians and Angus were getting the lead Basher tank open, a trick to do for it was upside down, which sealed its hatches. Angus got a side port open with a torch. The Russians looked in. Jonnie cupped his hands. “Any alive in there?”

Angus saw him up there, looked into the tank and back up to Jonnie: Angus shook his head negatively. He called back, “Crushed and suffocated!”

Sir Robert had made his way up to Jonnie, very shaky and white of face. Jonnie looked at him.

Sir Robert started to speak and Jonnie joined him in chorus.

“The best-planned raid in history!”

7

It took them three hard-working days to clean up the mess and occupy the Lake Victoria minesite.

The ore road had gone south to skirt the mountain ranges and turned back north to the minesite itself.

In full view, when the overcast parted, to the northwest of the minesite, were the Mountains of the Moon. It was a long range that contained at least seven peaks up to sixteen thousand feet high. Right here on the equator, in all this heat and humidity, one didn’t look for snow and ice, but there it was atop those peaks. There were even glaciers up there; now and then the towering tops were briefly visible, blazingly white.

At one-time this range had been the border between two or three countries of ancient times. At the period of the Psychlo invasion or perhaps before, the passes had been mined with nuclear tactical weapons. Needless to say, close as the mountains were to the minesite, the Psychlos never went there. There were several small tribes in the Mountains of the Moon, brown and black and even some whites remaining; they were often starved despite the teeming forests and savannahs full of game below them, and although they could come down now, long tradition kept them from approaching the minesite.

An ancient dam the man-maps said was the Owens Falls Dam provided power for the minesite, power so plentiful that the Psychlos just left all lights blazing.

This was an extensive minesite with seven underground levels and many branches working for tungsten and cobalt, and it was plentifully supplied with machinery and equipment. But MacArdle, in his original raid, had blown up their fuel and ammunition plant, and all their dumps.

The four wounded Psychlos were in a sealed-off section of the dormitory and breathe-gas was pumping into it. MacKendrick did not have much hope for them but he was working on it.

The problem of the other bodies they had solved. There was no morgue, and fighting time in this equatorial heat, they had hastily gotten forklifts and ore freighters from the minesite and lofted the Psychlo bodies up through the clouds to the freezing temperatures and crusted ice and snow of a mountain peak once called, the man-maps said, Elgon. They were up there now, ninety-seven bodies, around a thousand pounds each, neatly laid out in the frigid zone.

“We may have no diplomas,” Dunneldeen had said when they finished, “but it would seem we are pretty good Psychlo undertakers!” And then he looked down from the dizzy altitude to the plains below and added, “Or is it overtakers?” The Scots scorned his joke, it was so terrible.

They had opened up the road with blade scrapers and righted the Basher tank with a crane, and driven the vehicles the rest of the way to the minesite. Despite company regulations, they stored the fuel, ammunition and breathe-gas underground out of the way of attack. They were experts in attacking such dumps.

Thor had come back to help them. He said some of the people in the tribes had seen the flashes of the battle and when they heard the last Psychlos were mopped up they had named the day the “Tyler Battleday.” Thor had flown a hunting party down to the savannah and they had come back with game and there had been a lot of feasting and dancing. “It is sometimes very gratifying, Jonnie, to be taken for you! But I had to disappear during the battle. You can’t be in two places at once.” Thor had spotted the convoy exit from the forest and had discreetly stood by at two hundred thousand feet to assist if needed. He had full picto-recorder disks of the whole battle and was surprised that nobody wanted to see them.

Tired, glad to be out of the rain, they sat around in the huge chairs of the Psychlo recreation hall. Jonnie was looking through the pilot traffic that still spewed out on the printer. Nothing unusual. He threw it down.

“We better get to work,” said Jonnie.

They had been working. What did you call what they’d been doing if not working? Robert the Fox shook his head. Angus looked at his hands, bruised by wielding heavy torches and twisting open oversized locks. Dunneldeen just stared and thought of the flight hours ferrying dead Psychlos to the snow. Colonel Ivan whispered back of a bandaged hand to the coordinator who then told him what Jonnie had said, and he looked back frowning. Hadn’t his people been killing every Psychlo in sight and driving trucks and cleaning a minesite and doing everything else?

