THE SUCCESS MACHINE
By Henry Slesar
Mechanical brains are all the rage these days, so General Products just had to have one. But the blamed thing almost put them out of business. Why? It had no tact. It insisted upon telling the truth!
The Personnelovac winked, chittered, chortled, chuckled, and burped a card into the slot. Colihan picked it up and closed his eyes in prayer.
"Oh, Lord. Let this one be all right!"
He read the card. It was pink.
"Subject #34580. Apt. Rat. 34577. Psych. Clas. 45. Last Per. Vac.
"An. 3/5/98. Rat. 19. Cur. Rat. 14.
"Analysis: Subject demonstrates decreased mechanical coordination. Decrease in work-energy per man-hour. Marked increase in waste-motion due to subject's interest in non-essential activities such as horseracing. Indication of hostility towards superiors.
"Recommendation: Fire him."
Colihan's legs went weak. He sat down and placed the card in front of him. Then, making sure he was unobserved, he broke a company rule and began to Think.
Something's wrong, he thought. Something is terribly wrong. Twenty-four pink cards in the last month. Twenty-four out of forty. That's a batting average of--He tried to figure it out with a pencil, but gave it up as a bad job. Maybe I'll run it through the Averagovac, he thought. But why bother? It's obvious that it's high. There's obviously SOMETHING WRONG.
The inter-com beeped.
"Ten o'clock department head meeting, Mr. Colihan."
[Illustration: The steel brain was having more fun than people.]
"All right, Miss Blanche."
He rose from his chair and took the pink card with him. He stood before the Action Chute for a moment, tapping the card against his teeth. Then, his back stiffened with a sense of duty, and he slipped the card inside.
* * * * *
The meeting had already begun when Colihan took his appointed place. Grimswitch, the Materielovac operator looked at him quizzically. Damn your eyes, Grimswitch, he thought. It's no crime to be three minutes late. Nothing but a lot of pep talk first five minutes anyway.
"PEP!" said President Moss at the end of the room. He slammed his little white fist into the palm of his other hand. "It's only a little word. It only has three little letters. P-E-P. Pep!"
Moss, standing at the head of the impressive conference table, leaned forward and eyed them fixedly. "But those three little letters, my friends, spell out a much bigger word. A much bigger word for General Products, Incorporated. They spell PROFIT! And if you don't know how profit is spelled, it's M-O-N-N-E-Y!"
There was an appreciative laugh from the assembled department heads. Colihan, however, was still brooding on the parade of pink cards which had been emerging with frightening regularity from his think-machine, and he failed to get the point.
"Naughty, naughty," Grimswitch whispered to him archly. "Boss made a funny. Don't forget to laugh, old boy."
Colihan threw him a sub-zero look.
"Now let's be serious," said the boss. "Because things are serious. Mighty serious. Somewhere, somehow, somebody's letting us down!"
The department heads looked uneasily at each other. Only Grimswitch continued to smile vacantly at the little old man up front, drumming his fingers on the glass table top. When the President's machine-gunning glance caught his eyes, Colihan went white. Does he know about it? he thought.
"I'm not making accusations," said Moss. "But there is a let-down someplace. Douglas!" he snapped.
Douglas, the Treasurer, did a jack-in-the-box.
"Read the statement," said the President.
"First quarter fiscal year," said Douglas dryly. "Investment capital, $17,836,975,238.96. Assets, $84,967,442,279.55. Liabilities, $83,964,283,774.60. Production costs are--"
Moss waved his hand impatiently. "The meat, the meat," he said.
Douglas adjusted his glasses. "Total net revenue, $26,876,924.99."
"COMPARISON!" The President screamed. "Let's have last first quarter, you idiot!"
"Ahem!" Douglas rattled the paper in annoyance. "Last first quarter fiscal year net revenue $34,955,376.81. Percent decrease--"
"Never mind." The little old man waved the Treasurer to his seat with a weary gesture. His face, so much like somebody's grandmother, looked tragic as he spoke his next words.
"You don't need the Accountovac to tell you the significance of those figures, gentlemen." His voice was soft, with a slight quaver. "We are not making much p-r-o-f-i-t. We are losing m-o-n-e-y. And the point is--what's the reason? There must be some reason." His eyes went over them again, and Colihan, feeling like the culprit, slumped in his chair.
"I have a suggestion," said the President. "Just an idea. Maybe some of us just aren't showing enough p-e-p."
There was a hushed silence.
The boss pushed back his chair and walked over to a cork-lined wall. With a dramatic gesture, he lifted one arm and pointed to the white sign that covered a fourth of it.
"See that?" he asked. "What does it say?"
The department heads looked dubious.
"Well, what does it say?" repeated Moss.
"ACT!" The department heads cried in chorus.
"Exactly!" said the little old man with a surprising bellow. "ACT! The word that made us a leader. The word that guides our business destiny. The word that built General Products!"
* * * * *
He paced the floor. The chairs in the conference room creaked as the department heads stirred to follow him with their eyes.
"ACT is our motto. ACT is our password. ACT is our key to success. And why not? The Brains do the thinking. All of us put together couldn't think so effectively, so perfectly, so honestly as the Brains. They take the orders, designate raw materials, equipment, manpower. They schedule our work. They analyze our products. They analyze our people."
Colihan trembled.
"There's only one important function left to us. And that's ACT!"
The President bowed his head and walked slowly back to his seat. He sat down, and with great fatigue evident in his voice, he concluded his polemic.
"That's why we must have pep, gentlemen. Pep. Now--how do you spell it?"
"P! E! P!" roared the department heads.
The meeting was over. The department heads filed out.
* * * * *
Colihan's secretary placed the morning mail on his desk. There was a stack of memos at least an inch thick, and the Personnel Manager moaned at the sight of it.
"Production report doesn't look too good," said Miss Blanche, crisply. "Bet we get a flood of aptitude cards from Morgan today. Grimswitch has sent over a couple. That makes eleven from him this month. He really has his problems."
Colihan grunted. He deserves them, he thought.
"How did the meeting go?"
"Huh?" Colihan looked up. "Oh, fine, fine. Boss was in good voice, as usual."
"I think there's an envelope from him in the stack."
"What?" Colihan hoped that his concern wasn't visible. He riffled through the papers hurriedly, and came up with a neat white envelope engraved with the words: OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT.
Miss Blanche watched him, frankly curious. "That will be all," he told her curtly.
When she had left, he ripped the envelope open and read the contents. It was in Moss's own cramped handwriting, and it was a request for a three o'clock "man-to-man" talk.
Oh, Lord, he thought. Now it's going to happen.
* * * * *
President Moss was eating an apple.
He ate so greedily that the juice spilled over his chin.
Sitting behind his massive oak desk, chair tilted back, apple juice dappling his whiskers, he looked so small and unformidable, that Colihan took heart.
"Well, Ralph--how goes it?"
He called me Ralph, thought Colihan cheerfully. He's not such a bad old guy.
"Don't grow apples like they used to," the President said. "This hydroponic stuff can't touch the fruit we used to pick. Say, did you ever climb a real apple tree and knock 'em off the branches?"
Colihan blinked. "No, sir."
"Greatest thrill in the world. My father had an orchard in Kennebunkport. Apples by the million. Green apples. Sweet apples. Delicious. Spy. Baldwin." He sighed. "Something's gone out of our way of life, Ralph."
Why, he's just an old dear, thought Colihan. He looked at the boss with new sympathy.
"Funny thing about apples. My father used to keep 'em in barrels down in the basement. He used to say to me, 'Andrew,' he'd say, 'don't never put a sour apple in one of these barrels. 'Cause just one sour apple can spoil the whole derned lot.'" The boss looked at Colihan and took a big noisy bite.
Colihan smiled inanely. Was Moss making some kind of point?
"Well, we can't sit around all day and reminisce, eh, Ralph? Much as I enjoy it. But we got a business to run, don't we?"
"Yes, sir," said the Personnel Manager.
"Mighty big business, too. How's your side of it, Ralph? Old Personnelovac hummin' along nicely?"
"Yes, sir," said Colihan, wondering if he should voice his fears about the Brain.
"Marvelous machine, that. Most marvelous of 'em all, if you ask me. Sizes up a man beautifully. And best of all, it's one hundred percent honest. That's a mighty important quality, Ralph."
* * * * *
Colihan was getting worried. The boss's conversation was just a little too folksy for his liking.
"Yes, sir, a mighty fine quality. My father used to say: 'Andrew, an honest man can always look you in the eyes.'"
Colihan stared uncomprehendingly. He realized that Moss had stopped talking, so he looked him squarely in the eyes and said: "He must have been a fine man, your father."
"He was honest," said Moss. "I'll say that for him. He was honest as they come. Did you ever hear of Dimaggio?"
"It sounds familiar--"
"It should. Dimaggio was a legendary figure. He took a lantern and went out into the world looking for an honest man. And do you know something? He couldn't find one. You know, Ralph, sometimes I feel like Dimaggio."
Colihan gulped.
"And do you know why? Because sometimes I see a thing like this--" the boss's hand reached into the desk and came out with a thick bundle of pink cards--"and I wonder if there's an honest man left in the world."
* * * * *
He put the cards in front of Colihan.
"Now, sir," said Moss. "Let's talk a little business. These cards are all pink. That means dismissal, right? That's twenty-four people fired in the last month, is that correct?"
"Yes, sir," said Colihan unhappily.
"And how many cards went through the Personnelovac this month?"
"Forty."
"So that's twenty-four out of forty. A batting average of--" The boss's brow puckered. "Well. Never mind. But that's quite an unusual record, wouldn't you say so?"
"Yes, sir, but--"
"So unusual that it would call for immediate ACTION, wouldn't it?" The President's face was now stormy.
"Yes, sir. But I checked the Brain--"
"Did you, Ralph?"
"Yes, sir. And the Maintainovac said it was perfect. There's nothing wrong with it."
"Nothing wrong? You call twenty-four firings out of forty nothing?" The old man stood up, still holding the core of his apple.
"Well, I don't understand it either, Mr. Moss." Colihan felt dew on his forehead. "Nothing seems to satisfy the Brain anymore. It seems to develop higher and higher standards, or something. Why, I'm not sure it wouldn't even fire--"
"WHO?" said Moss thunderously. "WHO wouldn't it even fire?"
The thunder hit Colihan squarely. He swallowed hard, and then managed to say:
"Anybody, sir. Me, for instance."
The President's face suddenly relaxed.
"I'm no tyrant, my boy. You know that. I'm just doing a job, that's all."
"Of course, sir--"
"Well, all I want you to do is keep your eye on things. It could be a coincidence of course. That's the logical explanation." He narrowed his eyes. "What do you think, Ralph?"
"Me, sir?" said Ralph, wide-eyed. "I don't think, sir. I ACT, sir!"
"Good boy!" The boss chuckled and clapped his hand on Colihan's shoulder. Moss was momentarily satisfied.
* * * * *
The Personnelovac burped.
Colihan picked up the card with a groan. It was pink.
He walked over to the Action Chute and dropped it inside. As it fluttered down below, Colihan shook his head sadly. "Thirty-one," he said.
He placed the next personnel record into the Information chamber. He flipped the lever, and the Personnelovac, now hot with usage, winked, chittered, chortled, and chuckled with amazing speed. The burp was almost joyful as the card popped out. But Colihan's face was far from joyful as he picked it up.
Pink.
"Thirty-two," he said.
The next card was from Grimswitch's department. It was Subject #52098. The number was familiar. Colihan decided to check the file.
"Sam Gilchrist," he said. "Couldn't be anything wrong with Sam. Why, he's a blinkin' genius!"
Flip. Wink. Chitter. Chortle. Chuckle. BURP!
Pink.
"Poor Sam!" said Colihan.
He fed the other records through quickly.
Pink.
Pink.
PINK.
At the end of the day, Colihan worked laboriously with a blunt-pointed pencil. It took him fifteen minutes for the simple calculation.
"Sixty-seven tests. Twenty-three okay. Forty-four--"
Colihan put his hands to his head. "What am I going to do?"
* * * * *
Grimswitch followed Colihan down the hall as he came out of the boss's office for the third time that week.
"Well!" he said fatuously. "Quite the teacher's pet, these days. Eh, Colihan?"
"Go away, Grimswitch."
"On the carpet, eh? Temper a little short? Don't worry." Grimswitch's beefy hand made unpleasant contact with the Personnel man's shoulder. "Your old friends won't let you down."
"Grimswitch, will you please let me alone?"
"Better watch that think-machine of yours," Grimswitch chuckled. "Might fire you next, old boy."
Colihan was glad when Morgan, the production operator, hailed Grimswitch away. But as he entered his own office, Grimswitch's words still troubled him. Grimswitch, he thought. That fat piece of garbage. That big blow-hard. That know-it-all.
Almost savagely, he picked up the day's personnel cards and flipped through them carelessly.
Grimswitch, that louse, he thought.
Then he had the Idea.
If Grimswitch was still chewing the fat with Morgan, then his secretary would be alone--
If he called her and asked for Grimswitch's record--no, better yet, got Miss Blanche to call--
Why not? he thought. After all, I am the Personnel Manager. Sure, it's a little irregular. He IS a department head. But it's my job, isn't it?
Colihan flipped the inter-com and proceeded to call Miss Blanche.
* * * * *
His hand shook as he placed Grimswitch's card into the Personnelovac.
The machine, though still heated by the day's activity, seemed to take longer than usual for its chittering, chuckling examination of the pin-holed facts on the record.
Finally, it gave a satisfied burp and proffered the result to Colihan's eager hand.
"Aha!" cried the personnel man gleefully.
He walked over to his desk, wrote a quick note on his memo pad, and placed both note and card into an envelope. He addressed it to: OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT. Then he dropped it into the Action Chute. When it was out of sight, he rubbed his hands together in happy anticipation.
* * * * *
When Miss Blanche announced that President Moss himself was in Colihan's outer lobby, the Personnel Manager spent a hasty minute in straightening up the paper debris on his desk.
The old man came striding into the room, exhibiting plenty of p-e-p, and he seated himself briskly on Colihan's sofa.
"Sharp eyes, Ralph," he said. "Sharp eyes and a quick wit. This business demands it. That was a sharp notion you had, doing a run-through on Grimswitch. Never trusted that back-slapping fellow."
Colihan looked pleased. "Trying to do a job, sir."
"Put your finger on it," said Moss. "Hit the nail on the head. It's just like my father said: 'Trees go dead on the top.' Colihan--" The boss leaned forward confidentially. "I've got an assignment for you. Big assignment."
"Yes, sir!" said Colihan eagerly.
"If Grimswitch is a sour apple, maybe other department heads are, too. And who knows? IT knows."
Moss pointed a finger at the Personnelovac.
"I'm rounding up all the aptitude records of the department heads. They'll be in your hands in the next couple of days. Feed 'em in! Root 'em out! Spot the deadwood, Colihan! ACT!"
"ACT!" echoed Colihan, his face flushed.
The old man got up and went over to the Brain.
"Marvelous machine," he said. "Honest. That's what I like about it."
As Moss went out the door, Colihan could have sworn he saw the Personnelovac wink. He walked over to it and fingered the lever. It was turned off, all right.
* * * * *
It was an interesting week for Colihan.
Morgan, the production man, was fired.
Grimswitch came up to see the Personnel man and tried to punch him in the nose. Fortunately, he was a little too drunk, and the blow went wild.
Seegrum, the Shipovac operator, was fired.
Douglas, the Treasurer, was permitted to keep his job, but the Personnelovac issued a dire threat if improvement wasn't rapidly forthcoming.
Wilson, the firm's oldest employee, was fired.
In fact, seven out of General Product's twelve department heads were greeted by the ominous pink card.
Colihan, no longer plagued by doubt, felt that life was definitely worth living. He smiled all the time. His memos were snappier than ever. His heels clicked merrily down the office hallways. He had p-e-p.
Then, the most obvious thing in the world happened--and Colihan just hadn't foreseen it.
His record card came up.
* * * * *
"Have you run through the stack yet?" Miss Blanche asked.
"Er--just about." Colihan looked at her guiltily. He pushed his glasses back on the bridge of his nose. "Couple more here," he said.
"Well, we might as well finish up. Mr. Moss would like to have the schedule completed this afternoon."
"It will be. That's all, Miss Blanche."
His secretary shrugged and left. Colihan went to the Personnelovac with the record in his hand. The file number was 630.
"Don't let me down," he told the Brain.
He placed the pin-holed card into the machine and flipped the lever. It winked, chittered, chortled, and chuckled with almost sinister softness. When the card was burped out at the other end, Colihan took it out with his eyes firmly shut.
* * * * *
He walked over to the Action Chute mechanically. His hand hesitated before he dropped it inside. Then he changed his mind, walked back to the desk, and tore the pink card into the smallest possible shreds.
The inter-com beeped.
"Mr. Moss wants you," said his secretary.
"Colihan!"
"Yes, sir?"
"Don't act so innocent, Colihan. Your report isn't complete. It should have been ready by now."
"Yes, sir!"
"You're not ACTING, Colihan. You're stalling!"
"No, sir."
"Then where's your Personnelovac report, Colihan? Eh? Where is it?"
Colihan wrung his hands. "Almost ready, sir," he lied. "Just running it through now, sir."
"Speed it up. Speed it up! Time's a'wastin', boy. You're not afraid, are you, Colihan?"
"No, sir."
"Then let's have it. No more delay! Bull by the horns! Expect it in an hour, Colihan. Understand?"
"Yes, sir!"
The boss clicked off. Colihan groaned audibly.
"What can I do?" he said to himself. He went to the Brain and shook his fist helplessly at it. "Damn you!" he cursed.
He had to think. He had to THINK!
It was an effort. He jerked about in his swivel chair like a hooked fish. He beat his hands on the desk top. He paced the floor and tore at the roots of his hair. Finally, exhausted, he gave up and flopped ungracefully on the office sofa, abandoning himself to the inevitable.
