The new clothes were hung up on sticks to dry. He sat cross-legged, digging into his pouch.
He drew out the gold metal disk and then he reached for the gold belt buckle he had just acquired. He studied them.
The bird with the arrows was essentially the same on each one. And now he could read the squiggles.
The disk said The United States of America.
The belt buckle said The United States Air Force.
So his people long ago had been a nation. And it had had a force of some sort devoted to the air.
The Psychlos wore belt buckles that said they were members of the Intergalactic Mining Company.
With a smile that would have frightened Terl had he seen it, Jonnie supposed that he was as of this minute a member, the only member, of the United States Air Force.
He put the buckle carefully under a piece of robe he used for a pillow and lay for a long time looking at the dancing flames.
4
The mighty planet Psychlo, “king of the galaxies,” basked beneath the forceful rays of triple suns.
The courier stood to the side of Intergalactic’s transshipment receipt area, waiting. Above him the mauve skies domed the purple hillsides of the horizon. All about him spread the smoke-spewing factories, the power lines, the tense and crackling might of the company. Machines and vehicles boiled in purposeful turmoil throughout the multilayered roads and plains of the vast compound. In the distance lay the pyramidal shapes of the Imperial City. Spotted among the outlying hills were the compounds of many other companies—factories that spewed out their products to whole galaxies.
Who would be elsewhere? thought the courier. He sat astride his small ground-go, momentarily idle in his daily rounds, waiting. Who would want to live and toil on some forgotten light-gravity planet, wearing a mask, working under domes, driving pressurized vehicles, digging in alien soil? Or, drafted, fighting some war on territory nobody cared about anyway? Not this Psychlo, that was for sure.
A shrieking whistle pierced the day: the warning signal to get clear of the transshipment receipt platform, chasing away a fleet of blade, brush and vacuum vehicles that had been clearing it.
The courier automatically checked his own proximity. Good, he was outside the danger area.
The network of lines and cables about the platform hummed. Then they shrieked into a crescendo that ended with a roaring explosion.
Tons of ore materialized on the platform surface, teleported in an instant across the galaxies.
The courier gazed through the momentarily ionized air. Look at that. The incoming ore had a crust of whitish substance overlying it. The courier had seen it before from time to time. Somebody said it was called “snow.” Trickles of water took the place of the flakes. Imagine having to work and live on a crazy planet like that.
The all-clear signal sounded and the courier gunned his ground-go forward to the new ore heap. The receipt foreman rumbled out to the new pile of ore.
“Look at that,” said the courier. “Snow.”
The receipt foreman had seen it all, knew it all, and held junior couriers in contempt. “It’s bauxite, not snow.”
“It had some snow on it when it landed.”
The receipt foreman scrambled over to the right side of the pile and fished around. He brought up a small dispatch box. Standing on the ore, he noted the box number on his clipboard and then brought it over to the courier.
Blade vehicles were charging in on the new pile. The receipt foreman impatiently handed the clipboard to the courier, who signed. The box was thrown at him. He threw back the clipboard and it caught the receipt foreman on his massive chest.
The courier gunned his ground-go and swiftly threaded his way through the incoming machines, speeding toward the Intergalactic Central Administration Compound.
A few minutes later a clerk, carrying the box, walked into the office of Zafin, Junior Assistant to the Deputy Director for Secondary Uninhabited Planets. The office was little more than a cubicle, for space at Intergalactic Central housed three hundred thousand administrative personnel.
Zafin was a young ambitious executive. “What’s that box doing wet?” he said.
The clerk, who was about to set it down among papers, hastily withdrew it, got out a cloth and dried it. He looked at the label. “It’s from Earth; must be raining there.”
“Typical,” said Zafin. “Where’s that?”
The clerk tactfully hit a projector button and a chart flared on the wall. The clerk shifted the focus, peered, and then put a claw on a small dot.
