What an impressive city it must have been once. A huge palace ruin went up the side of a red mountain. The palace was so big it was more than the mountain. There was a wide-open expanse just below the palace and a lot of other ruins stood around what must have been a park. The whole city was in a sort of bowl surrounded by high mountains.
Yes, and there was a little mob of people waiting at the far side of the park, most of them in furs, some in yellow tribes. There was lots of space to land and Jonnie let the copilot bring the ship in over the top of a tumble of rubble that had once been a building and set her down. The huge ancient palace reared up on their right, the crowd was a hundred yards in front of the plane, and an ancient ruin was two hundred yards behind it.
Jonnie undid his security belts and swung the door partly open.
The crowd was simply standing over there. Perhaps two hundred people or more. They didn't rush forward. They didn't cheer. Oh, well, Jonnie thought, one can't be popular everyplace.
The sling of the AK 47 caught on the console before him and he lifted it up, swung the door wider, and dropped to the ground. Usually the copilot would shift to the pilot's seat and Jonnie glanced up. The German was just sitting there, staring straight ahead.
Jonnie looked at the crowd again. Nobody came forward. Nobody moved. Eerie! There they were across the park, about a hundred yards away. He could make out three Coordinators. They were also just standing there as though rooted.
They looked like people with a gun trained on them. An outdoorsman's instinct caused him to whirl and look back of the plane, back toward the tumbled ruin two hundred yards behind his ship.
Three running figures were racing toward him, blast rifles held low.
They were gray. There were about the size of men. They wore big faceplates.
Tolneps!
They were closing the distance fast. Only seventy-five yards away.
Jonnie started to grab for his belt gun and realized he was holding the AK 47.
He crouched, cocked the weapon, and sent a spray of fire at the figures.
They checked as though surprised. Then they began rushing at him in a crouching run.
The AK 47 slugs had not halted them.
Tolneps! What did he know about Tolneps? He had read the Psychlo manual only a few days ago. Eyes! They were half-blind and without faceplates couldn't see.
He fumbled with the single-shot lever.
They were strung out, the nearest was now only fifty yards, the furthest about sixty.
Jonnie dropped to one knee. He sighted. He squeezed off at the farthest one's faceplate. He shifted to the second. He sighted on the faceplate. He fired.
It had taken too long.
The leading one was almost upon him.
Fangs!
Faceplate!
No time to fire.
Jonnie leaped up and slammed the butt of the AK 47 into the Tolnep's face.
He completed the movement with a slash of the barrel.
The Tolnep didn't go down but he swerved.
Poison fangs. Mustn't get too close.
Jonnie leaped backward, shifting the rifle to his left hand, and drew his belt blast gun.
He fired and fired at point-blank range. The force shots pounded the Tolnep to the ground.
Jonnie walked nearer, still firing. The blast pistol was literally pounding the Tolnep into the ground. Geysers of dust blurred the view.
He hadn't had the handgun on “Flame.” But the sheer force of it had knocked the Tolnep out. The faceplate was shattered; the strange eyes were glazed and rolled up into the head. Obviously knocked out.
The others! Where were they? One was running off toward the high ruined palace, obviously unable to orient himself. The other one was making his way back to something in the tumbled wreck of a building. Jonnie could see the bright nose of a small craft jutting from its hiding place in a rubble cavity.
That one was trying to get back to a ship!
Jonnie leaped up to the cockpit and pulled a blast rifle out of its rack, throwing the AK 47 inside.
Back on the ground he knelt, steadied himself, and fired a single well-aimed shot at the Tolnep trying to get to his ship. No effect!
Jonnie threw the switches to “Flame” and “Maximum.” The Tolnep was inside the ruin, almost to his ship.
Jonnie sighted and squeezed the trigger.
The Tolnep erupted in a pillar of fire!
Swinging to the other one, Jonnie sighted in and squeezed off. A flash as the bolt struck and then a blast of fire as the Tolnep's own rifle exploded.
Jonnie peered at the ship. Nobody else in it apparently. He looked down at the Tolnep at his feet. From insignia he must be an officer.
Getting a safety line from the ship, Jonnie wound the Tolnep up in a tight series of loops and windings and tied the end behind his back. He had not carried a rifle, only a handgun. The shots Jonnie had fired had messed it up but he threw it far away. Then he dragged the Tolnep clear of the ship. Good lord, he was heavy! Jonnie tapped the Tolnep's “flesh.” Like iron.
He looked human but he was so dense no wonder the AK 47 had no effect. The slugs had just glanced off.
He felt the situation was in hand. It had happened too fast for the three escort planes to do anything and they were up there, circling now. He supposed they had been too far behind him to have seen the Tolneps begin their charge.
Jonnie looked around further. Then he was amazed. That crowd was still standing there, a hundred yards in front of the plane, unmoving. Nobody had come forward. He looked up at his own ship. The German copilot was just sitting there staring straight ahead.
Jonnie reached in and grabbed the local radio. “Don't come down here!” he told the other pilots.
That ship over there. Was it about to fire or blow up or something?