At that precise moment, the mind being the perverse organ it is, he was struck by an inspiration.
The Maintainovac bore an uneasy resemblance to Colihan's own think-machine. Wilson, the oldest employee of General Products, had been the operator of the maintenance Brain. He had been a nice old duffer, Wilson, always ready to do Colihan a favor. Now that he had been swept out in Colihan's own purge, the Personnel Manager had to deal with a new man named Lockwood.
Lockwood wasn't so easy to deal with.
"Stay out of my files, mister," he said.
Colihan tried to look superior. "I'm the senior around here, Lockwood. Let's not forget that."
"Them files is my responsibility." Lockwood, a burly young man, stationed himself between Colihan and the file case.
"I want to check something. I need the service records of my Brain."
"Where's your Requisition Paper?"
"I haven't got time for that," said Colihan truthfully. "I need it now, you fool."
Lockwood set his face like a Rushmore memorial.
"Be a good fellow, can't you?" Colihan quickly saw that wheedling wasn't the answer.
"All right," he said, starting for the door. "I just wanted to help you."
He opened the door just a crack. Sure enough, Lockwood responded.
"How do you mean, help me?"
"Didn't you know?" Colihan turned to face him. "I'm running through an aptitude check on the Personnelovac. Special department head check. Mr. Moss's orders."
"So?"
"I was just getting around to yours. But I figured I'd better make sure the Brain was functioning properly." He grew confidential. "You know, that darned machine has been firing everyone lately."
A little rockslide began on Lockwood's stoney face.
"Well ..." he said. "If that's the case--"
"I knew you'd understand," said Colihan very smoothly.
* * * * *
Eagerly, the Personnel Manager collated the records of the Personnelovac. They were far more complex than any employee record, and it took Colihan the better part of an hour.
Any moment he expected to hear the President's angry voice over the inter-com. His anxiety made him fumble, but at last, the job was done.
He slipped the record, marked by a galaxy of pinholes, into the Brain.
"Now we'll see," he said grimly. "Now we'll find out what's eating this monster."
He flipped the switch.
The Personnelovac winked.
It was several minutes before it digested the information in its chamber. Then it chittered.
It chortled.
It chuckled.
Colihan held his breath until the BURP came.
The card appeared. It read:
"Subject #PV8. Mech. Rat. 9987. Mem. Rat. 9995. Last Per. Vac.
"An. None. Cur. Rat. 100.
"Analysis: Subject operating at maximum efficiency. Equipped to perform at peak level. Is completely honest and does not exhibit bias, prejudice, or sentiment in establishing personnel evaluations. Cumulative increase in mnemonic ability. Analytic ability improving."
Colihan walked slowly over to the Action Chute as he finished reading the card.
"However," it read, "because of mechanistic approach to humanistic evaluation, subject displays inability to incorporate human equation in analytical computation, resulting in technically accurate but humanistically incorrect deductions.
"Recommendation: Fire him."
Colihan dropped the pink card into the chute. In half an hour, the Action wheels of General Products concluded their work, and the Personnelovac had winked for the last time.
THE END
HELPFULLY YOURS
By Evelyn E. Smith
Tarb Morfatch had read all the information on Terrestrial customs that was available in the Times morgue before she'd left Fizbus. And all through the journey she'd studied her Brief Introduction to Terrestrial Manners and Mores avidly. Perhaps it was a bit overinspirational in spots, but it had facts in it, too.
So she knew that, since the natives were non-alate, she was not to take wing on Earth. She had, however, forgotten to correlate the knowledge of their winglessness with her own vertical habits. As a result, on leaving the tender that had ferried her down from the Moon, she looked up instead of right and narrowly escaped death at the jaws of a raging groundcar that swerved out onto the field.
She recognized it as a taxi from one of the pictures in the handbook. It was a pity, she thought sadly as she was knocked off her feet, that all those lessons she had so carefully learned were to go to waste.
But it was only the wind of the car's passage that had thrown her down. As she struggled to get up, hampered by her awkward native skirts, the door of the taxi flew open. A tall young man--a Fizbian--burst out, the soft yellowish-green down on his handsome face bristling with fright until each feather stood out separately.
"Miss Morfatch! Are you all right?"
"Just--just a little shaky," she murmured, brushing dirt from her rosy leg feathers. Too young to be Drosmig; too good-looking to be anyone important, she thought glumly. Must be the office boy.
To her surprise, he didn't help her up. Probably it would violate some native taboo if he did, she deduced. The handbook hadn't mentioned anything that seemed to apply, but, after all, a little book like that couldn't cover everything.
* * * * *
She could see the young man was embarrassed--his emerald crest was waving to and fro.
"I'm Stet Zarnon," he introduced himself awkwardly.
The Managing Editor! The handsome young employer of her girlish dreams! But perhaps he had a wife on Fizbus--no, the Grand Editor made a point of hiring people without families to use as a pretext for expensive vacations on the Home Planet.
As she opened her mouth to say something brilliantly witty, to show she was no ordinary female but a creature of spirit and fire and intelligence, a sudden cacophony of shrill cries and explosions arose, accompanied by bursts of light. Her feathers stood erect and she clung to her employer with both feathered legs.
"If these are the friendly diplomatic relations Earth and Fizbus are supposed to be enjoying," she said, "I'm not enjoying them one bit!"
"They're only taking pictures of you with native equipment," he explained, pulling away from her. What was the matter with him? "You're the first Fizbian woman ever to come to Terra, you know."
She certainly did know--and, what was more, she had made the semi-finals for Miss Fizbus only the year before. Perhaps he had some Terrestrial malady he didn't want her to catch. Or could it be that in the four years he had spent in voluntary exile on this planet, he had come to prefer the native females? Now it was her turn to shrink from him.
He was conversing rapidly in Terran with the chattering natives who milled about them. Although Tarb had been an honors student in Terran back at school, she found herself unable to understand more than an occasional word of what they said. Then she remembered that they were not at the world capital, Ottawa, but another community, New York. Undoubtedly they were all speaking some provincial dialect peculiar to the locality.
And nobody at all booed in appreciation, although, she told herself sternly, she really couldn't have expected them to. Standards of beauty were different in different solar systems. At least they were picking up as souvenirs some of the feathers she'd shed in her tumble, which showed they took an interest.
Stet turned back to her. "These are fellow-members of the press."
She was able to catch enough of what he said next in Terran to understand that she was being formally introduced to the aboriginal journalists. Although you could never call the natives attractive, with their squat figures and curiously atrophied vestigial wings--arms, she reminded herself--they were very Fizboid in appearance and, with their winglessness cloaked, could have creditably passed for singed Fizbians.
Moreover, they seemed friendly; at any rate, the sounds they uttered were welcoming. She began to make the three ritual entrechats, but Stat stopped her. "Just smile at them; that'll be enough."
It didn't seem like enough, but he was the boss.
* * * * *
"Thank the stars we're through with that," he sighed, as they finally were able to escape their confrères and get into the taxi. "I suppose," he added, wriggling inside the clumsy Terrestrial jacket which, cut to fit over his wings, did nothing either to improve his figure or to make him look like a native, "it was as much of an ordeal for you as for me."
"Well, I am a little bewildered by it all," Tarb admitted, settling herself as comfortably as possible on the seat cushions.
"No, don't do that!" he cried. "Here people don't crouch on seats. They sit," he explained in a kindlier tone. "Like this."
"You mean I have to bend myself in that clumsy way?"
He nodded. "In public, at least."
"But it's so hard on the wings. I'm losing feathers foot over claw."
"Yes, but you could...." He stopped. "Well, anyhow, remember we have to comply with local customs. You see, the Terrestrials have those things called arms instead of legs. That is, they have legs, but they use them only for walking."
She sighed. "I'd read about the arms, but I had no idea the natives would be so--so primitive as to actually use them."
"Considering they had no wings, it was very clever of them to make use of the vestigial appendages," he said hotly. "If you take their physical limitations into account, they've done a marvelous job with their little planet. They can't fly; they have very little sense of balance; their vision is exceedingly poor--yet, in spite of all that, they have achieved a quite remarkable degree of civilization." He gestured toward the horizontal building arrangements visible through the window. "Why, you could almost call those streets. As a matter of fact, the natives do."
At the moment, she could take an interest in Terrestrial civilization only as it affected her personally. "But I'll be able to relax in the office, won't I?"
"To a certain extent," he replied cautiously. "You see, we have to use a good deal of native help because--well, our facilities are limited...."
"Oh," she said.
Then she remembered that she was on Terra at least partly to demonstrate the pluck of Fizbian femininity. Back on Fizbus, most of the Times executives had been dead set against having a woman sent out as Drosmig's assistant. But Grupe, the Grand Editor, had overruled them. "Time we broke with tradition," he had said. He'd felt she could do the job, and, by the stars, she would justify his faith in her!
"Sounds like rather a lark," she said hollowly.
Stet brightened. "That's the girl!" His eyes, she noticed, were emerald shading into turquoise, like his crest. "I certainly hope you'll like it here. Very wise of Grupe to send a woman instead of a man, after all. Women," he went on quickly, "are so much better at working up the human interest angle. And Drosmig is out of commission most of the time, so it's you who'll actually be in charge of 'Helpfully Yours.'"
She herself in charge of the column that had achieved interstellar fame in three short years! Basically, it had been designed to give guidance, advice and, if necessary, comfort to those Fizbians who found themselves living on Terra, for the Fizbus Times had stood for public service from time immemorial. As Grupe had put it, "We don't run this paper for ourselves, Tarb, but for our readers. And the same applies to our Terrestrial edition."
With the growing development of trade and cultural relations between the two planets, the Fizbians on Earth were an ever-increasing number. But they were not the only readers of "Helpfully Yours." Reprinted in the parent paper, it was read with edification and pleasure all over Fizbus. Everyone wanted to learn more about the ancient and other-worldly Terran culture.
The handbook, A Brief Introduction to Terrestrial Manners and Mores, owed much of its content to "Helpfully Yours." A grateful, almost fulsome, introductory note had said so. But the column truly deserved all the praise that had been lavished upon it by the handbook. How well she had studied the thoughtful letters that filled it and the excellent and well-reasoned advice--erring, if it erred at all, on the side of overtolerance--that had been given in return. Of course, on Earth, spiritual adjustment apparently was more important than the physical; you could tell that from the questions that were asked. A number of the letters had been reprinted in an appendix to the manual.
New York
Dear Senbot Drosmig:
When in contact with Terrestrial culture, I find myself constantly overawed and weighed down by the knowledge of my own inadequacy. I cannot seem to appreciate the local art forms as disseminated by the juke box, the comic strip, the tabloid.
How can I help myself toward a greater understanding?
Hopefully yours,
Gnurmis Plitt
* * * * *
Dear Mr. Plitt:
Remember, Orkv was not excavated in a week. It took the Terrestrials many centuries to develop their exquisite and esoteric art forms. How can you expect to comprehend them in a few short years? Expose yourself to their art. Work, study, meditate.
Understanding will come, I promise you.
Helpfully yours,
Senbot Drosmig
* * * * *
Paris
Dear Senbot Drosmig:
To think that I am enjoying the benefits of Terra while my wife and little ones are forced to remain on Fizbus makes my heart ache. Surely it is not fair that I should have so much and they so little. Imagine the inestimable advantage to the fledgling of even a short contact with Terrestrial culture!
Why cannot my loved ones come to join me so that we can share all these wonderful spiritual experiences and be enriched by them together?
Poignantly yours,
Tpooly N'Ox
* * * * *
Dear Mr. N'Ox:
After all, it has been only five years since Fizbian spaceships first came into contact with Terra. In keeping with our usual colonial policy--so inappropriate and anachronistic when applied to a well-developed civilization like Terra's--at first only males are allowed to go to the new world until it is made certain over a period of years that the planet is safe for mothers and future mothers of Fizbus.
But Stet Zarnon himself, the celebrated and capable editor of the Terran edition of The Fizbus Times, has taken up your cause, and I promise you that eventually your loved ones will be able to join you.
Meanwhile, work, study, meditate.
Helpfully yours,
Senbot Drosmig
* * * * *
Ottawa
Dear Senbot Drosmig:
Having just completed a two-year tour of duty on Earth as part of a diplomatic mission, I am regretfully leaving this fair planet. What books, what objects of art, what, in short, souvenirs shall I take back to Fizbus which will give our people some small idea of Earth's rich cultural heritage and, at the same time, serve as useful and appropriate gifts for my friends and relatives back Home?
Inquiringly yours,
Solgus Zagroot
* * * * *
Dear Mr. Zagroot:
Take back nothing but your memories. They will be your best souvenirs.
Out of context, any other mementos might convey little, if anything, of the true beauty and advanced spirituality of Terrestrial culture, and you might cheapen them were you to use them crassly as souvenirs. Furthermore, it is possible that you, in your ignorance, might unwittingly select some items that give a distorted and false idea of our extrafizbian friends.
The Fizbian-Earth Cultural Commission, sponsored by The Fizbian Times, in conjunction with the consulate, is preparing a vast program of cultural interchange. Leave it to them to do the great work, for you can be sure they will do it well.
And be sure to tell your fellow-laborers in the diplomatic vineyards that it is wiser not to send unapproved Terran souvenirs back Home. They might cause a fatal misunderstanding between the two worlds. Tell them to spend their time on Earth in working, studying and meditating, rather than shopping.
Helpfully yours,
Senbot Drosmig
* * * * *
And now she--Tarb Morfatch--herself was going to be the guiding spirit that brought enlightenment and uplift to countless thousands on Terra and millions on Fizbus. Her name wouldn't appear on the columns, but the reward of having helped should be enough. Besides, Drosmig was due to retire soon. If she proved herself competent, she would take over the column entirely and get the byline. Grupe had promised faithfully.
But what, she wondered, had put Drosmig "out of commission"?
The taxi drew up before a building with a vulgar number of floors showing above ground.
"Ah--before we--er--meet the others," Stet suggested, twitching his crest, "I was wondering whether you would care to--er--have dinner with me tonight?"
This roused Tarb from her speculations. "Oh, I'd love to!" A date with the boss right away!
Stet fumbled in his garments for appropriate tokens with which to pay the driver. "You--you're not engaged or anything back Home, Miss Morfatch?"
"Why, no," she said. "It so happens that I'm not."
"Splendid!" He made an abortive gesture with his leg, then let her get out of the taxi by herself. "It makes the natives stare," he explained abashedly.
"But why shouldn't they?" she asked, wondering whether to laugh or not. "How could they help but stare? We are different." He must be joking. She ventured a smile.
He smiled back, but made no reply.
The pavement was hard under her thinly covered soles. Now that walking looked as if it would present a problem, the ban on wing use loomed more threateningly. She had, of course, walked before--on wet days when her wings were waterlogged or in high winds or when she had surface business. However, the sidewalks on Fizbus were soft and resilient. Now she understood why the Terrestrials wore such crippling foot armor, but that didn't make her feel any better about it.
A box-shaped machine took the two Fizbians up to the twentieth story in twice the time it would have taken them to fly the same distance. Tarb supposed that the offices were in an attic instead of a basement because exchange difficulties forced the Times to such economy. She wondered ruefully whether her own expense account would also suffer.
But it was no time to worry about such sordid matters; most important right now was making a favorable impression on her co-workers. She did want them to like her.
Taking out her compact, she carefully polished her eyeballs. The man at the controls of the machine practically performed a ritual entrechat.
"Don't do that!" Stet ordered in a harsh whisper.
"But why not?" she asked, unable to restrain a trace of belligerence from her voice. He hadn't been very polite himself. "The handbook said respectable Terran women make up in public. Why shouldn't I?"
He sighed. "It'll take time for you to catch on, I suppose. There's a lot the handbook doesn't--can't--cover. You'll find the setup here rather different from on Fizbus," he went on as he kicked open the door neatly lettered THE FIZBUS TIMES in both Fizbian and Terran. "We've found it expedient to follow the local newspaper practice. For instance--" he indicated a small green-feathered man seated at a desk just beyond the railing that bisected the room horizontally--"we have a Copy Editor."
"What does he do?" she asked, confused.
"He copies news from the other papers, of course."
"And what are you doing tonight, Miss Morfatch?" the Copy Editor asked, springing up from his desk to execute the three ritual entrechats with somewhat more verve than was absolutely necessary.
"Having dinner with me," Stet said quickly.
"Pulling rank, eh, old bird? Well, we'll see whether position or sterling worth will win out in the end."
As the rest of the staff crowded around Tarb, leaping and booing as appreciatively as any girl could want, she managed to snatch a rapid look around. The place wasn't really so very much different from a Fizbian newsroom, once she got over the oddity of going across, not up and down, with the desks--queerly shaped but undeniably desks--arranged side by side instead of one over the other. There were chairs and stools, no perches, but that was to be expected in a wingless society. And it was noisy. Even though the little machines had stopped clattering when she came in, a distant roaring continued, as if, concealed somewhere close by, larger, more sinister machines continued their work. A peculiar smell hung in the air--not unpleasant, exactly, but strange.
She sniffed inquiringly.
"Ink," Stet said.
"What's that?"
"Oh, some stuff the boys in the back shop use. The feature writers," he went on quickly, before she could ask what the "back shop" was, "have private offices where they can perch in comfort."
He led the way down a corridor, opening doors. "Our drama editor." He indicated a middle-aged man with faded blue feathers, who hung head downward from his perch. "On the lobster-trick last night writing a review, so he's catching fifty-one twinkles now."
"Enchanted, Miss Morfatch," the critic said, opening one bright eye. "By a curious chance, it so happens that tonight I have two tickets to--"
"Tonight she's going out with me."
"Well, I can get tickets to any play, any night. And you haven't laughed unless you've seen a Terrestrial drama. Just say the word, chick."