“Well,” said Jonnie, “I hate to have to tell you that we aren’t here to do all that.”

All right. But then what—

“We’re here,” said Jonnie, “to find out why the Chamco brothers committed suicide.”

The devil with the Chamcos. They were just Psychlos and they’d tried to kill Jonnie—

So Jonnie made a speech. He paused now and then to let the coordinator catch up for the Russians present.

He told them that they did not know whether or not Psychlo was still there as a functioning planet. He told them about the Galactic Bank note and all the races listed on it, and he remembered he had one and passed it around.

They realized what he was saying. Earth was wide open to counterattack. If the Psychlo planet were still there, it would eventually counter-attack with new gas drones. And these other races possibly had means of reaching Earth swiftly. And when they found there were no Psychlo defenses here, they could slaughter the place if they had a mind to.

The only way to find out was to rebuild the teleportation shipment rig and get it cracking.

But the Psychlos put on the project had attacked him when he questioned them on that subject.

They got it. They also got the fact that no other group or organization was working to handle these problems or the defenses of the planet.

“Which elects us,” Jonnie said.

They agreed.

“So, Angus, I want you to set up that machine they said you used on me to find that steel splinter. And we’re going to set it up and start looking in Psychlo heads! If we find something and if one of those Psychlos that are still alive can be operated on, we will have somebody we can make rebuild the teleportation rig and we’re in! We can cast picto-recorders out and look at Psychlo and we can look at these other civilizations and then we’ll know where we are. Right now we’re listing in the cloud layers with no direction but down. Without knowing, I think we’re dead men.”

“We have all their mathematics and texts on teleportation,” said Angus. “I’ve seen them, man. I’ve even held them in my hands!”

“But you haven’t made any sense out of them,” said Jonnie. “I tried for weeks to unravel them. I’m no mathematician, but there’s something wrong with those mathematics. They just don’t work out! So we need a Psychlo who won’t commit suicide if we ask him.”

“Tell me, Jonnie,” said Dr. MacKendrick, “I see no evidence of anything in their heads. You can’t X-ray, or whatever you call it, thoughts!”

“When I was lying around trying to get back the use of my hand and arm,” said Jonnie, “I got hold of a lot of man-books on the subject of the brain. And you know what I found?”

They didn’t know.

“Way back when man had hospitals and lots of surgeons and engineers,” said Jonnie, “clear back, maybe twelve hundred years ago, they were experimenting with planting electric capsules in the heads of babies to regulate their behavior. To make them laugh or cry and get hungry just by pressing a button.”

“What a disgusting experiment,” said Robert the Fox.

“They had an idea,” said Jonnie, “that they could control the whole population if they put electric capsules in their heads.”

The coordinator translated for Colonel Ivan. He said there was a myth that that had been tried—controlling whole populations—in Russia, and nobody liked it.

“I don’t know they ever succeeded,” said Jonnie. “But when I looked this Chamco thing over, I had a clue about it. Why should two hitherto cooperative renegades, happily signed up on good contracts, suddenly attack me when I said certain words? I have reviewed the disks somebody cut. I was pressing them to rebuild the teleportation transshipment rig, and they started to get upset and then I said these words: ‘If you will explain to me . . .’ and they both went crazy and attacked.”

“Maybe they were just withholding information,” said Robert the Fox. “They—”

“They committed suicide two days later,” said Jonnie. “After that I asked Ker whether he had ever heard of Psychlos committing suicide and he said yes, one did, an engineer on a planet he’d served on. They used an alien race there and the Psychlo engineer had gone out drinking one night, killed an alien, and then two days later committed suicide. That was the only one he ever heard of. Also,” he added impressively, “they return all corpses to Psychlo. There must be something in them they don’t want found.”

The group buzzed to each other and got their wits around it.