Jonnie hefted the blast rifle and, running in a wide detour, approached the ship.
They had certainly hidden it well. They had used a deep recess in the rubble and pushed the ship in until it was invisible from the air, maybe flown it in backward.
He approached it gingerly. It had blast cannon mounted on its nose. It was a bright silver color. It was shaped like a diamond. It had a canopy, now thrown back, that dropped over it to make an air seal. It had places for three and a sort of cargo space in the rear of it.
Jonnie keeping his distance, rocked it with the barrel of the blast rifle. It didn't blow up. It rocked very easily, surprisingly light to carry such heavy beings.
He put his hand on its side to climb into it. The ship was vibrating. Something on it was running.
He peered at the panel. Several lights were blinking. The controls were totally strange. He had no idea what alphabet those letters were part of. He didn't know what kind of power it had beyond the generality in the Psychlo manual that they were usually “solar powered.”
Better not touch those controls. It might take off.
He glanced out at the crowd about three hundred yards away.
They were just standing there, fixed in place.
For a moment he felt sort of fixed in place, too. But maybe that was just battle reaction.
Something in this ship was running! With his hand he traced the vibration. What he thought was a cannon was more than a cannon. It had two barrels, one over the other. The upper barrel had a flare at the “muzzle.”
The lethargy he felt was increasing.
Well, anything that ran had to have power one way or the other. Where was a power cable? He found a big thick one under the panel. It led down to an exposed accumulator.
There was a coil of line in the back of the craft and Jonnie tied it to the cable just above the accumulator connection. He got back, braced himself, and pulled hard.
The cable snapped off the accumulator.
There was a ferocious flash of sparks.
At once, three things happened. The craft stopped vibrating. The lethargy Jonnie had felt vanished. And the whole crowd out there collapsed. They
fell to the ground and lay there.
Jonnie tied the cable away from the accumulator so it couldn't short again and then ran out toward the crowd.
As he passed his plane, the German copilot was fumbling his way out of the door. He called something but
Jonnie couldn't hear him.
Reaching the crowd, Jonnie found a Coordinator struggling to his knees. Others were stirring, sitting up groggily. The place was a litter of fallen banners, musical instruments, and odds and ends of what must have been a planned celebration.
The Coordinator's mouth was moving and Jonnie thought the Scot must have lost his voice. He couldn't hear anything the Coordinator was saying. Jonnie turned and saw an escort plane had landed. He hadn't heard that.
Suddenly he realized it was this confounded helmet of Ivan's. Jonnie unfastened the chin strap and got the huge, thick ear pads off his ears.
"... and how did you get here?” the Coordinator was saying.
“I flew in!” said Jonnie, a bit sharply.
“That's my ship right over there!”
“There's a creature on the ground!” said the Coordinator. He was pointing at the tied Tolnep. “How did he get there?”
For a moment, Jonnie was a trifle exasperated. All this shooting and running... it dawned on him: none of these people had observed a thing that had gone on.
The people were confused and embarrassed. The three tribal chiefs there were coming up, bowing, upset. They had “lost face.” They had planned a very fine reception– see the banners, the musical instruments, the presents there– and he had already landed. So please excuse them....
The Coordinator was trying to answer Jonnie's questions. No, they hadn't seen anything strange. They had all come out here shortly after sunup to wait and then here he was and their schedule was all out of kilter now and it must be nine of the morning ... what? Two of the afternoon? No, that can't be. Let's see your watch!
They wanted to start the reception up now even though they didn't feel that well. Jonnie told the Coordinator in charge to hold it off a bit and got to the radio.
On local command, he told the two planes still holding to be very alert to any ship in orbit. Then he switched to planetary pilot band, knowing well it could be heard by the visitors. He got Sir Robert in Africa.
“The little birds tried to sing here,” said Jonnie. They didn't have a code. They surely needed one. But he was making do. “All okay now. But our friend Ivan in his new hole must have a ceiling. Got it?”
Robert the Fox got it. He knew Jonnie meant him to get air cover to the Russian base and he would right away.
“Have our own band play Swenson's Lament,” said Jonnie. There was no such Scot piper lament. Planetary radio silence, if you please. If the visitors had known he would be here, they were monitoring unguarded speech. “I may play a note or two but otherwise Swenson's Lament.”
He turned off. The situation was more dangerous than he had thought. For all the people on this planet.
Only he had been “deaf.” Only he had been able to act. Therefore that bell-mouthed barrel had been emitting a sound wave of high intensity that produced a total paralysis. So that's how the Tolneps did their slave trade.
Chapter 4
The escort pilot who had just landed didn't understand what had happened either, and he was trying to explain it to the Coordinator who didn't speak German. Jonnie asked the German whether he had recorded the action and the pilot said he had. Jonnie explained it to them both, in English to the Coordinator and in Psychlo to the pilot, that it was a device on the nose of that hidden patrol ship over there.
And they had better gather this crowd up and take them into a room of one of these ruins and explain and play the discs for them so they wouldn't think the place was full of devils. Soothe them down. They could have a reception later.
The crowd was trailing after the Coordinator into a nearby interior. Jonnie walked over to the Tolnep.