Stet got Tarb out of the office and slammed the door shut. "Over here is the office of our food editor," he said, breathing hard, "whom you'll be expected to give a claw to now and then, since your jobs overlap. Can't introduce you to him right now, though, because he's in the hospital with ptomaine poisoning. And this is the office you'll share with Drosmig."
Stet opened the door.
Underneath the perch, Senbot Drosmig, dean of Fizbian journalists, lay on the rug in a sodden stupor, letters to the editor scattered thickly over his shriveled person. The whole room reeked unmistakably of caffeine.
Tarb shrank back and twined both feet around Stet's. This time he did not repulse her. "But how can a--an educated, cultured man like Senbot Drosmig sink to such depths?"
"It's hard for anyone with even the slightest inclination toward the stuff to resist it here," Stet replied somberly. "I can't deny it; the sale of caffeine is absolutely unrestricted on Earth. Coffee shops all over the place. Coffee served freely at even the best homes. And not only coffee ... caffeine is insiduously present in other of their popular beverages."
Her eyes bulged sideways. "But how can a so-called civilized people be so depraved?"
"Caffeine doesn't seem to affect them the way it does us. Their nervous systems are so very uncomplicated, one almost envies them."
Drosmig stirred restlessly under his blanket of correspondence. "Go back ... Fizbus," he muttered. "Warn you ... 'fore ... too late ... like me."
Tarb's rose-pink feathers stood on end. She looked apprehensively at Stet.
"Senbot can't go back because he's in no shape to take the interstel drive." The young editor was obviously annoyed. "He's old and he's a physical wreck. But that certainly doesn't apply to you, Miss Morfatch." He looked long and hard into her eyes.
"Few years on planet," Drosmig groaned, struggling to his wings, "'ply to anybody."
His feathers, Tarb noticed, were an ugly, darkish brown. She had never seen any one that color before, but she'd heard rumors that too much caffeine could do that to you. At least she hoped it was only the caffeine.
"For your information, he was almost as bad as this when he came!" Stet snapped. "Frankly, that's why he was sent here--to get rid of his unfortunate addiction. Grupe had no idea, when he assigned him to Earth, that there was caffeine on the planet."
The old man gave a sardonic laugh as he clumsily made his way to the perch and gripped it with quivering toes.
"That is, I don't think he knew," Stet said dubiously.
Tarb reached over and picked a letter off the floor. The Fizbian characters were clumsy and ill-made, as if someone had formed them with his feet. Could there be such poverty here that individuals existed who could not afford a scripto? The letter didn't read like any that had ever been printed in the column--at least none that had been picked up in the Fizbus edition:
* * * * *
New York
Dear Senbot Drosmig:
I am a subaltern clerk in the shipping department of the FizbEarth Trading Company, Inc. Although I have held this post for only three months, I have already won the respect and esteem of my superiors through my diligence and good character. My habits are exemplary: I do not gamble, sing, or take caffeine.
Earlier today, while engaged in evening meditation at my modest apartments, I was aroused by a peremptory knock at the door. I flung it open. A native stood there with a small case in his hand.
"Is the house on fire?" I asked, wondering which of my few humble possessions I should rescue first.
"No," he said. "I would like to interest you in some brushes."
"Are the offices of the FizbEarth Trading Company, Inc., on fire?"
"Not to my knowledge," he replied, opening his case. "Now I have here a very nice hairbrush--"
I wanted to give him every chance. "Have you come to tell me of any disaster relative to the FizbEarth Trading Company, to myself, or to anyone or anything else with whom or with which I am connected?"
"Why, no," he said. "I have come to sell you brushes. Now here is a little number I know you'll like. My company developed it with you folks specially in mind. It's--"
"Do you know, sir, that you have wantonly interrupted me in the midst of my meditations, which constitutes an established act of privacy violation?"
"Is that a fact? Now this little item is particularly designed for brushing the wings--"
At that point, I knocked him down and punched him into insensibility with my feet. Then I summoned the police. To my surprise, they arrested me instead of him.
I am writing this letter from jail. I do not like to ask my employers to get me out because, even though I am innocent, you know how a thing like this can leave a smudge on the record.
What shall I do?
Anxiously yours,
Fruzmus Bloxx
* * * * *
"What should he do?" Tarb asked, handing Stet the paper. "Or is the question academic by now? The letter's five days old."
Stet sighed. "I'll find out whether the consulate has been notified. Native police usually do that, you know. Very thoughtful fellows. If this Bloxx hasn't been bailed out already, I'll see that he is."
"But how will we answer his letter? Advise him to sue for false arrest?"
Stet smiled. "But he has no grounds for false arrest. He is guilty of assault. The native was entirely within his rights in trying to sell him a brush. Now--" he put out a foot--"brace yourself. Privacy violation is not a crime on Terra. It is perfectly legal. In fact, it does not exist as such!"
At that point, everything went maroon.
When Tarb came to, she found herself lying upon Drosmig's desk. A skin-faced native woman was offering her water and clucking.
"Are you all right, Tarb--Miss Morfatch?" Stet demanded anxiously.
"Yes. I--I think so," she murmured, raising herself to a crouch.
"Better ... have died," Drosmig groaned from his perch. "Fate worse ... death ... awaits you."
Tarb tried to smile. "Sorry to have been so much trouble." She stuck out her tongue at both Stet and the native.
The woman drew in her breath.
"Miss Morfatch," Stet reminded Tarb, "sticking out the tongue is not an apology on Terra; it is an insult. Fortunately, Miss Snow happens to be perhaps the only Terran who would not be offended. She has become thoroughly acquainted with us and our odd little customs. She even--" he beamed at the Terran female--"has learned to speak our language."
"Hail to thee, O visitor from the stars," Miss Snow said in Fizbian. "May thy sojourn upon Earth be an incessant delight and may peace and plenty shower their gifts in abundance upon thee."
Tarb put her hand to her aching head. "I'm very glad to meet you," she said, glad she did not have to get up to make the ritual entrechats.
"Miss Snow is my right foot," Stet said, "but I'm going to be noble and let her act as your secretary until you can learn to operate a typewriter."
"Secretary? Typewriter?"
"Well, you see, there are no scriptos or superscriptos on Earth and we can't import any from Home because the natives--" Miss Snow smiled--"don't have the right kind of power here to run psychic installations. All prosifying has to be done directly on prosifying machines or--" he paused--"by foot."
"Catch her!" Miss Snow exclaimed in Terran.
Everything had gone maroon for Tarb again. As she fell, she could hear a sudden thump. It was, she later discovered, Drosmig falling off his perch again--the result of insecure grip, she was given to understand, rather than excessive empathy.
* * * * *
"I didn't mean, of course, to give you the impression that we actually produce the individual copies of the papers ourselves," Stet explained over the dinner table that night. "We have native printers who do that. They've turned out some really remarkable Fizbian type fonts." "Very clever of them," Tarb said, knowing that was what she was expected to say. She glanced around the restaurant. In their low-cut evening garments, the Terrestrial females looked much less Fizboid than they had during the day. All that naked-looking skin; one would think they'd want to cover it. Probably they were sick with jealousy of her beautiful rose-colored down--what they could see of it, anyway.
"Of course, our real problem is getting proofreaders. The proofing machines won't operate here either, of course, and so we need human personnel. But what Fizbian would do such degrading work? We had thought of convict labor, but--"
"Why mustn't I take off my wrap?" Tarb interrupted. "No one else is wearing one."
Stet coughed. "You'll feel much less self-conscious about your wings if you keep it on. And try not to use your feet so conspicuously. I'm sure everyone understands you need them to eat with, but--"
"But I'm not in the least self-conscious about my wings. On Fizbus, they were considered rather nice-looking, if I do say so myself."
"It's better," he said firmly, "not to emphasize the differences between the natives and ourselves. You didn't object to wearing a Terrestrial costume, did you?"
"No, I realize I must make some concessions to native prudery, but--"
"Matter of fact, I've been thinking it would be a good idea for you to wear a stole or a cape or something in the daytime when you go to and from the office. You wouldn't want to make yourself or the Times conspicuous, I'm sure.... No, waiter, no coffee. We'll take champagne."
"I want to try coffee," Tarb said mutinously. "Champagne! You'd think I was a fledgling, giving me that bubbly stuff!"
He looked at her. "Now don't be silly, Miss Morfatch ... Tarb. I can't let you indulge in such rash experiments. You realize I am responsible for you."
Tarb muttered darkly into her coupe maison.
Stet raised his eyebrows. "What did you say?"
"I was only wondering whether you'd remembered to check on whether that young man--Bloxx--ever did get out of jail."
Stet snapped his toes. "Glad you reminded me. Completely slipped my mind. Let's go and see what happened to him, shall we?"
* * * * *
As they rose to leave, a dumpy Earthwoman rushed up to them, enthusiastically babbling in Terran. Seizing Tarb's foot, she clung to it before the Fizbian girl could do anything to prevent her. Tarb had to spread her wings wide to retain her balance. Her cloak flew off and an adjoining table of diners disappeared beneath it.
[Illustration]
Stet and the headwaiter rushed to the rescue with profuse apologies, Stet's crest undulating as if it concealed a nest of snakes. But Tarb was too much frightened to be calmed.
"Is this a hostile attack?" she shrieked frantically at Stet. "Because the handbook never said shaking feet was an Earth custom!"
"No, no, she's a friend!" Stet yelled, leaving the diners still struggling with the cloak as he sped back to her. "And shaking feet isn't an Earth custom; she thinks it's a Fizbian one. You see.... Oh, hell, never mind--I'll explain the whole thing to you later. But she's just greeting you, trying to put you at your ease. It's Belinda Romney, a very important Terrestrial. She owns the Solar Press--you must have heard of it even on Fizbus--biggest news service on the planet. Absolutely wouldn't do to offend her. Mrs. Romney, may I present Miss Morfatch?"
The woman beamed and continued to gush endlessly.
"Tell her to let go my foot!" Tarb demanded. "It's getting so it feels carbonated."
He smiled deprecatingly. "Now, Tarb, we mustn't be rude--"
For the first time in her life, Tarb spoke Terran to a Terrestrial. She formed the words slowly and carefully: "Sorry we must leave, but we have to go to jail."
She looked to Stet for approval ... and didn't get it. He started to explain something quickly to the woman. Every time she'd heard him speak Terran, Tarb thought, he seemed to be introducing, explaining or apologizing.
It turned out that, through some oversight, the usually thoughtful Terran police department had neglected to inform the Fizbian consul that one of his people had been incarcerated, for the young man had already been tried, found guilty of assault plus contempt of court, and sentenced to pay a large fine. However, after Stet had given his version of the circumstances to a sympathetic judge, the sum was reduced to a nominal one, which the Times paid.
"But I don't see why you should have paid anything at all," Bloxx protested ungratefully. "I didn't do anything wrong. You should have made an issue of it."
"According to Earth laws, you did do wrong," Stet said wearily, "and this is Earth. What's more, if we take the matter up, it will naturally get into print. You don't want your employers to hear about it, do you--even if you don't care about making Fizbians look ridiculous to Terrestrials?"
"I suppose I wouldn't like FizbEarth to find out," Bloxx conceded. "As it is, I'll have to do some fast explaining to account for my not having shown up for nearly a week. I'll say I caught some horrible Earth disease--that'll scare them so much, they'll probably beg me to take another week off. Though I do wish you fellows over at the Times would answer your mail sooner. I'm a regular subscriber, you know."
* * * * *
"But the same kind of thing's going to happen over and over again, isn't it, Stet?" Tarb asked as a taxi took them back to the hotel in which most of the Times staff was domiciled. "If privacy doesn't exist on Earth, it's bound to keep occurring."
"Eh?" Stet took his attention away from her toes with some difficulty. "Some Earth people like privacy, too, but they have to fight for it. Violations aren't legally punishable--that's the only difference."
"Then surely the Terrestrials would understand about us, wouldn't they?" she asked eagerly. "If they knew how strongly we felt about privacy, maybe they wouldn't violate it--not as much, anyway. I'm sure they're not vicious, just ignorant. And you can't just keep on getting Fizbians out of jail each time they run up against the problem. It would be too expensive, for one thing."
"Don't worry," he said, pressing her toes. "I'll take care of the whole thing."
"An article in the paper wouldn't really help much," she persisted thoughtfully, "and I suppose you must have run at least one already. It would explain to the Fizbians that Terrestrials don't regard invasion of privacy as a crime, but it wouldn't tell the Terrestrials that Fizbians do. We'll have to think of--"
"You're surely not going to tell me how to run my paper on your first day here, are you?"
He tried to take the sting out of his words by twining his toes around hers, but she felt guilty. She had been presumptuous. Probably there were lots of things she couldn't understand yet--like why she shouldn't polish her eyeballs in public. Stet had finally explained to her that, while Terrestrial women did make up in public, they didn't scour their irises, ever, and would be startled and horrified to see someone else doing so.
"But I was horrified to see them raking their feathers in public!" Tarb had contended.
"Combing their hair, my dear. And why not? This is their planet."
That was always his answer. I wonder, she speculated, whether he would expect a Terrestrial visitor to Fizbus to fly ... because, after all, Fizbus is our planet. But she didn't dare broach the question.
However, if it was presumptuous of her to make helpful suggestions the first day, it was more than presumptuous of Stet to ask her up to his rooms to see his collection of rare early twentieth-century Terrestrial milk bottles and other antiques. So she just told him courteously that she was tired and wanted to go to roost. And, since the hotel had a whole section fitted up to suit Fizbian requirements, she spent a more comfortable night than she had expected.
She awoke the next day full of enthusiasm and ready to start in on the great work at once. Although she might have been a little too forward the previous night, she knew, as she took a reassuring glance in the mirror, that Stet would forgive her.
* * * * *
In the office, she was, at first, somewhat self-conscious about Drosmig, who hung insecurely from his perch muttering to himself, but she soon forgot him in her preoccupation with duty. The first letter she picked up--although again oddly unlike the ones she'd read in the paper on Fizbus--seemed so simple that she felt she would have no difficulty in answering it all by herself:
Heidelberg
Dear Senbot Drosmig:
I am a professor of Fizbian History at a local university. Since my salary is a small one, owing to the small esteem in which the natives hold culture, I must economize wherever I can in order to make both ends meet. Accordingly, I do my own cooking and shop at the self-service supermarket around the corner, where I have found that prices are lower than in the service groceries and the food no worse.
However, the manager and a number of the customers have objected to my shopping with my feet. They don't so much mind my taking packages off the shelves with them, but they have been quite vociferous on the subject of my pinching the fruit with my toes. Unripe fruit, however, makes me ill. What shall I do?
Sincerely yours,
Grez B'Groot
Tarb dictated an unhesitating reply:
Dear Professor B'Groot:
Why don't you explain to the manager of the store that Fizbians have wings and feet rather than arms and hands?
I'm sure his attitude and the attitudes of his customers will change when they learn that your pinching the fruit with your feet is not mere pedagogical eccentricity, but the regular practice on our planet. Point out to him that your feet are covered and, therefore, more sanitary than the bare hands of his other customers.
And always put on clean socks before you go shopping.
Helpfully yours,
Senbot Drosmig
Miss Snow raised pale eyebrows.
"Is something wrong?" Tarb asked anxiously. "Should I have put in that bit about work, study, meditate? It seems inappropriate somehow."
"Oh, no, not that. It's just that your letter--well, violates Mr. Zarnon's precept that, in Rome, one must do as the Romans do."
"But this isn't Rome," Tarb replied, bewildered. "It's New York."
"He didn't make the saying up," Miss Snow replied testily. "It's a Terrestrial proverb."
"Oh," Tarb said.
She resented this creature's trying to tell her how to do her job. On the other hand, Tarb was wise enough to realize that Miss Snow, unpleasant though she might be, probably did know Stet well enough to be able to predict his reactions.
So Tarb not only was reluctant to show Stet what she had already done, but hesitated about answering another and even more urgent letter that had just been brought in by special messenger. She tried to compromise by submitting the letters to Drosmig--for, technically speaking, it was he who was her immediate superior--but he merely groaned, "Tell 'em all to drop dead," from his perch and refused to open his eyes.
In the end, Tarb had to take the letters to Stet's office. Miss Snow trailed along behind her, uninvited. And, since this was a place of business, Tarb could not claim a privacy violation. Even if it weren't a place of business, she remembered, she couldn't--not here on Earth. Advanced spirituality, hah!
Advanced pain in the pinions!
Stet read the first letter and her answer smilingly. "Excellent, Tarb--" her hearts leaped--"for a first try, but I'd like to suggest a few changes, if I may."
"Well, of course," she said, pretending not to notice the smirk on Miss Snow's face.
"Just write this Professor B'Goot that he should do his shopping at a grocery that offers service and practice his economies elsewhere. A professor, of all people, is expected to uphold the dignity of his own race--the idea, sneering at a culture that was thousands of years old when we were still building nests! Terrestrials couldn't possibly have any respect for him if they saw him prodding kumquats with his toes."
"It's no sillier than writing with one's vestigial wings!" Tarb blazed.
"Well!" Miss Snow exclaimed in Terran. "Well, really!"
Tarb started to stick out her tongue, then remembered. "I didn't mean to offend you, Miss Snow. I know it's your custom. But wouldn't you understand if I typewrote with my feet?"
Miss Snow tittered.
"If you want the honest truth, hon, it would make you look like a feathered monkey."
"If you want the honest truth about what you look like to me, dearie--it's a plucked chicken!"
"Tarb, I think you should apologize to Miss Snow!"
"All right!" Tarb stuck out her tongue. Miss Snow promptly thrust out hers in return.
"Ladies, ladies!" Stet cried. "I think there has been a slight confusion of folkways!" He quickly changed the subject. "Is that another letter you have there, Tarb?"