“So I am guessing that Psychlos, when they are babies,” said Jonnie, “get something put in their heads to protect their technology!”

MacKendrick and Angus were very interested now.

“So that’s what we’ve been doing,” said Robert the Fox.

Angus went to their ship to assemble the device. MacKendrick went to a dormitory section to set up tables. Dunneldeen and Thor went off to the mountain peak to bring down a couple of corpses, Dunneldeen calling himself and Thor “the gruesome twosome.”

If Jonnie was right or Jonnie was wrong, they would know more very shortly.

The planet was wide open to counterattack.

Robert the Fox went out and got an antiplane battery manned and arranged for twenty-four-hour alert and pilot scrambles. This tiny group, under half a hundred, only four or five pilots, and an antiplane battery that had already failed to shoot down one of the minesite attack craft, to defend a whole planet? Ridiculous! But he went through the motions. At least for local defense.

8

“Who are you?” said Terl. He had no trouble at all in seeing the figure who stood in the shadow of the post. It was a brilliantly clear, moonlit night, so bright that even the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies gleamed.

Lars Thorenson had brought the newcomer down to the cage at senior councilman Staffor’s request. Lars had totally flunked out of pilot training after trying a “combat maneuver” so impossible that it crashed him, wiped out a plane, and cracked his neck. He had been appointed “language assistant” to the council. The plaster cast collar he was wearing did not interfere with his talking. He had been told to bring the newcomer down to the cage, turn off the electricity, hand in a mine radio, give the newcomer another mine radio, and then with no mine radio of his own, withdraw. Lars was very punctilious about his duties—he had accepted the appointment on the condition that he could now also spread fascism among the tribes, which made both him and his father very happy. This newcomer had really stunk up the ground car! Suddenly Lars re-membered he was also to tell the cadet on guard duty to go elsewhere, so he rushed off to find him and tell him just that.

Terl looked at this newcomer, hoping his contempt for the animal wouldn’t show through his face mask or sound in his voice. He knew all about General Snith of the Brigantes. As security officer, war officer and political officer of this planet, he was very well informed about this band. Like all security officers before him, Terl had accepted the situation of a human group in a rainy forest who couldn’t be reached or observed and who had developed a symbiotic relationship with the Psychlos. The Brigantes had kept all other races wiped out and had delivered hundreds of thousands of Bantu and Pygmies to the branch minesite. The only attraction that place had was that you could occasionally buy a human creature to torture. Yes, Terl not only knew all about them, but he had personally engineered their transport over here.

Terl had persuaded the creature Staffor that what he needed was a true and reliable corps of troops for this place. Staffor had vehemently agreed—you couldn’t trust those Scots, they were too sly and treacherous; you also shouldn’t use cadets who seemed to have some damnable and misplaced admiration for that Tyler.

The Brigantes had come, but Staffor seemed to be having trouble with the negotiation with them, so Terl had suggested their chief be sent down.

“Who are you?” repeated Terl in the mine radio. Did the creature speak Psychlo as was reported?

Yes, the next words were Psychlo, but a Psychlo spoken as though the thing had goo-food in its mouth. “The question be, who the crap crud be you?” said General Snith.

“I am Terl, the chief security officer of this planet.”

“Then what be you doing in a cage?”

“An observation post that keeps the humans out.”

“Ah,” said Snith, understanding. (Who did this Psychlo think he was fooling?)

“I understand,” said Terl, “that you have had some difficulty coming to terms.” (You crud brain: I pull you out of a jungle and you don’t realize my power!)

“It be the back pay,” said Snith. It seemed quite natural to be talking to a Psychlo over a mine radio. He had never talked to one any other way. So maybe this interview was on the level after all. This Psychlo knew the proper form.

“Back pay?” said Terl. He could understand somebody being concerned about that, but he thought it was a barter system of explosive ingredients for humans.

“We was hired by the international bank,” said Snith. He knew his legends and he knew his rights, and he was very good at trading. Very good indeed. “At one hundred dollars a day per man. We ain’t been paid.”