Zafin wasn’t bothering to look. He had opened the dispatch box and was sorting the dispatches to different departments under him, zipping an initial on those that required it. He was almost finished when he held up a dispatch that required some work and couldn’t just be initialed. He looked at it with distaste.
“Green-flashed urgent,” said Zafin.
The clerk took it apologetically and read it. “It’s just a request for information.”
“Too high a priority,” said Zafin. He took it back. “Here we have three wars in progress and somebody from . . . where?”
“Earth,” said the clerk.
“Who sent it?”
The clerk took the dispatch back and looked. “A security chief named . . . named Terl.”
“What’s his record?”
The clerk put his talons on a button console and a wall slot clattered and then spat out a folder. The clerk handed it over.
“Terl,” said Zafin. He frowned, thinking. “Haven’t I heard that name before?”
The clerk took back the folder and looked at it. “He requested a transfer about five months ago, our time.”
“Steel trap brain,” said Zafin. “That’s me.” And he meant it. He took the folder back. “Never forget a name.” He leafed through the papers. “Must be a dead, dull place, Earth. And now a dispatch with wrong priority.”
The clerk took the folder back.
Zafin frowned. “Well, where’s the dispatch?”
“On your desk, Your Honor.”
Zafin looked at it. “He wants to know what connections . . . Numph? Numph?”
The clerk worked the console and a screen flashed. “Intergalactic Director, Earth.”
“This Terl wants to know what connections he has in the main office,” said Zafin.
The clerk pushed some more buttons. The screen flashed. The clerk said, “He’s the uncle of Nipe, Assistant Director of Accounting for Secondary Planets.”
“Well, write it on the dispatch and send it back.”
“It’s also marked ‘confidential,’” said the clerk.
“Well, mark it ‘confidential,’” said Zafin. He sat back, thinking. He turned his chair and looked out the window at the distant city. The breeze was cool and pleasant. It dissipated some of his irritation.
Zafin turned back to his desk. “Well, we won’t discipline this what’s-his-name . . .”
“Terl,” said the clerk.
“Terl,” said Zafin. “Just put it in his record that he assigns too high priorities to nonsense. He’s simply young and ambitious and doesn’t know much about being an executive. We don’t need a lot of excess and incorrect administration around here! You understand that?”
The clerk said that he did and backed out with the box and its contents. He wrote into Terl’s record, “Assigns too high priorities to nonsense; young, ambitious and unskilled as an executive. Ignore further communications.”
The clerk grinned wickedly in his own little cubicle as he realized the description also fit Zafin. He put the answer to Terl’s dispatch on it in a precise, clerkly calligraphy and didn’t even bother to file a copy. In a few days it would be teleported back to Earth.
The mighty, imperious, and arrogant world of Psychlo hummed on.
5
The day for the demonstration had arrived and Terl went into a flurry of activity.
Up early, he had again put the animal through its paces. He
had made it drive the blade machine up and down and up and down and around and around. Terl had pushed it so hard that the machine had finally run out of fuel. Well, he could fix that.
He went to see Zzt.
“You don’t have a requisition,” said Zzt.
“But it’s just a fuel cartridge.”
“I know, I know. But I have to account for them.”
Terl grated his fangs. Leverage, leverage, all was leverage, and he didn’t have anything at all on Zzt.
Suddenly Zzt halted what he was doing. There was a flicker of a smile on his mouthbones. It made Terl suspicious. “Tell you what I will do,” said Zzt. “After all, you did give up five recon drones. I’ll just check out that blade machine.”
Zzt put on a face mask and Terl followed him outside.
The animal was sitting on the machine, collared, the lead rope firmly fastened to a roll bar. It was kind of bluish and shivering in the bitter wind of late winter. Terl ignored it.
The hood popped up as Zzt released the catches. “I’ll just make sure it’s all functional,” he said, his voice muffled by his face mask and further muffled because his head was in the motor mounts. “Old machine.”