"Yes, but I didn't try to answer it. I thought you'd better have a look at it first, since Miss Snow didn't seem to think much of the job I did with the other one."
"Miss Snow always has the Times' welfare at heart," Stet remarked ambiguously, and read:
Chicago
Dear Senbot Drosmig:
I am employed as translator by the extraterrestrial division of Burns and Deerhart, Inc., the well-known interstellar mail-order house. As the company employs no other Fizbians and our offices are situated in a small rural community where no others of our race reside, I find myself rather lonely. Moreover, being a bachelor, with neither chick nor child on Fizbus, I have nothing to look forward to upon my return to the Home Planet some day.
Accordingly, I decided to adopt a child to cheer my declining years. I dispatched an interstellargram to a reliable orphanage on Fizbus, outlining my hopes and requirements in some detail. After they had satisfied themselves as to my income, strength of character, etc., they sent me a fatherless and motherless egg in cold storage, which I was supposed to hatch upon arrival.
However, when the egg came to Earth, it was impounded by Customs. They say it is forbidden to import extrasolar eggs. I have tried to explain to them that it is not at all a question of importation but of adoption; however, they cannot or will not understand.
Please tell me what to do. I fear that they may not be keeping the egg at the correct Fizbian freezing point--which, as you know, is a good deal lower than Earth's. The fledgling may hatch by itself and receive a traumatic shock that might very well damage its entire psyche permanently.
Frantically yours,
Glibmus Gluyt
"Oh, for the stars' sake!" Stet exploded. "This is really too much! Viz our consul, Miss Snow. That egg must go back to Fizbus at once, before any Terrestrials hear of it! And I must notify the government back on the Home Planet to keep a close check on all egg shipments. Something like this must certainly not occur again."
"Why shouldn't the Terrestrials hear of it?" Tarb asked, outraged. "And I think it's mean of you to send back a poor little orphan egg like that when it has a chance of getting a good home."
"An egg!" Miss Snow repeated incredulously. "You mean you really...?" She gave me one mad little hoot of laughter and then stopped and strangled slightly. Her face turned purple in her efforts to restrain mirth. Really, Tarb thought, she looks so much better that color.
Stet's crest twitched violently. "I hope--" he began. "I do hope you will keep this ... knowledge to yourself, Miss Snow."
"But of course," she assured him, calming down. "I'm dreadfully sorry I was so rude. Naturally I wouldn't dream of telling a soul, Mr. Zarnon. You can trust me."
"I'm sure I can, Miss Snow."
Tarb almost choked with indignation. "You mean you've been keeping the facts of our life from Terrestrials? As if they were fledglings ... no, even fledglings are told these days."
"One could hardly blame him for it, Miss Morfatch," Miss Snow said. "You wouldn't want people to know that Fizbians laid eggs, would you?"
"And why not?"
"Tarb," Stet intervened, "you don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh, don't I? You're ashamed of the fact that we bear our children in a clean, decent, honorable way instead of--" She stopped. "I'm being as bad as you two are. Probably the Terrestrials' way of reproduction doesn't seem dirty to them--but, since they do reproduce that way, they could scarcely find our way objectionable!"
"Tarb, that's not how a young girl should talk!"
"Oh, go lay an egg!" she said, knowing that she had overstepped the limits of propriety, but unable to let him get away with that. "I hope to be a wife and mother some day," she added, "and I only hope that when that time comes, I'll be able to lay good eggs."
"Miss Morfatch," Stet said, keeping control of his temper with a visible effort, "that will be enough from you. If common decency doesn't restrain you, please remember that I am your employer and that I set the policies on my paper. You'll do what you're told and keep a civil tongue in your head or you'll be sent back to Fizbus. Do I make myself clear?"
"You do, indeed," Tarb said. How could she ever have thought he was charming and handsome? Well, perhaps he still was handsome, but fine feathers do not make fine deeds. And, if it came to that, it wasn't his paper.
"We have the same thing on Terra," Miss Snow murmured sympathetically to Stet. "These young whippersnappers think they can start in running the paper the very first day. Why, Belinda Romney herself--she's a distant cousin of mine, you know--told me--"
"Miss Snow," Tarb said, "I hope for the sake of Earth that you are not a typical example of the Terrestrial species."
"And you, hon," Miss Snow retorted, "don't belong on a paper, but in a chicken coop."
"Ladies!" Stet said helplessly. "Women," he muttered, "certainly do not belong on a newspaper. Matter of fact, they don't belong anywhere; their place is in the home only because there's nowhere else to put them."
Both females glared at him.
* * * * *
During the next fortnight, Tarb gained fluency in Terran and also learned to operate a Terrestrial typewriter equipped with Fizbian type--mostly so that she could dispense with the services of the invaluable Miss Snow. She didn't like typing, though--it chipped her toenails and her temper. Besides, Drosmig kept complaining that the noise prevented him from sleeping and she preferred him to sleep rather than hang there making irrelevant and, sometimes, unpleasantly relevant remarks.
"Longing for the old scripto, eh?" one of the cameramen smiled as he lounged in the open doorway of her office. Although she was fond of fresh air, Tarb realized that she would have to keep the door shut from now on. Too many of the younger members of the staff kept booing at her as they passed, and now they had formed the habit of dropping in to offer her advice, encouragement and invitations to meals. At first, the attention had pleased her--but now she was much too busy to be bothered; she was going to turn out acceptable answers to those letters or die trying.
"Well, if the power can't be converted, it can't," she said grimly. "Griblo, I do wish you'd be a dear and flutter off. I--"
He snorted. "Who says the power can't be converted? Stet, huh?"
She took her feet off the keys and looked at him. "Why do you say 'Stet' that way?"
"Because that's a lot of birdseed he gives you about not being able to convert Earth power. Could be done all right, but he and the consul have it all fixed up to keep Fizbian technology off the planet. Consul's probably being paid off by the International Association of Manufacturers and Stet's in it for the preservation of indigenous culture--and maybe a little cash, too. After all, those rare antique collections of his cost money."
"I don't believe it!" Tarb snapped. "Griblo, please--I have so much work to get through!"
"Okay, chick, but I warn you, you're going to have your bright-eyed illusions shattered. Why don't you wake up to the truth about Stet? What you should do is maybe eschew the society of all journalists entirely, and a sordid lot they are, and devote yourself to photographers--splendid fellows, all."
"Please shut the door behind you!"
The door slammed.
Tarb gazed disconsolately at the letter before her. Would she ever be able to answer letters to Stet's satisfaction? The purpose of the whole column was service--but did she and Stet mean the same thing by the same word? Or, if they did, whom was Stet serving?
She was paying too much attention to Griblo's idle remarks. Obviously he was a sorehead--had some kind of grudge against Stet. Perhaps Stet was a bit too autocratic, perhaps he had even gone native to some extent, but you couldn't say anything worse about him than that. All in all, he wasn't a bad bird and she mustn't let herself be influenced by rumormongers like Griblo.
* * * * *
Tarb got up and took the letter to Stet. He was in his office dictating to Miss Snow. After all, Tarb could not repress the ugly thought, why should he care about the scriptos? He'll never have to use a typewriter.
And he was perfectly nice about being interrupted. The only thing he didn't like was being contradicted. I'm getting bitter, she told herself in surprise. And at my age, too. I wonder what I'll be like when I'm old.
This thought alarmed her and so she smiled very sweetly at Stet as she murmured, "Would you mind reading this?" and gave him the letter.
"Run into another little snag, eh?" he said affably, giving her foot a gentle pat with his. "Well, let's see what we can do about it."
Montreal
Dear Senbot Drosmig:
I am a chef at the Cafe Inter-stellaire, which, as everyone knows, is one of the most chic eating establishments on this not very chic planet. During my spare moments, I am a great amateur of the local form of entertainment known as television. I am especially fascinated by the native actress Ingeborg Swedenborg, who, in spite of being a Terran, compares most favorably with our own Fizbian footlight favorites.
The other day, while I am in the kitchen engaged in preparing the ragout celeste à la fizbe for which I am justly celebrated on nine planets, I hear a stir outside in the dining room. I strain my ears. I hear the cry, "It is Ingeborg Swedenborg!"
I cannot help myself. I rush to the doorway. There, behold, the incomparable Ingeborg herself! She follows the headwaiter to a choice table. She is even more ravishing in real life than on the screen. On her, it does not matter that she has no feathers save on the head--even skin looks good. Overcome by involuntary ardor, I boo at her. Whereupon I am violently assailed by a powerfully built native whom I have not previously noticed to be escorting her.
I am rescued before he can do me any permanent damage, though, if you wish the truth, it will be a long time before I can fly again. However, I am given notice by the cold-hearted management. Now I am without a job. And what is more, if on this planet one is not permitted to express one's instinctive and natural admiration for a beautiful woman, then all I have to say is that it is a lousy planet and I wiggle my toes at it. How do I go about getting deported?
Impatiently yours,
Rajois Sludd
"Oh, I suppose it serves him right," Tarb said quickly, before Stet could comment, "but don't you think it would be a good idea if the Times got up a Fizbian-Terrestrial handbook of its own? It's the only solution that I can see. The regular one, I recognize now, is more than inadequate, with all that spiritual gup--" Miss Snow drew in her breath sharply--"and not much else. All these problems are bound to arise again and again. Frankly speaking, Stet, your solutions only take care of the individual cases; they don't establish a sound intercultural basis."
He grunted.
"What's more," she went on eagerly, "we could not only give copies to every Fizbian planning to visit Earth, but also print copies in Terran for Terrestrials who are interested in learning more about Fizbus and the Fizbians. In fact, all Terrans who come in contact with us should have the book. It would help both races to understand each other so much better and--"
"Unnecessary!" Stet snapped, so violently that she stopped with her mouth open. "The standard handbook is more than adequate. Whatever limitations it may have are deliberate. Setting down in cold print all that ... stuff you want to have included would make a point of things we prefer not to stress. I wouldn't want to have the Terrestrials humor me as if I were a fledgling or a foreigner."
He leaped out of his chair and paced up and down the office. One would think he had forgotten he ever could fly.
"But you are a foreigner, Stet," Tarb said gently. "No matter what you do or say, Terrestrials and Fizbians are--well, worlds apart."
"Spiritually, I am much closer to the Terrestrials than--but you wouldn't understand." He and Miss Snow nodded sympathetically at each other. "And you might be interested to know that I happen to be the author of all that 'spiritual gup.' I wrote the handbook--as a service to Fizbus, I might point out. I wasn't paid for it."
"Oh, dear!" Tarb said. "Oh, dear! I really and truly am sorry, Stet."
He brushed her apologies aside. "Answer that letter. Ignore the question about deportation entirely." He ran a foot through his crest. "Just tell the fellow to see our personnel manager. We could use a chef in the company dining room. Haven't tasted a decent celestial ragout--at a price I could afford--since I left Fizbus."
"Would you want me to print that reply in the column?" she asked. "'If you lose your job because you're unfamiliar with Terrestrial customs, come to the Times. We'll give you another job at a much lower salary.'"
"Of course not! Send your answer directly to him. You don't think we put any of those letters you've been answering in the column, do you? Or any that come in at all, for that matter. I have to write all the letters that are printed--and answer them myself."
"I should have recognized the style," Tarb said. "So this is the service the Times offers to its subscribers. Nothing that would be of help. Nothing that could prevent other Fizbians from making the same mistake. Nothing that could be controversial. Nothing that would help Terrestrials to understand us. Nothing, in short, but a lot of birdseed!"
"Impertinence!" Miss Snow remarked. "You shouldn't let her talk to you like that, Mr. Zarnon."
"Tarb!" Stet roared, casting an impatient glance at Miss Snow. "How dare you talk to me in that way? And all this is none of your business, anyway."
"I'm a Fizbian," she stated, "and it certainly is my business. I'm not ashamed of having wings. I'm proud of them and sorry for people who don't have them. And, by the stars, I'm going to fly. If skirts are improper to wear for flying, then I can wear slacks. I saw them in a Terrestrial fashion magazine and they're perfectly respectable."
"Not for working hours," Miss Snow sniffed.
"I have no intention of flying during working hours," Tarb snapped back. "Even you should be able to see that the ceiling's much too low."
Stet ran a foot through his crest again. "I hate to say this, Tarb, but I don't feel you're the right person for this job. You mean well, I'm sure, but you're too--too inflexible."
"You mean I have principles," she retorted, "and you don't." Which wasn't entirely true; he had principles--it was just that they were unprincipled.
"That will be enough, Tarb," he said sternly. "You'd better go now while I think this over. I'd hate to send you back to Fizbus, because I'd--well, I'd miss you. On the other hand...."
Tarb went back to her office and drafted a long interstel to a cousin on Fizbus, explaining what she would like for a birthday present. "And send it special delivery," she concluded, "because I am having an urgent and early birthday."
* * * * *
"Tarb Morfatch!" Stet howled, a few months later. "What on Earth are you doing?"
"Dictating into my scripto," Tarb said cheerfully. "Some of the boys from the print shop helped fix it up for me. They were very nice about it, too, considering that the superscriptos will probably throw them out of work. You know, Stet, Terrestrials can be quite decent people."
"Where did you get that scripto?"
"Cousin Mylfis sent it to me for my birthday. I must have complained about wearing out my claws on a typewriter and he didn't understand that scriptos won't work on Earth. Only they do." She beamed at her employer. "All it needed was a transformer. I guess you're just not mechanically minded, Stet."
He clenched his feet. "Tarb, Terrestrials aren't ready for our technology. You've done a very unwise thing in having that scripto sent to you. And I've done a very unwise thing in keeping you here against my better judgment."
"Maybe the Terrestrials aren't ready," she said, ignoring his last remark, "but I'm not going to wear my feet to the bone if I can get a gadget that'll do the same thing with no expenditure of physical energy." She placed a foot on his. "I don't see how a thing like this could possibly corrupt the Terrestrials, Stet. It's made a better, brighter girl out of me already."
"Hear, hear!" said Drosmig hoarsely from his perch.
"Shut up, Senbot. You just don't understand, Tarb. If you'll only--"
"But I'm afraid I do understand, Stet. And I won't send my scripto back."
"May I come in?" Miss Snow tapped lightly on the door frame. "Is what I hear true?"
"About the scripto?" Tarb asked. "It certainly is. All you have to do is talk into it and the words appear on the paper. Guess that makes you obsolete, doesn't it, Miss Snow?"
"And high time, too," commented Drosmig. "Never liked the old biddy."
"Senbot...." Stet began, and stopped. "Oh, what's the use trying to talk reasonably to either of you! Tarb, come back to my office with me."
She could not refuse and so she followed. Miss Snow, torn between curiosity and the scripto, hesitated and then made after them.
"I've decided to take you off the column--for this morning, anyway--and send you on an outside assignment," Stet told Tarb. "The consul's wife is coming to Earth today. Once she heard there was another woman on Terra, nothing could stop her. Consul seems to think it's my fault, too," he added moodily. "Won't believe I had nothing to do with hiring you. I told the Home Office not to send a woman, that she'd disrupt the office, and you sure as hell have."
"But I thought you said in your letters that you were doing everything in your power to bring Fizbian womenfolk to their men on Terra!" Tarb pointed out malevolently.
"Yes," he confessed. "We must please our readers. You know that. Anyway, all that's irrelevant right now. What I want you to do is go meet the consul's wife. Nice touch, having the only other Fizbian woman here be the one to interview her. Human interest angle for the Terrestrial papers. Shouldn't be surprised if Solar Press picked it up--they like items of that kind for fillers. Take Griblo along with you and make sure he has film in his camera this time."
"Yes, sir," Tarb said. "Anything you say, sir."
He pretended not to notice her sarcasm. "I have a list of the questions you should ask her." He fixed her with his eye. "You stick to them, do you hear me? I don't want anything controversial." He rummaged among the papers on his desk. "I know I had it half an hour ago. Sit down, will you, Tarb? Stop hopping around."
"If I can't have a perch, I want a stool," Tarb said. "This is a private office and I think it's a gross affectation for you to have those silly, uncomfortable chairs in it."
"If you would have your wings clipped like Mr. Zarnon's--" Miss Snow began before Stet could stop her.
"Stet, you didn't!"
His crest thrashed back and forth. "They'll grow back again and it's so much more convenient this way. After all, I can't use them here and I do have to associate with Terrestrials and use their equipment. The consul has had his wings clipped also and so have several of our more prominent industrialists--"
"Oh, Stet!" Tarb wailed. "I was beginning to think some pretty hard things about you, but I wouldn't ever have dreamed you'd do anything as awful as that!"
"Why should I have to apologize to you?" he raged. "Who do you think you are, anyway? You're an incompetent little fool. I should have fired you that first day. I've let you get away with so much only because you have a pretty face. You've only been on Earth a couple of months; how can you presume to think you know what's good and what's bad for the Fizbians here?"
"I may not know what's good," she retorted, "but I certainly do know what's bad. And that's you, Stet--you and everything you stand for. You not only don't have the courage of your convictions, you don't even have any convictions. You're ashamed of being a Fizbian, ashamed of anything that makes Fizbians different from Terrestrials, even if it's something better, something that most Terrans would like to have. You're a damned hypocrite, Stet Zarnon, that's what you are--professing to help our people when actually you're hurting them by trying to force them into the mold of an alien species."
She brushed back her crest. "I take it I'm fired," she said more quietly. "Do you want me to interview the consul's wife first or leave right away?"
It took Stet a moment to bring his voice under control. "Interview her first. We'll talk this over when you get back."
* * * * *
It was pleasant to be away from the office, she thought as the taxi pulled toward the airfield, and doing wingwork again, even if it proved to be the first and last time on this planet. Griblo sat hunched in a corner of the seat, too preoccupied with the camera, which, even after two years, he hadn't fully mastered, to pay attention to her.