“How many men, how long?” said Terl.

“I calculate in rough figures one thousand men for, let’s say, one thousand years.”

The rapid skill Terl had with mathematics told him this was 36,500 a year per man; 36,500,000 per year for all the men; and 36,500,000,000 in total. But he made a test. “Why,” said Terl, in a shocked voice, “that’s more than a million!”

Snith nodded gravely. “Just so! They won’t agree to it.” This Psychlo knew when he was in a boxed ambush. Maybe he could do business with him after all.

Terl had his answer. The piece of crap couldn’t do common arithmetic! “You were hired, you say, by the international bank to take Kishangani of Haut-Zaïre and then take Kinshasa and overthrow the government and wait for bank representatives to come in and negotiate for proper payment of loans. Is that right?”

Snith had said nothing of the sort, not in that detail. The legends were a trifle vague. But he realized abruptly that he was talking to somebody who really knew his business.

Terl always knew his business. He hadn’t even bothered to review any of this. It was a security chief joke and had been for more than a thousand years on this planet. They had had all the details from a captured mercenary, properly interrogated over several days way back when; it had made delicious reading. “But your ancestors,” Terl bore on remorselessly, “only captured Kishangani. They never went on to capture Kinshasa.”

Snith had dimly known that, but he had hoped it wouldn’t come up. His ancient forebears had been crudely interrupted by the Psychlo invasion. He wasn’t sure what was coming now.

“You see,” said Terl, “the international bank has been taken over.” He hoped this crap brain would swallow this outrageous set of lies. “The Galactic Bank, located in the Gredides System, bought them out.”

“Gredides System?” gawped Snith.

“You know,” said Terl, “Universe Eight.” This much was true, where the Galactic Bank was. Always sweeten lies with a little truth.

“Ah,” said Snith, totally adrift. He better watch it. This Psychlo would swindle him. It had happened before. He was on the alert.

“And,” lied Terl, “you will be glad to know that it took over all obligations of the international bank and that includes yours.” This quick reversal almost spun Snith.

“So as one of the agents for the Galactic Bank,” (if he only were!) “I am authorized to pay you the back pay. But your ancestors only did half their job so you only get half the back pay. That would be five hundred thousand dollars.” He was wondering what a dollar was. “I’m sure that will be acceptable.”

Snith came out of his fog like a shot. He had expected nothing! “Yes,” he said deliberately, “I think I can persuade my men to accept that.” Creepo! That would be ten dollars a man and the rest for himself. Riches!

“Now is there any other trouble? Quarters? They found you quarters?”

Snith said yes, they’d given them a whole “serbub” in the town up there, a square mile of old houses and buildings in the outskirts. Bad repair, but palaces really.

“You should also insist on some uniforms,” said Terl. He was looking at this filthy creature over there in its monkey skins and crossed bandoliers of poisoned arrows and a diamond in a peaked leather cap. “You should also clean yourself up, comb your fur. Look more military.”

This was rank criticism! Snith became very cross. He himself was spit and polish and so was his unit. All twenty of his commandos, fifty men in each, properly officered, trained to the nth degree! (He slowed down, hoping they wouldn’t notice it was only thirty-five to the commando these days, the food situation being what it had become.)

“And food?” said Terl.

Snith was startled. Could this Psychlo read his mind? “Food is bad!” said Snith. “There be plenty of dead bodies in those houses, but they be old and dried and unfit to eat. There would got to be a clause in any future contract about better food!”

Belatedly, Terl remembered that these Brigantes were reputed cannibals, a fact that had lessened their trade with the minesite over the centuries. Sternly he said, “There can be no such clause!” His whole plan could be wrecked if they threw these creatures out. His studies, when he was doing the lode plan, had isolated some data in Chinko books indicating that these human animals curiously objected to cannibalism. He had at onetime considered using the Brigantes for his gold plan but they had been far away, and also they might have run around yammering about no food due to the scarcity of humans in these parts.

“For the duration of this contract,” said Terl, “you will just have to put up with cattle as food.”