“It’s a wrecked machine,” said Terl.
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Zzt, busily pulling and pushing connections. “But you got it, didn’t you?”
The animal was watching everything Zzt did. It was standing there on the top edge of the instrument panel looking down. “You left a wire loose,” said the animal.
“Ah, so I did,” said Zzt. “You talk?”
“I think you heard me.”
“Yes, I did hear you,” said Zzt. “And I also heard no proper, polite phrases.”
Terl snorted. “It’s just an animal. What do you mean, polite phrases? To a mechanic?”
“Well, there,” said Zzt, ignoring Terl. “I think that will be fine in there.” He pulled out a power cartridge and shoved it into the casing and screwed on the cap. “Start it up.”
Terl reached over and pushed a button and the machine seemed to run all right.
Zzt turned it off for him. “I understand you’re giving some kind of a demonstration today. I never seen no animal drive. Mind if I come out and watch?”
Terl eyed him. He didn’t have any leverage on Zzt and all this cooperation and interest was out of character. But he couldn’t put a talon on anything wrong. “Come ahead,” he grunted. “It’ll take place here in an hour.”
He would kick himself later, but right now he had a lot on his mind.
“Could I get warmed up?” said Jonnie.
“Shut up, animal,” said Terl, and he rushed off into the compound.
Nervously Terl waited in the outer office of Numph. One of the clerks had announced him but there had been no invitation to enter.
Finally, after forty-five minutes, he scowled another clerk into announcing him again and this time he was signaled to enter.
Numph had nothing on his desk but a saucepan of kerbango. He was looking at the mountain view through the canopy wall. Terl scratched his belt to make a small noise. Numph eventually turned around and gave him an absent look.
“The demonstration you ordered can take place right away,” said Terl. “Everything is all ready, Your Planetship.”
“Does this have a project number?” said Numph.
Terl hastily made up a number. “Project 39A, Your Planetship.”
“I thought that had to do with new site recruitment.”
Terl had saved himself by adding an A, which no projects had. “That was probably 39. This is 39A. Substitution of personnel—”
“Ah, yes. Transferring more personnel from home.”
“No, Your Planetship. You remember the animal, of course.”
Recollection cut into Numph’s fog. “Ah, yes. The animal.” And he just sat there.
Leverage, leverage, thought Terl. He had no leverage on this old fool. He had combed the offices inside and out and could find none. The home office had merely said he was the uncle of Nipe, Assistant Director of Accounting for Secondary Planets. All this meant, apparently, was that he had his job by influence and was a known incompetent. At least that was all Terl could make out of it.
Obviously, Numph was not going to stir. Terl could see his plans crumbling. He would wind up just vaporizing that damned animal and forgetting it. And all for lack of leverage.
Behind his impassive face, Terl was thinking so hard sparks were flashing internally.
“I’m afraid,” said Numph, “that—”
Hastily Terl interrupted. Don’t let him say it. Don’t let him condemn me to this planet! The inspiration was on his lips in a miraculous bypass of his thinking.
“Have you heard from your nephew lately?” he said. He meant it socially. He was about to add a lie that he had known Nipe in school.
But the effect was out of proportion. Numph jerked forward and looked at him closely. It was not much of a jerk. But it was enough. There was something there!
Terl said nothing. Numph kept looking at him, seeming to wait. Was Numph afraid? He had started to say so, but that was a figure of speech.
“There’s no reason to be afraid of the animal,” said Terl, smoothly, easily, deliberately misinterpreting things. “It doesn’t bite or scratch.”
Numph just kept on sitting there. But what was that in his eyes?
“You ordered the demonstration and it’s all ready, Your Planetship.”
“Ah, yes. The demonstration.”
“If you’ll just get a mask and come outside . . .”
“Ah, yes. Of course.”
The Intergalactic head of the planet drank off the kerbango in steady gulps, got up, and took his face mask off the wall.