Outside, it was raining, the kind of thin drizzle that, on Fizbus or Earth, could go on for days. Tarb had brought along the native umbrella she had purchased in the hotel gift shop--a delightful contraption that was supposed to keep off the rain and didn't, and was supposed to collapse and did, but at the wrong moments. She planned to take it back with her when she returned to Fizbus. Approved souvenir or not, it was the same beautiful purple as her eyes. And, besides, who had made the ruling about approved souvenirs? Stet, of course.
"No reason why we couldn't have autofax brought from Home," Griblo suddenly grumbled.
Tarb pulled herself back from her thoughts. "I suppose Stet wouldn't let you," she said. "But now that one scripto's here," she went on somewhat complacently, "he'll have to--"
"Keep this planet charming and unspoiled, he says," Griblo interrupted ungratefully. "Its spiritual values will be corrupted by too much contact with a crass advanced technology. And, of course, he's got the local camera manufacturers solidly behind him. I wonder whether they advertise in the Times because he helps keep autofax off Terra or whether he keeps the autofax off Terra because they advertise in the Times."
"But what does he care about advertising? He may talk as if he owned the Times, but he doesn't."
Griblo gave a nasty laugh. "No, he doesn't, but if the Terran edition didn't show a profit, it'd fold quicker than you can flip your wings and he'd have to go back to nasty old up-to-date Fizbus as a lowly sub-editor. And he wouldn't like that one bit. Our Stet, as you may have noticed, is fond of running things to suit himself."
"But Mr. Grupe told me that the Times isn't interested in money. It's running this edition of the paper only as a service to--oh, I suppose all that was a lot of birdseed, too!"
"Grupe!" Griblo snorted. "The sanctimonious old buzzard! He's a big stockholder on the paper. Bet you didn't know that, did you? All they're out for is money. Fizbian money, Terrestrial money--so long as it's cash."
"Tell me, Griblo," Tarb asked, "what does 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do' mean?"
Griblo grinned sourly. "Stet's favorite motto." He moved along the seat closer to her. "I'll tell you what it means, chicken. When on Earth, don't be a Fizbian."
* * * * *
The consul's wife, an old mauve creature, did not seem overpleased to see Tarb, since the younger, prettier Fizbian definitely took the spotlight away from her. The press had, of course, seen Tarb before, but at that time they hadn't been able to communicate directly with her and they didn't, she now found out, think nearly as much of Stet as he did of them.
Tarb couldn't attempt to deviate much from Stet's questions, for the consul's wife was not very cooperative and the consul himself watched both women narrowly. He was a good friend of Stet's, Tarb knew, and apparently Stet had taken the other man into his confidence.
When the interviews were over and the consular party had left, Tarb remained to chat with the Terrestrial journalists. Despite Griblo's worried objections, she joined them in the Moonfield Restaurant, where she daringly partook of a cup of coffee and then another and another.
After that, things weren't very clear. She dimly remembered the other reporters assuring her that she shouldn't disfigure her lovely wings with a stole ... and then pirouetting in the air over the bar to prolonged applause ... and then she was in the taxi again with Griblo shaking her.
"Wake up, Tarb--we're almost at the office! Stet'll have me plucked for this!"
Tarb sat up and pushed her crest out of her eyes. The sky was growing dark. They must have been gone a long time.
"I'll never hear the end of this," Griblo moaned. "Why, if only he could get someone to fill my place, Stet would fire me like a shot! Not that I wouldn't quit if I could get another job."
"Oh, it'll be mostly me he'll be mad at." Tarb pulled out her compact. Stet had warned her not to polish her eyeballs in public, but the ground with him! Her head hurt. And her feathers, she saw in the mirror, had turned almost beige. She looked horrible. She felt horrible. And Stet would probably think she was horrible.
"When Stet's mad," Griblo prophesied darkly, "he's mad at everybody!"
And Stet was mad. He was waiting in the newsroom, his emerald-blue eyes blazing as if he had not only polished but lacquered them.
"What's the idea of taking six hours to cover a simple story!" he shouted as soon as the door began to open. "Aside from the trivial matter of a deadline to be met--Griblo, where's Tarb? Nothing's happened to her, has it?"
"Naaah," Griblo said, unslinging his camera. "She took a short cut, only she got held up by a terrace. Snagged her umbrella on it, I believe. I heard her yelling when I was waiting for the elevator; I didn't know nice girls knew language like that. She should be up any minute now.... There she is."
He pointed to a window, through which the lissome form of the young feature writer could be seen, tapping on the glass in order to attract attention.
[Illustration]
"Somebody better open it for her," the cameraman suggested. "Probably not meant to open from the outside. Not many people come in that way, I guess."
* * * * *
Open-mouthed, the whole newsroom stared at the window. Finally the Copy Editor got up and let a dripping Tarb in.
"Nearly thought I wouldn't make it," she observed, shaking herself in a flurry of wet pink feathers. The rest of the staff ducked, most of them too late. "Umbrella didn't do much good," she continued, closing it. It left a little puddle on the rug. "My wings got soaked right away." She tossed her wet crest out of her eyes. "Golly, but it's good to fly again. Haven't done it for months, but it seems like years." Her eye caught Miss Snow's. "You don't know what you're missing!"
"Tarb," Stet thundered, "you've been drinking coffee! Griblo!" But the cameraman had nimbly sought sanctuary in the dark-room.
"You'd better go home, Tarb." When Stet's eye tufts met across his nose, he was downright ugly, she realized. "Griblo can give me the dope and I'll write up the story myself. I can fill it out with canned copy. And you and I will discuss this situation in the morning."
"Won't go home when there's work to be done. Duty calls me." Giving a brief and quite recognizable imitation of a Terrestrial trumpet, Tarb stalked down the corridor to her office.
Drosmig looked up from his perch, to which he was still miraculously clinging at that hour. "So it got you, too?... Sorry ... nice girl."
"It hasn't got me," Tarb replied, picking up a letter marked Urgent. "I've got it." She scanned the letter, then made hastily for Stet's office.
He sat drumming on his desk with the antique stainless steel spatula he used as a paperknife.
"Read this!" she demanded, thrusting the letter into his face. "Read this, you traitor--sacrificing our whole civilization to what's most expedient for you! Hypocrite! Cad!"
"Tarb, listen to me! I'm--"
"Read it!" She slapped the letter down in front of him. "Read it and see what you've done to us! Sure, we Fizbians keep to ourselves and so the only people who know anything about us are the ones who want to sell us brushes, while the people who want to help us don't know a damn thing about us and--"
"Oh, all right! I'll read it if you'll only keep quiet!" He turned the letter right-side up.
Johannesburg
Dear Senbot Drosmig:
I represent the Dzoglian Publishing Company, Inc., of which I know you have heard, since your paper has seen fit to give our books some of the most unjust reviews on record. However, be that as it may, I have opened an office on Earth with the laudable purpose of effecting an interchange of respective literatures, to see which Terrestrial books might most profitably be translated into Fizbian, and which of the authors on our own list might have potential appeal for the Earth reader.
Dealing with authors is, of course, a nerve-racking business and I soon found myself in dire need of mental treatment. What was my horror to find that this primitive, although charming, planet had no neurotones, no psychoscopes, not even any cerebrophones--in fact, no psychiatric machines at all! The very knowledge of this brought me several degrees closer to a breakdown.
Perhaps I should have consulted you at this juncture, but I admit I was a bit of a snob. "What sort of advice can a mere journalist give me," I thought, "that I could not give myself?" So, more for amusement than anything else, I determined to consult a native practitioner. "After all," I said to myself, "a good laugh is a step forward on the road to recovery."
Accordingly, I went to see this native fellow. They work entirely without machines, I understand, using something like witchcraft. At the same time, I thought I might pick up some material for a jolly little book on primitive customs which I could get some unknown writer to throw together inexpensively. Strong human interest items like that always have great reader-appeal.
The native chap--doctor, he calls himself--was most cordial, which he should have been at the price I was paying him. One thing I must say about these natives--backward they may be, but they have a very shrewd commercial sense. You can't even imagine the trouble I had getting those authors to sign even remotely reasonable contracts ... which in part accounts for my mental disturbance, I suppose.
Well, anyway, I handed the native a privacy waiver carefully filled out in Terran. He took it, smiled and said, "We'll discuss this afterward. My contact lenses have disappeared; I suppose one of my patients has stolen them again. Can't see a thing without them."
So we sat down and had a bit of a chat. He seemed remarkably intelligent for a native; never interrupted me once.
"You are definitely in great trouble," he told me when I'd finished. "You need to be psycho-analyzed."
"Good, good," I said. "I see I've come to the right shop."
"Now just lie down and make yourself comfortable."
"Lie down?" I repeated, puzzled. I have an excellent command of Terran, but every now and then an idiom will throw me. "I tell the truth, sir, and when I am required by force of circumstances to lie, I lie up."
"No," he said, "not that kind of lying. You know, the kind you do at night when you go to sleep."
"Oh, I get you," I said idiomatically. Without further ado, I flung off my ulster and flew up to a thingummy hanging from the ceiling--chandelier, I believe, is the native term--flipped upside down, and hung from it by my toes. Wasn't the Presidential Perch, by any means, but it wasn't bad at all. "What do I do next?" I inquired affably.
"My dear fellow," the chap said, whipping out a notebook from the recesses of his costume, "how long have you had this delusion that you are a bird--or is it a bat?"
"Sir," I said as haughtily as my position permitted, "I am neither a bird nor a bat. I am a Fizbian. Surely you have heard of Fizbians?"
"Yes, yes, of course. They come from another country or planet or something. Frankly, politics is a bit outside my sphere. All I'm interested in is people--and Fizbians are people, aren't they?"
"Yes, certainly. If anything, it's you who.... Yes, they are people."
"Well, tell me then, Mr. Liznig, when was it you first started thinking you were a bat or a bird?"
I tried to control myself. "I am neither a bird nor a bat! I am a Fizbian! I have wings! See?" I fluttered them.
He peered at me. "I wish I could," he said regretfully. "Without my glasses, though, I'm as blind as a bat--or a bird."
Well, the long and the short of it is that the natives are planning to certify me as insane and incarcerate me, pending the doctor's decision as to whether my delusion is that I am a bird or a bat. They are using my privacy waiver as commitment papers.
Save me, Senbot Drosmig, for I feel that if I have to wait for the doctor's glasses to be delivered, I shall indeed go mad.
Distractedly yours,
Tgos Liznig
"I'll handle this myself," Stet said crisply. "I'll tell the consul to advise the Terran State Department that this man should be deported as an undesirable alien. That'll solve the problem neatly. We can't have this contaminating the pure stream of Terrestrial literature with--"
"But aren't you going to explain to them that he's perfectly sane?" Tarb gasped.
"No need to bother. He'll be grateful enough to get off the planet. Besides, how do I know he is perfectly sane?"
"Stet Zarnon, you're perfectly horrid!"
"And you, Tarb Morfatch, are disgustingly drunk. Now you go right home and sleep it off. I know I was too harsh with you--my fault for letting you go out alone with Griblo in the first place when you've been here only a few months. Might have known those Terran journalists would lead you astray. Nice fellows, but irresponsible." He flicked out his tongue. "There, I've apologized. Now will you go home?"
"Home!" Tarb shrieked. "Home when there's work to be done and--"
"--and you're not going to be the one to do it. Tarb," he said, attempting to seize her foot, which she pulled away, "I was going to tell you tomorrow, but you might as well know tonight. I've taken you off the column for good. I have a better job for you."
She looked at him. "A better job? Are you being sarcastic? What as?"
"As my wife." He got up and came over to her. She stood still, almost stunned. "That solves the whole problem tidily. An office is no place for you, darling--you're really a simple home-girl at heart. Newspaper work is too strenuous for you; it upsets you and makes you nervous and irritable. I want you to stay home and take care of our house and hatch our eggs--unostentatiously, of course."
"Why, you--" she spluttered.
He put his foot over her mouth. "Don't give me your answer now. You're in no condition to think. Tell me tomorrow."
* * * * *
It rained all night and continued on into the morning. Tarb's head ached, but she had to make an appearance at the office. First she vizzed an acquaintance she had made the day before; then she took her umbrella and set forth.
As she kicked open the door to the newsroom, all sound ceased. Voices stopped abruptly. Typewriters halted in mid-click. Even the roar of the presses downstairs suddenly seemed to mute. Every head turned to look at Tarb.
Humph, she thought, removing her plastic oversocks, so suppose I was a little oblique yesterday. They needn't stare at me. They never stare at Drosmig. Just because I'm a woman, I suppose! The gate crashed loudly behind her.
"Oh, Miss Morfatch," Miss Snow called. "Mr. Zarnon said he wanted to see you as soon as you came in. It's urgent." And she giggled.
"Really?" Tarb said. "Well, he'll just have to wait until I've wrung out my wings." Sooner or later, she would have to face Stet, but she wanted to put it off as long as possible.
She opened the door to her office and halted in amazement. For, seated on a stool behind the desk, haggard but vertical, was Senbot Drosmig, busily reading letters and blue-penciling comments on them with his feet.
"Good morning, my dear," he said, giving her a wan smile. "Surprised to see me functioning again, eh?"
"Well--yes." She opened her dripping umbrella mechanically and stood it in a corner. "How--"
"I realized last night that all that happened to you was my fault. You were my responsibility and I failed you."
"Oh, don't be melodramatic, Senbot. I wasn't your responsibility and you didn't fail me. Not that I'm not glad to see you up and doing again, but--"
"But I did fail you!" the aged journalist insisted. "And, in the same way, I failed my people. I shouldn't have given in. I should have fought Zarnon as you, my dear, tried to do. But it isn't too late!" The fire of the crusader lit up in his watery old eyes. "I can still fight him and his sacred crows--his Earthlings! If I have to, I can go over his head to Grupe. Grupe may not understand Stet's moral failings, but he certainly will comprehend his commercial ones. Grupe owns stock in other Fizbian enterprises besides the Times. Autofax, for example."
"Oh, Senbot!" Tarb wailed. "The whole thing's such an awful mess!"
"I don't think it'll be necessary to threaten that far," he comforted her. "Stet is no fool. He knows which side of his breadnut is peeled."
"I'm sure you'll do a wonderful job," she exclaimed, impulsively giving a ritual entrechat. "And I wish I could stay and help you, but...."
"I know, my dear."
"You do?" She was puzzled. "But how did the news get around so quickly?"
He shrugged. "The Terrestrial grapevine is almost as efficient as the Fizbian. Didn't you notice any change in the--ah--atmosphere when you came in?"
"Oh, was that the reason?" Tarb laughed merrily. "Somehow it never occurred to me that they could have heard so soon."
"But the morning editions have been out for hours."
The door to the office was flung open. Stet stormed in, bristling with a most unloverlike rage.
"Miss Morfatch--" he waved a crumpled copy of the Terrestrial Tribune at her--"when I give an order, I expect to be obeyed! Didn't Miss Snow tell you to report directly to my office the instant you came in? Although that's a question I don't have to ask; I know Miss Snow, at least, is someone I can trust."
"I was coming to see you, Stet," Tarb said soothingly. "Right away."
"Oh, you were, were you? And have you seen this?" Stet fairly threw the paper at her. Smack in the middle of the front page was a picture of herself in full flight over the airfield bar. Not a very good picture, but what could you expect with Terrestrial equipment? When the autofax came, perhaps she would be done justice.
FIZBIAN NEWSHEN GIVES EARTH A FLUTTER
"Though No Mammal, I Pack a Lot of Uplift," Says Beautiful Fizbian Gal Reporter
"I feel that you Terrans and we Fizbians can get along much better," lovely Tarb Morfatch, Fizbus Times feature writer, told her fellow-reporters yesterday at the Moonfield Restaurant, "if we learn to understand each other's differences as well as appreciate our similarities.
"With commerce between the two planets expanding as rapidly as it has been," Miss Morfatch went on, "it becomes increasingly important that we make sure there is no clash of mores between us. Where adaptation is impossible, we must both adjust. 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do' is an outmoded concept in the complex interstellar civilization of today. The Romans must learn to accept us as we are, and vice versa.
"Forgive me if I've offended you by my frankness," she said, sticking out her tongue in the charming gesture of apology that is acquiring such a vogue on Earth, Belinda Romney and many other socialites having enthusiastically adopted it, "but you've violated our privacy so many times, I feel I'm entitled to hurt your feelings just a teeny-weeny bit...."
"Those Terran journalists," Tarb said admiringly. "Never miss a trick, do they? Am I in all the other papers too, Stet? Same cheesecake?"
"You've made an ovulating circus out of us--that's what you've done!"
"Nonsense. Good strong human interest stuff; it'll make us lovable as chicks all over the planet. Gee--" she read on--"did I say all that while I was caffeinated? I ought to turn out some pretty terrific copy sober."
"And to think you, the woman I had asked to make my wife, did this to me."
"Oh, that's all right, Stet," Tarb said without looking up from the paper. "I wasn't going to accept you, anyway."
"Good for you, Tarb," Drosmig approved.
"You're going back to Fizbus on the next liner--do you hear me?" Stet raged.
She smiled sunnily. "Oh, but I'm not, Stet. I'm going to stay right here on Earth. I like it. You might say the spiritual aura got me."
He snorted. "How can you possibly stay? You don't have an independent income and this is an expensive planet. Besides, I won't let you stay on Earth. I have considerable influence, you know!"
"Poor Stet." She smiled at him again. "I'm afraid the Fizbian press--the Fizbian consul even--are pretty small pullets beside the Solar Press Syndicate. You see, I came in this morning only to resign."
He stared at her.
"Yesterday," she informed him, "I was offered another position--as feature writer for the SP. I hadn't decided whether or not to accept when I reported back last evening, but you made up my mind for me, so I called them this morning and took the job. My work will be to explain Fizbians to Terrans and Terrans to Fizbians--as I wanted to do for the Times, Stet, only you wouldn't let me."