“It tastes funny,” said the Brigante chief. He was willing to concede the point. His brigade had had to eat an awful lot of water buffalo and monkey and elephant. But it wouldn’t do to be too agreeable. Be a hard bargainer! “But all right, if the pay is good.”

Terl told him then that he himself intended to go back to Psychlo very soon and he would personally collect their back pay at the Galactic Bank and return it here. And that meanwhile they should hire on as the sentries and military force of this compound and the council.

“You’ll bring the back-pay back?” said Snith. “All half-million?”

“Yes, you have my word on it.”

The word of a Psychlo? Snith said, “I and six of my picked men will go with you to see that you do!”

Although Terl didn’t know whether the imperial government would want to interrogate them—the imperial government would want a very important, knowledgeable man—he readily agreed. Who cared about what happened to Snith once Terl’s plan was executed!

“Of course, and welcome,” smiled Terl. “Providing of course you help me all you can until we go. Anything else?”

Yes, there was. Snith fished out something and gingerly approached the cage. He laid it down between the temporarily de-electrified bars and withdrew, as was proper.

Terl tugged his chain over and picked the item up.

“They want to pay us in that stuff,” said Snith. “It’s only printed on one side and I think it might be counterfeit!”

Terl took it closer to a cage light. What was this thing? He couldn’t read any of the characters on it. “I doubt you can even read this!” he challenged.

“Oh yes, I did,” said Snith. He couldn’t read either, but somebody had read it to him. “It do say it is one credit and is legal for payment of all debts. And around the picture it says, ‘Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, The Conqueror of the Psychlos.’” That was what disturbed him really, that the Psychlos were said to have been conquered.

Terl thought fast. “Indeed it is a counterfeit and a lie as well!”

“I thought so,” said Snith. They always tried to trick you. His ancestors had known that very firmly. Trick before you are tricked, they used to say about all dealings.

“But I’ll tell you what I will do,” said Terl into the mine radio. “Just so you know who you are really working for, you accept this and say nothing, and when we get to the Galactic Bank, I will redeem it in cold, hard cash!”

That was fair. Now he knew who he was really working for. Made a lot of sense, quite proper. Paid by one group, but working for another. This Psychlo was straight after all.

“That’s fine,” said Snith. “By the way, I know that man in the picture.”

Terl looked closer. The light had been bad. By crap, it did look like his animal! He tried to remember whether he had ever heard its name. Yes, he dimly recalled the strange words. Yes, it was the damned animal!

“That bird just waltzed in and wiped out a whole commando of mine,” said Snith. “Not too long ago. Attacked them without even a salute, mowed them down. And then stole their bodies and a truckload of trade goods!”

“Where?”

“In the forest, where else?”

This was news! His intelligence said that this creature in the picture had been flying around visiting tribes! Or maybe this was how he visited tribes! That was probably it. Terl knew he himself would visit tribes that way. Ah, well, he knew Staffor would be very, very happy indeed to know that! The animal was not where he was thought to be and he was making war on peaceful tribes. Staffor was a very apt political pupil. Now he would make him a very apt military pupil: in the dumb way that was the only one possible.

But to business. He put the bank note back on the ledge between the bars, withdrew, and Snith retrieved it.

“So we’ve settled the contract matter and you can negotiate it further,” said Terl. “Get settled in, and in a very few weeks or even sooner you’ll be doing your duty here. Right?”

“Indeed so,” said Snith.

“And as a bonus,” said Terl, “I’ll persuade certain parties to authorize you to kill the animal who wronged you on sight.”

That was very, very good. And Snith was driven back to the old city by a dutiful Lars, who endured the stink in the name of spreading the righteous creed of fascism and the great military leader, Hitler.

9

The underground room at the Lake Victoria minesite was chilled. Angus had rigged heavy-duty motor cooling coils along the wall and the humidity in the air dripped from them and made dark pools along the floor.