He went into the hall and signaled some of his staff to put on their breathe-masks and follow, and then, with many slit-eyed, darting glances at Terl, he walked with him to the outside air. A mystified Terl was jubilant nevertheless. The old fellow positively reeked with fear. The plan was going to come off!
6
Jonnie sat high on the blade machine. The aching cold wind blew puffs of snow, momentarily obscuring the compound. Jonnie’s attention was caught by the approaching crowd. Their combined footfalls made the earth shake.
The place chosen for the demonstration was a small plateau jutting out from the compound. It was a few thousand square feet in extent but ended in a sharp-edged cliff that dropped more than two hundred feet into a ravine. There was room to maneuver but one had to stay away from that edge.
Terl came stomping toward him through the light snow. He stepped up on a lower frame of the blade machine to put his huge face near Jonnie’s.
“See that crowd?” said Terl.
Jonnie looked at them. They were gathered by the compound. Zzt was over to their left.
“See this speaker?” said Terl. He jostled a speaking-horn thing in his hand. He had used it before in the drilling.
“See this blaster?” said Terl, and he patted a belt handgun he had buckled on, a huge thing.
“If you do one thing wrong,” said Terl, “or foul up in any way, I will gun you right off that rig. You’ll be very dead. Splattered dead.”
Terl reached up and made sure the leash was secure; he had wrapped it around the roll bar and welded the end to the rear bumper. It didn’t leave much room for Jonnie to move.
His instructions had gone unheard by the small crowd. Now Terl approached them and turned, stood with his huge feet apart, seemed to swell, and yelled, “Start it up!”
Jonnie started it up. He felt uneasy; a sixth sense was biting him, like when you had a puma behind you that you hadn’t seen. It wasn’t Terl’s threats. It was something else. He looked over the crowd.
“Raise the blade!” roared Terl, through the horn.
Jonnie did.
“Lower the blade!”
Jonnie did.
“Roll it ahead.”
Jonnie did.
“Back it up.”
Jonnie did.
“Put it in a circle.”
Jonnie did.
“Now build a mound of snow from all angles!”
Jonnie started maneuvering, handling the controls, taking light scrapes of snow, pushing them to a center. He was doing better than just making a mound; he was building a square-sided pile and leveling off its top. He worked rapidly, backing up, pushing in more snow. The precisely geometric mound took shape.
He had just one more run to make inward, a run that would carry him toward the cliff a few hundred feet away.
Suddenly the controls did not respond. There had been a prolonged whirring whine in the guts of the control box. And every knob and lever on the control panel went slack!
The blade machine yawed to the right, yawed to the left.
Jonnie hammered at the slack controls. Nothing bit! The blade abruptly rose high in the air.
The machine rumbled relentlessly forward and rose up to the top of the pile, almost summersaulted over backward. At the top, it slammed down flat. Then it almost did a forward flip as it went down the other side.
It was rolling straight toward the cliff edge!
Jonnie punched the kill button time after time but it had no effect on the roaring engine.
He fought the controls. They stayed slack.
Wildly he looked back at the crowd. He got a fleeting impression of Zzt off to the side. The brute had something in its paw.
Jonnie strained at the collar that held him to this deadly machine.
He tugged at the flexirope. It was as unyielding as ever.
The cliff edge was coming nearer.
There was a manual blade control to his left, held by a hook. Jonnie fought to get the hook loose. If he could drop the blade it might stick and hold. The hook wouldn’t let go.
Jonnie grabbed in his pocket for a fire flint and banged the flint against the hook. The hook let go. By its own weight the scraper blade came down in a swooping arc and gouged into the rocky earth. The machine rocked and slowed.
There was a small explosion under the hood. An instant later smoke shot up in the air. And a split second after that a roaring tongue of flame rose.
The cliff edge was only a few feet away. Jonnie stared at it for an instant through the growing sheets of flame. The machine edged forward, buckling its scraper blade.