"It's no use saying anything to you about loyalty, I suppose?"
"None whatsoever," she said. "I owe the Times no loyalty and I'm doing what I do out of loyalty to Fizbus ... plus, of course, a much higher salary."
"I'm glad for you, Tarb," Drosmig said sincerely.
"Be glad for yourself, Senbot, because Stet will have to let you conduct the column your way from now on. Either it'll supplement my work in the Terrestrial papers or he'll look like a fool. And you do hate looking like a fool, don't you, Stet?"
He didn't answer.
"Better give up, Stet." She turned to Drosmig. "Well, good-by, Senbot--or, rather, so long. I'm sure we'll be seeing each other again. Good-by, Stet. No hard feelings, I hope?"
He neither moved nor spoke.
"Well ... good-by, then," she said.
The door closed. Stet stared after her. The forgotten umbrella dripped forlornly in the corner.
NARAKAN RIFLES, ABOUT FACE!
By Jan Smith
Those crazy, sloppy, frog-like Narakans ... all thumbs and six-inch skulls ... relics of the Suzi swamps. Until four-fisted Lt. Terrence O'Mara moved among them--lethal, dangerous, with a steady purpose flaming in his volcanic eyes.
Terrence O'Mara lay flat on his back trying to keep his big body as still as possible. Despite the fact that he was stripped to his regulation shorts, a large pool of sweat had formed on the cot underneath him. The only movement he permitted himself was an occasional pursing of his lips as he dragged on a cigarette and sent a swirl of smoke upward through the heavy humid air. Then he would just lie there watching as the smoke crept up to mingle with the large drops of water that were forming on the concrete of the command post.
"Damn! Damn Naraka, anyway! Outpost of civilization! Who'd want the blasted place except the Rumi?"
[Illustration]
At the words, Terrence moved his head just a fraction of an inch and his eyes only a little farther to look across the room to where Bill Fielding was twisting and turning on his cot. All he could see of the other man was the wet outline of his body under a once white sheet and a hand that every so often reached into a bucket of water on the floor and then replaced a soaking T-shirt over a red head.
"You'll feel it less if you lie still," Terrence said, distressed at the necessity for talking.
"Feel it less! My God, listen to the man! What difference does it make if you lie still or move around or even run around in the suns like a bloody Greenback? Dust Bin will get you one way or another ... and if it doesn't, the Rumi will."
The visible hand lifted the T-shirt and began to pop salt tablets into an open mouth like they were so many peppermints.
"I wonder where Norton is. Out reviewing the troops?"
"Reviewing, my eye. He's up at Government House sitting in that cool living room drinking one of Mrs. Wilson's icy drinks and admiring Mrs. Wilson's shapely legs. From a discreet distance, of course. Being temporary Commanding Officer of even Dust Bin has its privileges!"
There was a rattle of drums and the blare of one or two off-key instruments from outside.
"Then why," asked Terrence, "are those poor beggars marching up and down in this blasted heat?"
"The Greenbacks? They love it! It would take more than a little heat to get under those inch-thick skins of theirs. They like to play soldier when it's a hundred and thirty under water."
There were a few more straggling notes and then the semblance of a march began.
"Listen to that, will you?" Fielding moaned, "They can't even keep time with a drum! They can't march, they can't shoot, they can't break down a Banning; they're all thumbs and six-inch thick skulls. 'Train local forces to take over'! Bah! Did those desk jockeys back in New Chicago ever see a Greenback? Did they ever try to teach a Narakan to fix a bayonet to the proper end of a rifle or to fire a blaster in the right direction?"
* * * * *
Terrence was lighting another cigarette with as little exertion as possible. "Yes, but they keep trying. Ten hours a day. You don't have to drive those boys. They want to learn. Listen to O'Shaughnessy barking out orders."
"Sergeant Major O'Shaughnessy of the First Narakan Rifles!" Fielding murmured sarcastically. "A year ago he was squatting in a mud cocoon at the bottom of Suzi swamp with the rest of the frogs. Now he's got a good Irish name and he's strutting around like a Martian Field Marshal."
"I thought the names might give them a sense of self respect. Besides we couldn't pronounce theirs and I was tired of hearing Norris yell 'Hey, greenboy!' at them."
"Well, they picked the right guy when they made you Training Officer. You and those damn frogs get along like you came from the same county!"
"They aren't any great shakes for brains but you can't take anything away from me boys for willingness."
"Willingness! Hooray! They're willing, so what? So is a Suzi Swamp lizard. What'll it get them? A week after they pull the Terran forces out, the Rumi will gobble up the lot of them. Maybe they'll gobble them and us before we pull out. Who could fight in this place? Who'd want to fight? I say, to hell with Naraka! It's so near to hell already with those two blasted suns blazing sixteen hours a day. Let the Rumi have the stinking planet! Let them have the whole Centaurian System!"
"Speaking of pulling out, I wouldn't be surprised if Dust Bin wasn't the next place we let go of...."
Fielding raised himself on one elbow, "No kidding? Where did you hear that?" His sunburned and blistered face was alight with excitement.
"Well, you know how it's been. When we first came here twenty years back, we drove the Rumi out of all this country and more or less took their cat feet off the Narakan's backs but now that so much of the Earth garrison has been pulled all the way back into the Solar System, the Rumi are acting up again. So much so that the dope I got is that we may be pulling everything back into the Little Texas peninsula to wait for reinforcements and it will take four years for those to come out from Mars."
"Great! Great! But.... Ah, it's too good to be true. Can't you just picture Fielding and O'Mara parading down Dobi street in New Chicago with their first lieutenant bars on their collars? Say, you don't suppose that's why the Sun Maid is sticking around out here, do you? Imagine, free transportation! A two hour trip to New Chi!"
"I'd sure hate to march those two hundred miles at this time of year!"
"March? Through those swamps? Every time we run a patrol through them...."
Fielding was interrupted by a knock on the door and a skinny young Terran with sergeant's chevrons on his shorts stuck his head through from the other room and said, "Major Chapelle's on the voice radio, sir. He's calling from battalion headquarters and wants Captain Norton."
"Tell him Norton's up playing footsies with the Resident's wife," Fielding said, "You'd think those people down at the river would have enough to do without bothering us in the heat of the day, wouldn't you?"
The sergeant looked shocked and started to withdraw his head. Terrence frowned Fielding into silence and called to the sergeant, "Just a minute, Rogers. I'll talk to the Major."
Major Chapelle was a thickset, balding man in his late forties. Even the blazing suns of Naraka hadn't succeeded in burning the sickly yellow color off his face. In the vision screen he looked like a man on his last legs. Whatever was wrong with him didn't help his temper, Terrence thought as he lowered himself gently into a seat before the screen.
"O'Mara! Where in hell is Norton?" he demanded.
"Well, sir, you see...." began Terrence.
"Never mind! I've a pretty good idea where he is. A fine time to be chasing skirts! Well, get this straight, O'Mara. Orders have come through and we're pulling the battalion out. We're ordered back to Little Texas. We're going to give up these positions along the river tonight and pull back into Dust Bin. The Sun Maid will stand by to evacuate us. You people are to come too. Everybody has to get out, both the military and civilians. All hell's broken loose down river. The Rumi are across the Muddy in half a dozen places. They've cut the 5th to pieces. New Chicago thinks that those cats have been bringing troops in from space all along despite the agreement by both sides not to do so. And now they have us way outnumbered." The Major's voice held a thin edge of hysteria.
"Is there any action along our front, Major?" Terrence asked quickly, hoping to stop the flow of talk before Chapelle's hysteria communicated itself to the enlisted men who were sitting or lying about the command post.
"Not yet; just patrols across the river so far. We've got to get out, O'Mara, and get out fast. They'll be all over us if we don't. The Colonel says for Norton to have everything ready to go. He wants the depot destroyed. Everything's got to go, everything we can't take along. The Sun Maid won't have time for more than one trip. He wants the HQ company and the civilians on board by tomorrow morning at the latest."
"What about the Rifles, sir?"
"What? The what?"
"The native troops, sir. The Narakan Rifles." Terrence grated.
"The Rifles? Good God, man! We haven't time for nonsense. The Rifles are only Greenbacks, aren't they? You get Norton started burning those stores."
Terrence put down the microphone very carefully to keep from slamming it down and stalked back into his quarters. Angrily he began to take his radiation clothing from its hooks on the wall.
"What the devil is eating you?" demanded Bill Fielding.
"We're pulling out, lock, stock and barrel," Terrence told him.
"Pulling out? Whoweee! I knew Mrs. Fielding didn't raise her boy to be a fried egg. Goodbye, Dust Bin! Hello, New Chi!" Bill was up on his hands and knees pounding on his cot. "But what's the matter with you? You like this place?"
"They're leaving the Rifles," Terrence said, zipping up his protective coveralls as he left the room.
II
Stepping outside on Naraka with the full power of Alpha and Beta Centauri beating down was like stepping into a river of fire. Even with the cooling unit in his suit, Terrence was aware of the searing heat that filled the parade ground. Looking off across the makeshift native huts, he could see the bright sides of a huge space ship-like object. The big dirigible Sun Maid was lying in an open field. It's a funny world, he thought to himself, where you have to use dirigibles for planetary travel. But a dirigible was the only practical aircraft when you had to use steam turbine engines because of the lack of gasoline and the economic impracticability of transporting it in the limited cargo holds of the occasional spacers that came out from Sol.
The Narakan Rifles were marching toward him now, the band doing absolutely nothing for The Wearing of the Green. Three hundred big, green bodied, beady eyed, frog-like creatures were marching in the boiling heat with their non-coms croaking out orders in English which might have come out of Alice in Wonderland.
As they marched by him, he snapped a salute. Watching them closely he tried to find two men who were in step with each other or one man who had his rifle at the right angle. Unable to find either, he stood there conscious of failure; failure which went beyond mere military precision however. Sloppiness at review could have been overlooked if he had been able to find that the Narakans had any ability as fighting men but after a year of training they seemed almost as hopeless as they had at first. It wasn't that they were completely unintelligent. In fact, other than the Galactic traveling Rumi, they were the only extra-solar race of intelligent beings encountered by man so far. It was just, he thought, that the hundreds of years during which the Rumi had dominated their planet had reduced the Narakans to a state of almost complete ineptitude.
He stood there as they passed in review three times because he knew that his presence pleased and encouraged them. Then he turned, and with dragging feet made his way down Dust Bin's single street toward Government House.
In a few minutes he was standing in the cool, air conditioned living room of the Wilsons. Wilson was seated at his desk rummaging through some papers while Norris and Mrs. Wilson were lounging in contour chairs admiring each other over tall, frosty drinks.
They took the news just as he expected them to. Wilson ran his hand through his sparse, gray hair and murmured something about it being a shame to have to leave the natives on their own after having more or less dragged them out of their comfortable swamps. A glance from his wife silenced him.
"What the hell," Norris said, "they're only blasted thick witted Greenbacks."
Mrs. Wilson yawned, "It'll be something of a bother packing but it'll certainly be a pleasure to get back to New Chicago. Some women's husbands get good posts in half-way civilized parts of the Universe. I don't know why I should always have to be stuck in every backwater, hick town there is."
Wilson smiled apologetically, "Now, dear...." he began but was interrupted by the sudden ringing of the telephone on the table near Norris' chair.
"Get that, will you, O'Mara?" the captain said, making no attempt to reach for it, "It's probably the Command Post."
Terrence put the phone to his ear angrily and growled into it. An excited Bill Fielding was on the line. "Terry? Is that you? Fielding here. Hell's breaking loose. There's a bunch of blasted Rumi trying to force their way into town. They attacked the sentries down this way and may be heading for your end of town too."
Terrence dropped the phone and headed for the door. "Rumi!" he shouted and there were shouts and cries from outside in answer. Then he heard the clack, clack, clack of Rumi spring guns. Windows of the room crashed in and Wilson collapsed across his desk. Norton grabbed Mrs. Wilson and pulled her down onto the floor. Terrence dropped to his hands and knees and continued toward the door as he drew his forty-five.
* * * * *
Somewhere, someone had cut loose with a Banning and its high whine drowned out the clack of the spring guns. With a quick look around, Terrence started at a run for the next building which was the native schoolhouse. He didn't make it. There was a clack, clack from off to his left and he threw himself forward, skidding and sliding in the dust and gravel of the street. A warehouse across the square was on fire and three Rumi had darted from behind it. In one brief glance he saw those long barreled spring guns of theirs and the tall, graceful bodies and the feline faces under the plastic protective clothing.
He snapped four shots at them and saw one fall. Then he began to slither along the ground raising enough dust to mask his movements. There were half a dozen of them in the square when he reached the rear door of the schoolhouse. Several gleaming plastic bolts smashed into the wooden outer door a second after he had raised up to open it and then had dropped back down.
Norton fired from the residency and momentarily scattered the Rumi and Terrence was inside the school room and racing for the side window from which he could get a clear line of fire at the raiders. He had a brief glimpse of Joan Allen, the school teacher, standing in a corner of the room with the tiny green figures of native children huddled around her. Then he was at a window and had beaten out the heavy protective glass and was firing into a mass of the catmen, firing and cursing as his gun emptied. He cursed in a stream of Martian, English and Greenback profanity as he forced another clip into the gun.
"Lieutenant O'Mara, if you'll be so kind as to restrain your language in front of these children," a voice said from over his shoulder.
Terrence reached back and felt something soft and forced it over against the wall out of the line of the window. Then he risked a quick look which was almost his last. A spring gun bolt burned a groove in the windowsill next to his head and smashed into the blackboard across the room.
"Lieutenant O'Mara, would you mind telling me what this is all about?" came the same calm determined woman's voice from beside him. He fired again at a darting figure across the square and saw it stumble before he had to drop to his haunches as the window above him was smashed and scattered by bolts and glass rained down about his head.
He put another clip into his gun and cursed because he had only two left. He turned his head briefly and had a quick glimpse of a white face framed in straight dark hair and a small, neat figure in a yellow dress.
"Rumi attack. One of their patrols must have gotten around the battalion."
A husky, whimpering little sound made him look down. A native child or pollywog as the Terrans called them was clinging desperately to the teacher's skirt. His tiny webbed feet clutched at the cloth as he buried his face against her leg. From behind her peered still another child, its baby frog face working spasmodically in the beginnings of a sob. Six or seven others were lying flat on the floor their bodies trembling in terror.
Terrence took another look outside and what he saw sent him into another stream of cursing. The Narakan Rifles were hurrying to the scene of action. Down the middle of the street they came in a column of fours with their drums and bugles blaring out a poor imitation of The Wearing of the Green. Their standard bearer was running at the head of the column beside Sergeant Major O'Shaughnessy.
"Oh, my God! He wouldn't...!"
"Lieutenant, please!"
"Teacher, will you shut up!" he roared as he leaped across the room toward the front door. At the harsh tone of his voice, the whimpering sounds in the room suddenly burst forth in full volume as the ten pollywogs raised their hoarse voices into full throated croaks.
Terrence braced his body against the wall and held his gun ready as he pulled open the door. In parade formation his men were moving up the street and in a moment they would be away from the buildings' protection and directly in the Rumi line of fire.
"O'Shaughnessy, you idiot!" he roared above the croaking from behind him and the rattle of firing outside.
O'Shaughnessy came to a skidding halt almost directly in front of the schoolhouse but his men kept on going, their faces set and determined. O'Shaughnessy came to attention and snapped a salute.
"Yes, sir, Mr. Lieutenant."
"Halt! Damn it, HALT!" Terrence yelled at the column of greenbacks. Their formation crumbled as they ran into each other, stepped on each other's feet and pushed and shoved. But they halted.
"O'Shaughnessy! Break ranks ... take cover ... line of skirmishers!" Terrence shouted and hit the dirt behind a sandbox in the schoolyard as the Rumi resumed firing. There was a mad scramble among the Narakans as they scattered behind walls and into buildings, moving with an incredibly rapid jumping motion which they used when in a hurry.
Terrence was so glad to see only one sprawled figure in the dust of the street that he just lay there for a few seconds spitting dust before he realized that he had forgotten to close the face visor of his radiation clothing.
* * * * *
There was a slight clucking sound from beside him and when he turned he found O'Shaughnessy lying almost beside him, squinting along his carbine. The Narakan's face split into two replicas of the map of Ireland and he saluted flat handed, his webbed fingers at just the proper angle.
"O'Shaughnessy, you don't have to salute when you're lying down!" O'Mara tried to keep his voice as calm as possible.
"Yes, sir, Mr. Lieutenant. Pretty quick we fight now?"
His lieutenant ignored him and searched for signs of life in the houses across the square. There wasn't a Rumi in sight except for one on the roof of a shed next to the burning warehouse. He tried a couple of shots with his automatic and missed. He grabbed O'Shaughnessy's carbine and dropped the creature as it tried to scramble off the shed.
"Pretty soon we fight with bayonet?" O'Shaughnessy asked as Terrence handed back the carbine.
"O'Shaughnessy, why do you do things like this to me, me who took you out of your damn mud hole and made a soldier out of you?"
O'Shaughnessy's mouth formed a huge round moon, "Not understand, Lieutenant...." he began but he was ignored again as Terrence stared across the street in pained disbelief to where the heavy weapons squad of the Narakan Rifles was gathered in a huddled group behind a native house, struggling to set up their Banning Automatic Blaster and two machine guns. One of the men was down on his hands and knees balancing the heavy barrel of the blaster on his back while two others were attempting to push the ponderous breech onto it by main strength. The two machine guns were half on and half off their tripods. The leg of one of them had been bent in the wrong direction and the other was so covered with grease that the parts wouldn't fit together.