The metal and mineral analysis machine hummed; its screen cast an eerie green light on everything around it. Five tense faces were turned to that screen: Dr. MacKendrick’s, Angus’s, Sir Robert’s, Dunneldeen’s and Jonnie’s.

Massive, more than eighteen inches in diameter, the ugly head of the Psychlo corpse lay on the machine’s plate. Such a head was mostly bone. It bore considerable resemblance to a human head and could be mistaken for one in bad light, but where a human had hair, eyebrows, fleshy lips, nose and ears, the Psychlo had bone whose shape was more or less the same as the corresponding human features, and the distribution and spacing were similar; the result was a kind of caricature of a human head. Until you touched the features, they did not seem to be bone, but contact proved them hard and unyielding.

The analysis machine was not penetrating the head. Not only were the features bone, but the whole top half of the skull was bone. As the parson in his earlier, inexpert autopsy had discovered, the brain was low down and to the back; he had discovered nothing in the brain because he had not opened the brain of the cadavers.

“Bone!” said Angus. “It’s almost as hard to penetrate as metal!”

Jonnie could attest to that from the negligible effects of his kill-club on Terl’s skull back in the morgue.

Angus was resetting dials. The Psychlo letters were codings for various metals and ores. He swung the intensity dial up five clicks.

“Wait!” said MacKendrick. “Back it up one! I thought I saw something.”

Angus backed the intensity of penetration dial back one, then two. It was sitting on “Lime” now.

There was a hazy difference in density on the screen, one little spot. Angus adjusted the beam’s “in depth” control, focusing it. The internal bones and fissures of the skull came clear on the screen. Five pairs of eyes watched intensely.

The Scot’s fingers took another knob, one that swept a second beam to various positions in the subject.

“Wait,” said MacKendrick. “Move the beam back to about two inches behind the mouth cavity. There! Now focus it again.” Then, “That’s it!”

There was something there, something hard and black on the screen that was not passing waves at this intensity. Angus touched the recorder of the machine and the whir-flap sound of registry of the images on the paper roll was loud.

“They do have something in their skulls!” said Robert the Fox.

“Not so fast,” said MacKendrick. “We jump to no conclusions. It could be some fragment of an old injury, some metal picked up in a mine explosion.”

“Naw, naw, naw,” said Robert the Fox. “It’s very plain!”

Jonnie had pulled out the recording sheets. They had the metal analysis trace squiggling down one side. He had left the Psychlo metal analysis code book, usually used to analyze drone transmissions as they hunted a surface for ore, outside. It was chill and dank and odorous in this room and he didn’t care much for this job, vital as it was. He took this opportunity to go out and look it up.

Page after page he compared the squiggle he had with the illustrations. It took a long time. He was no expert at this. He couldn’t find it. Then he got clever and began to compare composites of two squiggle illustrations.

The Psychlo engineers who would do this sort of thing could probably have told him with no code book. He cursed the anger of the Russians who, believing they were avenging their colonel, had slaughtered the Psychlos. The four in the guarded room of the dormitory were in very bad condition. Two of them were ordinary miners, one was an executive by his clothes and papers, and the other was an engineer. MacKendrick was very doubtful that they would make it. He had extracted bullets and sewn them up but they were all still unconscious or appeared so, and they lay there in the breathe-gas ventilated room, chained to their beds, breathing shallowly. There wasn’t even a first-aid handbook for Psychlos that Jonnie had ever seen. He didn’t think there was one issued. The company might require all bodies to be returned but it didn’t require that anybody keep them alive—a fact that tended to confirm that the sole reason for returning dead Psychlo bodies was to prevent examination by alien eyes—there was no sentiment involved. There were never even any hospital sections in these compounds, and mine accidents were very frequent.

Hold it. One of these squiggles in the book almost matched: copper! Now if he could find the little tail squiggle somewhere—here it was: tin! He overlaid the two squiggles. They seemed to match better. Copper and tin? Not quite. There was a tiny squiggle remaining. He searched for it. He found it: lead!

Mainly copper, some tin and a little bit of lead! He put the patterns one on top of the other. They matched now.

There was another code book, very thick, called Composite Ore Bodies for Drone Scan Analysis, and because it had about ten thousand characters in it, he had shunned it. But this one he had just done made a look-up easy. He looked under “Copper Deposits,” and then its subheading, “Tin Deposits,” and then its sub-subheading, “Lead Deposits,” and he found his squiggle. Not only that, he found, by comparing it to variations, that the analysis of “per-elevens” (Psychlos used the eleven integer) was five copper, four tin and two lead.

He went further and looked this up in a man-book and it said Bronze for such a combination. Apparently it was a very durable alloy that lasted for centuries and there had even been a Bronze Age where implements were mainly bronze. Great. But it struck him as funny that an advanced technical race should be using ancient bronze in a skull. Amusing.

He went back inside with his findings to discover that MacKendrick, with a hammer and chisel-like instrument, had been taking the head apart. Jonnie was just as glad not to have been around to watch that.

“We searched all through the rest of the skull with the machine,” said Angus. “That’s the only odd thing in there.”

“I went through its pockets,” said Robert the Fox. “He is the lowest-class miner. His identity card says his name was Cla and he had forty-one years’ service and three wives back on Psychlo.”

“The company paid them benefits?” said Dunneldeen.

“No,” said Robert the Fox, showing him the crumpled record, “it says here the company paid him also for the female earnings in a company ‘house,’ whatever that is.”

“The economics of Psychlo husbandry,” said Dunneldeen, “are a credit to their morality.”

“Don’t joke,” said Jonnie. “The object in his head is an alloy called ‘bronze.’ It is not magnetic, worse luck. It would have to be operated out. It can’t be pulled out with a magnet.”

Dr. MacKendrick now had the brain laid bare. With a surgeon’s skill, he was parting things that looked like cords.

And there it was!

It was shaped like two half-circles back to back and the circles were slightly closed, each one around a separate cord.

“I think these are nerves,” said MacKendrick. “We will know shortly.” He was delicately pulling the objects off the cords. He wiped the green blood off it and put it on the table. “Don’t touch any of this,” said MacKendrick. “Autopsies can be deadly.”

Jonnie looked at the thing. It was a dull yellow. It was about half an inch across at its widest point.

Angus picked it up with a tweezer and put it on the analysis machine plate. “It’s not hollow,” he said. “It’s just solid. Just a piece of metal.”

MacKendrick had a little box with wires and clips on it. It had a small fuel cartridge in it to generate electricity. But before he connected anything with his gloved hands he was distracted by the character of these cords in the head. It was a brain, but it was vastly different from a human brain.

He cut off a small cord end and a slice of skin from the cadaver’s paw and went over to an old makeshift microscope. He made a slide from a thin specimen and looked into the eyepiece.

MacKendrick whistled in surprise. “A Psychlo isn’t made of cells. I don’t know their metabolism but their structure isn’t cellular. Viral! Yes. Viral!” He turned to Jonnie. “You know, big as a Psychlo is, his basic structure seems to be clumps of viruses.” He saw Jonnie looking at him askance and added, “Purely academic interest. It does mean, however, that their bodies probably hold together much tighter and have a greater density. Probably of no interest to you. Well, let’s get to work on these cords.”

He attached one clip to the end of a cord in the brain and grounded the other on an arm and, watching a meter, measured the resistance of the cord to electrical flow. When he had determined that, he stood back and touched a button to send electricity through the cord.

The others felt their hair rise.

The Psychlo cadaver moved its left foot.

“Good,” said MacKendrick. “Nerves. There is no rigor mortis in these bodies and they’re still flexible. I have found the nerve that relays walk commands.” He put a little tag on the nerve. He had marked the places from which they had removed the metal with a spot of dye on each of the two nerves involved with it. But he wasn’t checking those yet.

His spectators were quite horrified to see, as MacKendrick identified nerves with tags, a Psychlo cadaver that moved its claws, clenched the remains of its jaw, moved an ear, and lolled out its tongue, one after the other as various nerves were given an electrical jolt.