"Oh, Lord!" moaned Terrence and was bracing himself for a dash across the street when a figure in Terran battle armor came around the building on the run, dodging and crawling as spring bolts raised the dust in front of him. It was the short, stout Gunnery Sergeant, Polasky. Terrence breathed a sigh of relief.
He turned to O'Shaughnessy, "Now, Sergeant, this is our problem. Those buildings over there are filled with Rumi. They have automatic weapons ... spring guns ... firing a clip of twenty plastic bolts. They're deadly at close to medium range. They can penetrate our battle armor." He looked at the thick, knobby skin of the Narakan, "Yours too. Now, they are probably just a patrol about the size of one of our companies. They don't seem to have any heavy weapons and ours will be in action in a few minutes. Then, O'Shaughnessy...." The Narakan was squinting along the barrel of his rifle.
"Are you paying attention, Sergeant?"
"Yes, sir! Attention, yes, sir." O'Shaughnessy started to lift his bulky three hundred pounds up off the ground. Terrence heaved with all his might against those thick khaki clad legs to knock him down again.
"Man, what are you doing?" he yelled.
"Attention, sir. Sir said...."
"No, no, O'Shaughnessy. I meant, listen to me. O'Shaughnessy, how could you? Haven't I been like a brother to you? Didn't I share my whiskey and candy ration with you?"
"Yes, sir. That's why...."
"Then for the sake of your two headed frog-faced gods, shut up and listen to me."
"Yes, sir."
"Look. In a minute our Banning will be in action," his voice was drowned out by the scream of tortured air as the Banning cut loose. "Now there is a sweet sound. What do we do next, O'Shaughnessy?"
One of the row of buildings across the square glowed red briefly as the beam from the Blaster caught it; glowed red and then burst into a ball of fire. O'Shaughnessy's mouth was open wide, his chinless face resting on the edge of the sandbox and his little black bead eyes were as large as they could get.
"What do we do now, O'Shaughnessy ... come on...."
The Narakan made a thrusting gesture with his carbine, "Bayonet ... we go in with bayonet now," he said.
O'Mara slapped him on the seat of his khaki pants. "No, no. You got to get this stuff straight."
The whine of the Banning interrupted him again and it was joined by the chatter of machine guns and rifle fire and answered by the rapid clacking of spring guns. Bolts dug into the wall of the schoolhouse and showered them with plaster. Others shattered the front window. Terrence wiped plaster off his visor and tried again. "You've got to get this straight, O'Shaughnessy, because ... well, because you may be getting an independent command pretty soon and there won't be anyone around to tell you what to do."
The Narakan was listening to him but wide-mouthed and uncomprehending. "We're going to burn them out of those huts; burn them out or burn the houses down over their heads. About the time Polasky gets to the third one, those guys are going to break and then they'll either rush us or...."
Norton was yelling something from the Residency. There was a noise of clanking armor behind him and he could hear Fielding's voice cracking out orders as he came up with twenty hastily armed and armored clerks, cooks and radiomen from the HQ unit.
"O'Mara! O'Mara, they're breaking! They're running! Let's go!" Norton was on the porch of the Residency pouring Tommy gun slugs at the rear of the burning row of houses.
"Okay, let's go," Terrence said, lurching to his feet. The Narakan sergeant blew his whistle and the riflemen swarmed out from their shelters and started at a run across the square with Norton, Terrence and O'Shaughnessy at their head. The rest of the Terrans in full battle armor lumbered along after them.
One or two bolts whistled overhead and Corporal O'Brien dropped his rifle and fell forward clutching his leg. The smoke from the burning buildings obscured their vision but Terrence had a momentary sight of Rumi radiation clothing and emptied his clip at it.
Someone from behind threw a grenade which fell short of its target and rolled in front of them. Norton took two quick strides and kicked it into one of the flaming buildings.
III
There were about twenty Rumi, less than they had thought, fleeing across the open fields behind the burning huts. They were firing as they ran and giving out those queer yelping cries of theirs. Three or four of them fell and then Norton was shouting, calling back his men to organize fire fighting parties.
"Captain! Captain, let's go after those guys. We can cut them off before they get to the grasslands," Terrence yelled.
"Get your men after these fires, O'Mara. We can't let them spread."
There was nothing to do but obey but he delayed long enough to empty his automatic in the general direction of the fleeing Rumi. Then he turned and yelled, "Harrigan! Sergeant Harrigan! Where in the devil is that...." There was a crashing sound behind him and Harrigan stumbled through the smoke and came down on his foot, all three hundred pounds of him.
Later, as the last smoking embers of the fire were being smothered by industrious squads of Narakans with buckets and shovels, Terrence limped back across the square with Bill Fielding.
"We should have gone after those lousy scum," Bill said, "They may cut back around the town again and give the battalion some trouble on the river road."
"Don't you think I know it! As fast as the Greenbacks can move when they want to, we could have caught the lot of them before they got into the grasslands. But Norton was worried about the fires! Of course, we're going to burn all these buildings tomorrow or the next day but Norton was afraid the Residency would catch fire."
"Probably didn't want his sweetie's fancy clothes to burn."
"They got Wilson, you know."
"Good Lord! Dead?"
"Right between the eyes. They almost got all four of us."
Fielding took his heavy battle helmet off and pushed back the glass visor of his radiation helmet to wipe the perspiration and dirt off his face. "Well, maybe Norton didn't want us to catch those damn cats. Maybe he figured he owed them that much."
O'Mara shielded his eyes as he said, "Beta's setting. It'll be night in a couple of hours and we can walk around without this blasted radiation armor for a while."
"Yeah, and we can start looking for a full scale night attack as soon as good old Alpha hides his hoary head."
"If you see O'Shaughnessy, tell him I want to see him, will you? I'm going to stop at the schoolhouse for a few minutes."
Surprise spread across Bill's freckled face, "Not the school teacher? Not you! Buddy, you've been in Dust Bin too long. You've been on Naraka too long. You'll be attending services at the Chapel next."
Terrence muttered a few old Anglo-Saxon words under his breath and limped off in the direction of the school building.
* * * * *
The Reverend Ames Goodman was the smallest Narakan that Terrence had ever seen. The Johnathian missionary from Little Texas was somewhat under two hundred and fifty pounds which was slight for a Greenback. He also spoke the best English except for some of the big shots in New Chicago. Ordinarily he was a composite of superstitious reverence and natural dignity which Terrence had always found admirable. Today, however, he couldn't have appeared more ludicrous if he had tried. He was dressed for a visit to the Residency in a white duck suit which was too small and out of which he bulged in a number of surprising places.
He and Joan Allen were talking half in English and half in Narakan as the lieutenant entered. The minister had a painfully surprised look on his round green face.
"I hope we didn't bust up your school too much, Miss Allen."
"If you are quite finished with your shooting and cursing, Lieutenant O'Mara, perhaps you have time to explain to Rev. Goodman and me what this talk about evacuation means."
As she spoke, she brushed stray strands of black hair up under her radiation helmet. For the first time in the six months that she had been in charge of the orphan school in Dust Bin, Terrence decided that maybe she was pretty after all. He wasn't sure whether it was the high color which excitement lent to her usually pale face or if Bill Fielding was right in saying he had been on Naraka too long, but Joan Allen was beginning to look good to him. At the moment the feeling wasn't at all mutual.
"Is it true that the Defense Force is pulling out and leaving the rest of us to the Rumi?"
Terrence took off his helmet and let the rapidly cooling air strike his head. "Not exactly, teacher," he said, "The Fifth is pulling out but so are all the Terrans in Dust Bin. Everyone's being ordered back to Little Texas. That's why the Sun Maid is standing by."
"All the Terrans, Lieutenant? What about the people here who depend on us? What about my children?"
O'Mara somehow couldn't quite look either of them in the face. He muttered something about having to get back to his command post and started out the door. Joan called after him as she noticed his limp, "Lieutenant, I'm sorry, I didn't know you have been wounded."
"Oh, it's nothing ... nothing," he said, hurrying away, his neck reddening from something more than the attention of Beta Centauri. How in the name of Naraka's sixty devils could you tell a woman that one of your own non-coms had stepped on your foot and nearly broken your instep?
The battalion straggled into Dust Bin during the night. It hadn't exactly fought its way back from the river but had had enough casualties to make the men nervous and jumpy without tempering them at all. One of the casualties had been Lt. Colonel Upton. Now Major Chapelle was in command. The men of the battalion were nervous but Chapelle was riding on the thin edge of panic. He ordered everyone on board the Sun Maid at once and then countermanded the order and formed a defense perimeter around the town. He threw out patrols which were unable to contact any Rumi on the Dust Bin side of the river.
The next morning Terrence was summoned to Government House for an officers' conference. As he hurried along its single street, Dust Bin was in a state of confused and helpless excitement. The three or four hundred Narakans who made up its population were all in the street or square. Many of them were carrying their belongings on their shoulders and looked as if they were only waiting for an order of some kind to send them scurrying off toward the Suzi swamps.
As O'Mara reached the veranda of the Residency, Rev. Goodman was speaking with Joan Allen by his side. His words were aimed at Chapelle, Norton and a large gray-eyed man whom Terrence recognized as the Captain of the Sun Maid.
"When you came, you earthmen in your great ships, the Narakan was a hunted creature on his own planet and had been back as far as he could remember. You drove off the Rumi and took parts of the planet for your own use but you did not hunt the Narakan. You brought him out of his swamps and taught him much; to wear clothes, to till the ground and many other things. You even gave him your religion. But now the Rumi have returned and you say you are not strong enough to hold all the planet."
* * * * *
Major Chapelle was impatient, "That's right, Reverend, there's too many of them. The garrison just isn't big enough to hold everything and it's too far back to Earth for us to expect any reinforcements for a year or even longer."
Norton took over. "You're an educated ... ah ... man, Goodman. You see what the problem is. We can't hold everything so we've got to cut our losses. All of the most important resources and towns are in the Little Texas area and so we're pulling back into there."
"I see. Yes, I understand. The people of Dust Bin are part of the losses that must be cut."
"Now, now. Don't put it that way, Reverend. The natives can always take refuge in the swamps, you know."
"Yes. I suppose it must be so. Back to Little Texas for the Terrans and back to the swamps for the Narakans. Back to living naked in the mud, back to fishing for our food and back to thinking only of the next meal."
"It really isn't that bad," Chapelle said. "As soon as the situation adjusts itself, the Terran forces will be coming back. Then you can come out of your hiding places and resume your regular life again."
"Yes. And in the meantime our only problem will be to stay out of the way of the Rumi."
"I don't believe that they will go out of their way to harm you. It's the Terrans they want to drive out."
Suddenly the Reverend Goodman was shaking his fist in the Major's face, forgetting in his excitement both his manners and his correct English. "Not hurt! Not hurt, Mr. General? No, they not hurt, they just eat! They favorite food is Naraka steak."
"Now, now, calm yourself," Norton put a hand on Goodman's shoulder. "There's plenty of room in the Sun Maid for you and the rest of your people will be safe enough in the swamps."
"What about my children?" demanded Joan Allen.
"Children, Miss Allen? I don't know.... Oh, yes, you mean the poly ... the children. Why, I assume they will go with their parents."
Joan placed a small fist firmly on each of her slim hips. "Major, all the children in the mission school are orphans. They have no parents. None of them have ever lived in the swamps."
"Ah yes. But I hardly see what we can do about it, Miss Allen."
"Well, Major, I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do about it. Unless those kids are loaded on the Sun Maid in place of some of this junk," she waved a hand at the piles of luggage which belonged to Mrs. Wilson, "I'm going to stay with my charges and leave you with the problem of explaining to the Mission Board and to the Bishop of New Chicago just why you left me behind."
At the mention of the extremely influential Johnathian Bishop the Major looked more worried than ever. After a short conference with Norton, he turned to Joan.
"Very well, Miss Allen. The children will go in the airship. I'm sure that Mrs. Wilson will be only too glad to leave some of her clothes to make room for them."
"Thank you, Major." Joan said, making no attempt to gloat over her victory.
"Now, Captain, I understand that most of the military stores have been destroyed and that the men are ready for embarkation," Chapelle went on hurriedly, addressing himself to the captain of the Sun Maid. "We will have about three hundred and twenty, no ... about three hundred and thirty passengers for you."
The captain shook his head doubtfully, "It's a big load. I hope we can make it without any trouble."
"Well, then," Chapelle went on, "We'll go aboard during the day after we complete the destruction of the stores and facilities. The native troops under Lieutenant O'Shaughnessy will cover our embarkation and then convoy the civilians as far as the Suzi swamps. Afterwards they will march overland to Fort Craven on the Little Texas border."
Terrence had never had any urge to be a hero. He had always pictured himself retiring at a ripe old age as a Colonel or Brigadier and raising canal oranges on Mars, but suddenly the memory of the Narakan Rifles rushing down the street with bugles blaring and flag waving right into the Rumi line of fire rose before him. The thought of O'Shaughnessy, even with his new lieutenant's commission, leading the blundering troops along the two hundred miles to Fort Craven was too much for him.
"I beg your pardon, Major," he heard himself saying, "But as the Narakan Training Officer, I think that I should remain in command of the unit in its overland march."
The Major was dumfounded. Norton looked as if he were sure the Narakan climate had proven too much of a strain for the lieutenant.
"Lieutenant O'Mara, are you sure...." began Chapelle.
"Are you nuts, O'Mara? Do you know what you're asking for?" demanded Norton.
"Yes, sir. I feel that since Colonel Upton appointed me Training Officer for the Narakan Rifles, it is my duty to stay with them until I am relieved."
Chapelle's look of astonishment had changed to one of relief. It would be far easier to explain the hurried abandonment of the Narakan Rifles to the native representatives at New Chicago if a Terran officer were to remain with them.
"Well," he said, "I could, of course, relieve you of your responsibility but if you feel that...."
"I do, sir." Terrence said quickly lest he be tempted to back out.
IV
Later in the day as he sat in the shade of the command post's overhanging roof with his back against a stack of sand-bags, he cursed himself for sixteen kinds of an idiot as he watched the evacuation begin. Beta was dropping low over the pink Maldo hills as the long line of earthmen filed up the gangway into the big airship.
"Hello," said a voice behind him. He turned to find Joan Allen standing there clothed in radiation armor and holding a small canvas bag in one hand. "I thought ... I mean ... I came to say good-bye."
"Hello, yourself. I thought you were on board with the rest of them." He got up hastily.
"No. I got the kids on board but I wanted one more look at the schoolhouse before we shoved off."
Somehow he was holding onto her arm, "I guess it meant a lot to you, that schoolhouse," he said.
"Yes, it did. I ... I was afraid that I wouldn't get to see you when you get to New Chicago."
"There's no danger of that, Joanie. If and when I get there, I'll be looking for you ... that is ... if you want to see me."
"If you think you can stand an old maid school teacher, I'll be looking for you." She was very close to him now. "Why did you do it, Terrence? Why are you making the march with the Narakans? Fielding says your chances aren't very good."
"I'll thank Fielding to keep his big mouth shut! I don't really know why, probably kind of an Earthman's Burden, noblesse oblige ... you know ... something like the sort of thing Kipling used to write about."
"Hell," she said, surprising him with her vehemence, "you don't believe that guy any more than I do. It was old when Kipling wrote it and it's even older now. I think that somewhere under that tough Irish skin of yours, there's a sentimental fool hiding."
She was still closer now with her hands pressed lightly against his chest and suddenly his arms went around her, he lifted her protective visor and forced his lips down hard on hers. All of her primness had disappeared as she leaned against him, returning his kiss with a burning eagerness which a more experienced woman might have controlled.
There were tears running down his cheeks and he knew they weren't his. He released her slightly and looked down into her tear streaked face, wondering how it was possible for them to have been at the same post for six months without really knowing each other.
"I guess I'm kind of crazy about you, teacher," he said.
He had lifted her off her feet and she clung there with her arms around his neck. "Terrence, I can't leave you ... I...."
As Terrence bent over to kiss her again there was a loud cough and Bill Fielding was standing there dressed in full battle armor. He grinned and said, "Much as I hate to break this up, I don't think Chapelle is going to hold the Sun Maid much longer."
Terrence set Joan gently on her feet and she turned and fled toward the waiting ship. He watched until she was on board and then turned to stare at Bill. Still grinning broadly, Bill clapped him on the shoulder as he said, "I could never have faced those bartenders on Dobi Street if I had gone back without you. We better get going, hadn't we? Sergeant Polasky's down with the men. He couldn't bear to leave his Bannings."
"Well, I'll be damned!" was all O'Mara could find to say as he watched the big airship lift itself in the fading light, circle and pass through the smoke of Dust Bin for the last time.
* * * * *
Throwing their gear over their shoulders, the two officers crossed the parade ground to where the two hundred khaki clad figures of the Narakan Rifles stood waiting with Sergeant Polasky clucking slightly as he fussed over his Bannings.
O'Shaughnessy was wearing his new lieutenant bars and a pith helmet and was carrying a large piece of wood in imitation of Norton's swagger stick. Terrence took one look at him and at the two orderlies who stood behind him holding his field kit. He strode toward him scowling, placed his fists on his hips and stood glaring up at the Greenback as he roared, "So! It's delusions of grandeur you've got, is it? Where are Hannigan and O'Toole and their patrols? Why aren't they back?"
O'Shaughnessy stiffened to attention trying to pull in his great stomach. "They are back, Mr. Lieutenant Sir.... I forgot. They had nothing to report ... no contact."
Terrence looked him up and down, "If you foul up just once more ... I'm going to ... I'll split your gizzard, stuff it with To-To leaves and send you to the Rumi for their breakfast with my compliments!"
O'Shaughnessy shivered at the dire threat as O'Mara turned to Rev. Goodman who stood with his people clustered about him. "All right, Reverend, you can move out with your flock. I'll throw patrols out in front of you and bring up the rear with the rest of the Rifles. We'll see you as far as the edge of the swamps."