MacKendrick saw their reaction. “Nothing new in this. Just electrical impulses approximating brain commands. Some man-scientist did this maybe thirteen hundred years ago and thought he’d found the secret of all thought and made up a cult about it called ‘psychology.’ Forgotten now. It wasn’t the secret of thought; it was just the mechanics of bodies. They started with frogs. I’m cataloging this body’s communication channels, that’s all.”

But it was very weird. The depths of superstition stirred in them as they saw a corpse move and breathe, and saw, for a couple of pumps, its heart beat.

MacKendrick’s gloved hands were slimy with green blood, but he moved in a very efficient and businesslike fashion until he had more than fifty little tags clipped to the nerve cords.

“Now for the answer!” said MacKendrick. He sent pulses through the two nerves to which the bronze item had been attached.

It was difficult work. The room was cold. The corpse stank, having gone even mustier than the common, rank smell of a Psychlo.

MacKendrick stood up, a little tired. “I’m sorry to say that I don’t think that piece of metal would cause any of these monsters to commit suicide. But I can make a pretty good guess now as to what it does do.”

He pointed to his tags. “Taste and sexual impulses branch off from that one as near as I can tell. Emotion and action branch off from the other one there.

“This metal clip was installed when it was an infant. See the faint, ancient scars in this side of the skull. At that time the bones would be soft and would heal fast.”

“And what does it do?” said Angus.

“My guess,” said MacKendrick, “is that it short-circuits pleasure with action. Maybe they did it to make a Psychlo happy only when he was working. But—and I can’t tell fully unless I dissect a lot of these nerves further down—I think its actual effect was to make a Psychlo enjoy cruel action.”

Suddenly Jonnie recalled an expression of Terl’s. He had seen him do something cruel and heard him mutter, “Delicious!”

“The effort,” said MacKendrick, “to make them industrious I think was miscalculated by their ancient metal specialists, and they made a race of true monsters.”

Everyone agreed with that.

“That wouldn’t make them commit suicide to protect technology!” said Robert the Fox. “You got another corpse here. He was an assistant mine manager by his papers, and got twice the pay of the one you just did. Get him on the table, man.”

MacKendrick got another table. He would have to picto-record and sketch the work he had just done.

They put the mammoth head of the second one on the machine. They had the setting now. And they looked into the dead brain of one who had been called Blo.

And Jonnie, who had been getting despondent, gruesome as this job was, suddenly smiled.

There were two metal pieces in this one’s head!

The whir-flap of the machine took the recording and he rushed out to tear through the analysis code books.

There it was, bright and clear: silver!

When he reentered the room, MacKendrick, being practiced now, had the brain stripped down. He was spot-dyeing the connections of the second bit of metal before he took it out.

It was about three-quarters of an inch long. The lack of oxygen in a Psychlo bloodstream had left it gleamingly bright. It was a cylinder. The nubs on each end were insulated from the silver.

Angus put it on the machine and it was hollow.

Jonnie made him adjust the equipment even more finely. There was a filament of some sort inside that cylinder.

They surmised they would find them in other executive corpses, so when MacKendrick had sterilized it, Jonnie cut it in half very delicately.

The inside of it resembled a component in remote controls but it was not a radio.

“I haven’t identified these nerves,” said MacKendrick, “because I can’t tell exactly what they go to right now. But I’ll work on it.”

“Could it be a thought wavelength vibrator?” asked Jonnie.

“A difference measurer?” said Angus. “Like difference of thought waves of another race?”

Jonnie would let them go on working on it, but he had a very good idea it was designed to release an impulse under certain conditions and that that impulse could cause attack and suicide.

“There’s only one thing wrong,” said MacKendrick. “It was put in an infant. Getting it out of the head of a live, adult Psychlo, through all these bones, would be a task one could never guarantee the success of.” Then he saw the look of disappointment on their faces. “But I’ll try, I’ll try!” He didn’t think it could be done. And he only had four Psychlos—and they looked like they were dying.