In a long straggly line, the refugees started out with the native police keeping order and Goodman marching at their head. The two drums and the three bugles of the Narakan Rifles struck up a badly mangled version of Back to Donegal, and the column followed on the heels of the civilians. Once or twice Terrence glanced back at the smoke and flame that had been Dust Bin before he turned his face forward across the miles of grasslands to where the Suzi swamps lay.
Darkness had fallen but progress wasn't difficult until one of those sudden, lashing storms for which Naraka was famous hurled itself upon them, flattening the tall grass, raising swirls of dust and finally turning the dust into thick, clinging mud.
As suddenly as it had come, the storm was gone. But by that time they were in the swamp itself. Night in the Suzi swamps. Swamps composed of a sticky, gray mud and heavy tangled undergrowth. The night was as black as the day had been bright. The column which had left the civilians at the edge of the swamp was pushing slowly forward. The Narakans glided along on their bare, webbed feet and the Terrans pushed along on snowshoe-like glides attached to their boots.
Bill Fielding, bareheaded with his helmet thrown back over his shoulder, floundered along beside Terrence. "Did you ever see a place like this? Did you ever see mud like this? Even the Irish bogs couldn't be this bad."
Terrence checked his map, shielding his flashlight carefully. "We'll be out of the worst of this by tomorrow morning," he said.
"If we live until tomorrow morning," Fielding replied, "those Rumi have eyes like the blasted jungle cats they're descended from."
"I don't think we have much to worry about until we get out of the swamps. I doubt if their patrols would penetrate very deeply into this mess."
"How about the radio? Has Polasky been able to get through to Fort Craven?" asked Fielding.
O'Mara shook his head, "no. You know what Beta's radiations do to radio reception this time of year. Even at night it takes a powerful transmitter to reach farther than twenty or thirty miles."
Later in the night, with a good ten miles of swamp country between him and the enemy, Terrence called a halt on a slightly raised spot of almost dry ground. The unwearied Greenbacks and the exhausted Terrans dropped down in huddled groups. The patrols that had penetrated to the edge of the swamp came in to report that they had contacted no Rumi ahead. Terrence munched a can of cold beans and fell over in an exhausted sleep to the sound of O'Shaughnessy placing sentries about the camp.
* * * * *
The next day's march was a nightmare to the lieutenant. If anything, the heat and humidity were worse in the swamps than they had been in Dust Bin and the going got tougher every mile. The mud was softer and the undergrowth had to be cut away by bayonet-wielding Narakans before the main body could move through. Terrence had thrown off his battle armor and lost his radiation helmet somewhere in the morass as had other of the Earthmen. Hannigan had prepared a thick mess of mud and grass which the Terrans applied to exposed parts of their bodies.
Late in the afternoon of the second day the Narakan Rifles came to a tepid little stream that marked the end of the swamps, and for the first time Terrence ordered a rest of longer than two hours. Bill Fielding was lying flat on his back in the grass beside the stream with his feet dangling in the water, shoes and all, when O'Mara dragged himself wearily back from inspecting the pickets and flopped down beside him.
"If I never to my dying day see another speck of mud," Fielding muttered as he ate a bar of tropical chocolate that was as mud covered as he was, "I'll still have seen more than all the Fieldings for two hundred years back have seen on Earth and Mars."
"And now," said Terrence as he eased over on his back with a heavy sigh, "that we have run out of mud, we can start looking for Rumi."
"At least it'll be a change! Here Kitty! Here kitty! Nice Rumi! Come and get a bayonet in...."
Clack, clack, clack. The sound of spring guns broke the stillness of the afternoon and was followed by the sound of rifles and a cry of pain.
"Oh, Lord!" moaned O'Mara, "now it starts!" He was on his feet, gripping his carbine and running bent over. Fielding was at his heels, dragging a machine gun off the ground.
"O'Shaughnessy! Hannigan! Take the first platoon. Move up to support the pickets. O'Toole! On the double! Take your squad and try to get around the firing. Bill, you and Polasky stand by here with the rest of the men and the Bannings."
Terrence had plunged into the stream and splashed across and was clambering up the opposite bank when one of his pickets came crawling and stumbling back clutching a wounded arm. "Mr. Lieutenant! Mr. Lieutenant! Rumi! Rumi! Many Rumi up ahead! Sullivan and O'Leary dead! Rumi get!"
"Medic! Medic!" O'Shaughnessy was yelling in his ear with the full-throated croak of an adult Narakan, drowning out what the wounded picket was trying to say.
"How many? How many Rumi, man?" Terrence demanded.
"Twenty ... thirty ... maybe thousand!" the Narakan gasped as the Medic led him off.
"'Twenty, thirty, maybe thousand.' That gives us a damn fine idea of what we're up against!"
While his men dragged their big bodies up the bank of the stream, O'Mara stood scowling at the eight foot high grass. Usually about a foot high, the hardy and ubiquitous purple grass of Naraka grew far more lushly around the edges of the swamps. He felt that it would be a risky business at best to plunge into it after an unknown number of enemy. At the same time he had an illogical determination not to leave the bodies of his men in the hands of the Rumi. He looked at the broad, big-mouthed exaggerations of Irish faces around him, heaved a sigh that came from deep in his chest and ordered, "All right, men. Spread out. Keep low and keep your eyes open. And try not to shoot each other."
"We fix bayonets now, Lieutenant, sir?" Hannigan asked.
"You keep your eyes open, Sergeant," Terrence snapped, "I'll tell you when to fix bayonets."
The noisy rustling of his men's heavy bodies as they pushed through the grass made him nervous and irritable. Then suddenly, just as they were edging their way around a gully, a dozen Rumi were swarming down on them. Terrence cut down two with his carbine but his men were firing and missing as the incredibly fast catmen hurtled at them. He had a brief glimpse of O'Shaughnessy spraying submachine gun slugs wildly about and then there was a hail of spring bolts and two of his men were down. The whole platoon was thrashing through the grass in their direction and the Rumi were gone as quickly as they had come.
"Come on!" Terrence shouted, breaking into a run with twenty or thirty Riflemen after him. A bolt grazed his cheek and another cut down a man to his right. He emptied his carbine in the general direction of the Clack, Clack, Clack. Hannigan was roaring a primitive bull-throated chant and firing at everything that moved. O'Shaughnessy managed to jam his gun and was beating frantically at it with one webbed fist. They burst into a clearing filled with Rumi and both sides blazed away at point blank range. It was hard for even a Narakan to miss at that close range and the Rumi broke and ran just as Sergeant O'Toole and his squad came out of the grass on the other side of the clearing.
The Rumi, trapped, turned and dashed at Terrence and his men. The lieutenant drove his fist into one cat faced creature and smashed his empty gun across the head of another. Hannigan grappled with one of the lithe gray-bodied things and slowly crushed it beneath his 350 odd pounds. O'Shaughnessy beat another insensible with his jammed Tommy gun. Several Narakans were down but most of them had taken Rumi with them.
Terrence was knocked off his feet by a gray ball of fury that leaped at him wielding a stiletto-thin knife. He caught at the Rumi's arm with both hands but the creature was not only fast but strong. It twisted out of his grasp and slashed at him and only a quick sideward roll saved him. Desperately he brought his fist down on his assailant's head.
The Rumi's grip relaxed slightly and Terrence drove his fist full into its face and locked his legs about its waist. The catman couldn't have weighed more than a hundred and fifty pounds but all of it was wiry strength. It clawed at him now, ripping his protective clothing and gashing his legs, meanwhile trying to get its knife into play. He was vaguely conscious that his men had disposed of the rest of the Rumi and were dancing around him frantically trying to get a chance to aid him. He was struck by the incongruity of a civilized being descended from simian ancestors and a civilized being descended from feline ancestors fighting fang and claw while a bunch of misplaced amphibians danced about them.
Making his weight count he suddenly twisted and hurled the Rumi under him but something hit him a terrific blow on the back of the head and blackness closed in.
V
O'Mara awoke with a head that felt like all the hangovers of a misspent life.
"Have a nice rest?" Bill Fielding asked.
Terrence reached a weak hand to the back of his head and felt bandages. "Did I catch a spring bolt?" he asked.
Bill grinned, "Well, no. Not exactly. It was more on the order of Private O'Hara's rifle butt. He was trying to hit the Rumi you were necking with."
"I might have known," Terrence groaned.
"We lost six men but recovered all the bodies except for one. We've got four wounded ... litter cases. Thought you were going to make it five for a while."
"Well, they won't slow us down too much. We still have about a hundred and fifty miles to go. We'll camp here for the night and move out at dawn."
Marching in the early morning and resting in the heat of the day before another afternoon march, the Narakan Rifles covered another fifty miles of the distance to Fort Craven without incident but not without signs of Rumi. Twice they came on recently occupied camps and once they caught sight of a Rumi patrol moving parallel to their own line of march.
The next morning, which was blistering and cloudless, they were only seventy miles from the Fort.
"Maybe we ought to give the radio another try." Terrence decided. "We're close enough to have a chance of getting through now."
Polasky set up the field radio.
"Hello, Balliwick. Hello, Balliwick. This is Apple Three Three. Can you read me? Come in, please."
O'Mara and Fielding sat and listened while he repeated the call a dozen or more times. His only answer was the heavy static that Beta produced in most electronic instruments. The same static that made radar and space scanners all but useless, that limited aircraft to the big dirigibles and weapons to old fashioned rifles and machine guns.
"I guess we'll know what's going on when we get there!" Terrence said. He wiped his forehead with his arm, noticing that the heavily caked mud was beginning to crack off. He would be in for a bad case of sun poisoning probably.
A rare breeze had sprung up and drifting down it from the west came the sound of gunfire. As one man, everyone in the camp stiffened.
"Did you hear that?" demanded Fielding.
"I think I hear a Banning," Polasky said, "sounds like it's coming from in back of us ... off to the west."
"From what our scouts have been able to pick up, that's the general direction that the Rumi have been moving," Terrence said.
"But there's nothing over that way. What in hell could they be attacking?" Fielding was on his feet, looking off in the direction from which the sounds were coming.
Terrence was aware of an increasingly uneasy feeling. He got to his feet and picked up his gear. "The sounds could be deceiving. We might as well get moving. It isn't going to get much cooler before nightfall."
* * * * *
An hour later they were hotly engaged with a large force of Rumi. Rumi armed for the first time with heavier weapons, mortar-like guns that hurled pods of smothering dust that caused almost instant strangulation. Rumi who attacked suddenly, giving them time only to drop to the ground and set up the Bannings and machine guns before three hundred howling fiends came charging through the grass at a dead run, firing as they came.
O'Mara was behind a machine gun and Fielding and Polasky each had a Banning in action. They met the Rumi charge with a withering hail of lead and fire. The Narakans lying as flat as their huge chests would allow them were firing as fast as the automatic rifles would fire. The Bannings swept the line of charging figures. As the beams paused for a moment, the charge would take effect and a ball of fire would mushroom skyward, leaving a dozen seared cat bodies on the ground. Terrence swept his machine gun along in a swath behind the Bannings, picking off what they left. Some dozen catmen made it to within ten yards of their front but sprawled still or lay kicking briefly until a Greenback put another bullet into him.
The Rumi were gone, withdrawing to the west and Terrence was yelling and cursing at his men to keep them from breaking ranks and following them. Three Riflemen and O'Toole were dead and Sergeant Polasky was coughing out his life beside his Banning with a spring gun bolt in his stomach.
"Those damn cats!" he was muttering when O'Mara reached him, "those damn cats. We showed 'em, didn't we, Lieutenant? That Banning's a good gun if you...."
They buried the Greenbacks in eight foot graves and the Earthman in a seven foot one. "Those dirty, lousy, stinking...." Bill Fielding was beating his fist into the palm of his hand. "We got one of them alive this time, Terrence. Hannigan knows a little of their lingo. His old man escaped from one of their breeding pens on the other side of the Muddy. He's working him over."
In the twenty odd years that Terrans and Rumi had occupied different halves of the same planet, the number of men who had learned the Rumi language wouldn't have filled a small room. So Terrence was surprised at Bill's information and hurried toward the place where the interrogation was taking place. Before he got there, he heard a piercing cat cry which ended in a gurgle and when he reached the group of Greenbacks, Hannigan was wiping his bayonet on the grass. He stood looking down at a Rumi officer whose throat was neatly slit from furry ear to furry ear. Then fists clenched on his hips, he confronted his men.
"I don't suppose it ever occurred to you bunch of dimwits that we might have gotten some information out of this guy. He might have talked, you know."
"He talk," grinned Hannigan, "he talk plenty. He feared we might hurt him. We tell him no hurt if he talk.... Ha!"
"He say big flyship down, Mr. Lieutenant," said O'Shaughnessy.
"What? What do you mean?" demanded O'Mara.
"Flyship ... Sun Maid crash in storm.... Rumi find."
"Good God! The Sun Maid!" Terrence gasped, "That storm the first night!"
"They surround and attack Terrans. These ones on way to join attack when meet us," O'Shaughnessy went on.
"He tell where ship down," Hannigan said, "it near bend in Big Muddy ... place I know. Ten, twenty mile back."
The Greenbacks were watching the Terrans, fingering their bayonets eagerly and hugging their rifles. Terrence had the impression that they were beginning to like their jobs. He turned to Bill Fielding, "Well, Bill, it looks like we came about twenty miles too far."
Bill grinned, "Yep, I guess so. Come on, soldiers, fall in. We got work to do back here a piece."
A two hour's forced march with the sun beating down and the sound of firing growing closer. Only a column of Greenbacks could have done it and only a crazy Irishman would have asked them to. They came up over a rise and looked down a gentle slope toward the brown twisting snake that was the Big Muddy. On its banks lay the broken shape of the airship and swarming across a burned circle around it were Rumi, thousands of them. The firing had slackened in the last few minutes and now they could see why. The Rumi were assaulting and were at close grips with the ring of defending Terrans.
"Now?" questioned O'Shaughnessy, "we fix bayonets now?"
"Yes," replied Terrence, "now we fix bayonets."
At his word three hundred big clumsy hands reached for three hundred bayonets and fixed them to three hundred rifles.
"O'Shea, take O'Toole's squad and stand by up here with the Bannings. O'Shaughnessy, take the left flank. Bill, you take the right. Let's go!"
There wasn't a sound out of the Rifles as they started down the hill, none of their usual croakings and bellowings, just silence and the heavy thud of their feet. The Rumi had seen them. Many of those in the rear of the attack were swinging about to face them. Spring gun bolts began to whiz in their direction. One or two Narakans fell. They were closer to the struggle now, closer to the tightly packed Rumi and the hand to hand struggle about the Sun Maid.
Terrence was firing, throwing lead into the gray-bodied mass ahead of him but his men were just thundering along with their little black eyes fixed on their old oppressors, bayonets leveled in front of them in approved training school method. They resembled nothing so much as a regiment of tanks hurtling at an enemy. The momentum of their charge carried them half way through the Rumi ranks, the terrific force of the plunging amphibians bowling over the lighter catmen.
Bayonets, clubbed rifle and heavy webbed fist fought against claw, teeth and knife. There was almost no firing, almost no sound save for the cries of the Rumi and an occasional cheer from the Terrans.
Terrence emptied his Tommy gun, hurled it in the face of a Rumi and reached for his knife and automatic. A Rumi knocked him off his feet with the butt end of a spring gun but before he could do more, Hannigan stepped over his lieutenant and plunged his bayonet into the catman. The Irishman scrambled to his feet amidst the gray furry bodies, thrust his .45 into a snarling face and pulled the trigger. The face disappeared but another took its place and he fired again. A Rumi with a knife grabbed at him from behind and he raised his pistol again but the cat was already down with a bayonet between his shoulders.
The Greenbacks were yelling now, lifting those great voices of theirs in full throated bullfrog croaks. The Rumi, trapped and desperate, were scattering and trying to flee down river. O'Mara stumbled over a barricade of rocks and boxes and almost got a Terran slug in him before he realized that they had cut their way through to the broken ship. He was up in a minute and urging his men on after the scattering enemy. Twenty or thirty of them tried to make a stand around a tall Rumi officer but O'Shaughnessy at the head of a wedge of Narakans swept into them at a full run.
Their bayonets flashed for a few seconds and then flashed no more, the steel was covered with blood. A few hundred Rumi made it to the river under a hail of fire from O'Shea and his squad on the hill. Hardly pausing to consider their cat-like aversion to water, most of them plunged in and struck out for the other shore. The rest were cut down on the bank by onrushing Greenbacks. Terrence grabbed hold of one of his buglers and then had to practically beat the man over the head to get him to sound Recall.
Bill Fielding picked his way among the bodies and came toward Terrence holding his left arm. O'Shaughnessy was leaping up and down and waving his fist across the river.
"Things different now! All different now! One Greenback better than four, five, eight Rumi!"
"At least that many," Terrence said under his breath before he roared at O'Shaughnessy, "Fall the men in on the double now! We're going to march back to the Sun Maid in proper military style."
There was a blowing of sergeant's whistles, the shouting of corporals, and the Narakan Rifles slowly formed ranks. Some were missing and others were limping and holding wounds but they stepped out smartly as the column headed back up the river. Every rifle was at the correct slope, every man was in step as they marched through the makeshift barricade and past where Chapelle was standing. The drum and bugle corps struck up The Wearing of the Green just as O'Mara shouted, "Eyes Right!" and every eye swung right in perfect unison. A tattered and weary Chapelle brought a surprised hand up to salute and the Narakan Rifles came to a snappy halt.
A small, black haired figure threw itself at Terrence and his arms were again holding Joan Allen. "I knew you'd come," she said, "only a big, crazy Irishman like you could do it."
He kissed her and then pressed his mud-caked face against hers as he said into her ear. "Only three hundred big, crazy Irishmen, baby. There's not a drop of anything else in me boys."