The creature was conscious now. His eyes without his faceplate looked blind. They saw in some different light band and needed correction filters. Jonnie looked around and found the half-shattered plate and, keeping well away from the creature's teeth, dropped it over his eyes. It tried to snap at him.
Jonnie hunkered down and said, “We will now begin your narrative, the long sad story of your youth, how circumstances drove you to crime, and how that fateful trail led you to this pitiful ending.”
“You're mocking me!” snarled the Tolnep.
“Ah,” said Jonnie. “We speak Psychlo. Very good. Continue your story.”
“I will tell you nothing!”
Jonnie looked around. It was quite a drop from the top of that huge palace down to the valley. He carefully selected the spot and pointed it out. “We're going to carry you up there and drop you. See the place just at the end of the long gable?”
The Tolnep laughed. “Wouldn't even dent me!”
Jonnie was thoughtful for a while. “Well, we're not really enemies of yours, so I am going to reconnect the wiring on your ship, put a little remote control I have in it, and send you back up to the Vulcor-class war vessel.”
The Tolnep was silent. Rather alertly silent.
“So I just better get to work on the remote control-” and Jonnie got up as though to go to his plane.
“Wait,” said the Tolnep. “You really wouldn't do that, would you? Return me to my ship?”
“Of course. It 's the civilized thing to do!”
The Tolnep screamed, “You rotten foul Psychlos! You would do anything! Anything! There is no limit to your filthy sadism!”
“Why, what would they do to you?”
“They'd shoot me down and you know it! And I’d sizzle and burn in the air friction!”
“But why wouldn't they want you?” said Jonnie.
“Don't play around with me!” raved the Tolnep. “You think I’m stupid? You think they're stupid? I notice you don't mention sprinkling virus powder all over me to infect the crew. You are a fiend! Coughing my lungs out all the way there, writhing in agony as I fall, burning slowly mile after mile with the build-up of air friction heat! You just plain go to hell!”
Jonnie shrugged. “It’s the civilized thing to do,” he said and started toward the ship again.
“Wait! Wait, I tell you! What do you want to know?”
So Jonnie heard about the travails of this Double-Ensign Slitheter Pliss and his Half-Captain Rogodeter Snowl, and how stupid it was not to let a superior officer win at gambling. He heard a lot of other things, not really relevant, and then the double-ensign said, “Of course Snowl hasn't told the crew, because he'll take the whole prize himself, but it's rumored that there's a hundred-million-credit reward for finding the one.”
“What one.' said Jonnie.
But Double-Ensign Slitheter Pliss didn't have anything more on it than that. He explained they were waiting to make sure, but either way the combined force would eventually attack en masse. The commanders of the ships were gambling via viewscreen for shares of the loot, and Rogodeter Snowl had already won the planet's people, he thought, though Snowl often lied and one didn't really know. But for certain they would need transport and maybe have to go home for it. Home? Did he ever notice a bright star– really a double star? Must be very bright from here. Constellation above it looked like a square box from this angle. Well, that was home. Ninth planet in the rings. The Tolneps only had one planet. They were raiders of other planets. Slaves.
That seemed to be all just now, so Jonnie told him he wouldn't send him back to his ship. Not yet, anyway.
Jonnie had read that once a Tolnep bit, it took six days to develop more poison. So he got a mine sample bottle and a rag out of the plane and told the Tolnep to bite the rag a few times and the Tolnep resignedly did so. Jonnie put the rag in the bottle and put the lid on tightly. MacKendrick knew about snakebite serums. Maybe he could make one for Tolnep bites.
Another escort plane had landed. It had a copilot. There was a minesite d
own the mountain, smashed now, but it would have an ore carrier and they had spare fuel, so Jonnie sent them down to check one out and fly it up here. He was taking this Tolnep and the patrolcraft back. He also told them to see what the minesite could supply in the way of passenger carriers.
Jonnie looked up in the afternoon sky. He couldn't see anything in orbit but four hundred miles and daylight would make it invisible. An uneasy day.
The Coordinator and the German pilot had shown the pictures and had taken the crowd over to see the ship and explain the gun to them. The throng was leaving it now. Coming back toward Jonnie, who was standing by the plane, they were within talking distance.
Abruptly, as though on signal, they all dropped down to their knees and began bowing their heads to the ground. And then they stayed down.
Jonnie had seen quite enough people falling down today. “Now what's the matter?” he said to the Coordinator.
“They are deeply ashamed. They planned a great welcome for you and it all went splat. But more than that,” said the Coordinator, “they have developed a lot of respect for you. They had it before, but now-'
“Well, tell them to get up,” said Jonnie a bit impatiently. Adulation was not any pay he was after.
“You just saved their lives or maybe more,” said the Coordinator.
“Nonsense,” said Jonnie. “I was just lucky to be wearing a helmet with ear pads. Now tell them to get up!”
The German pilot was near at hand. It seemed that this was the day for embarrassment. He was explaining to Jonnie again that he had dared not fire: a Mark 32's guns might have blown half that palace right down on the crowd and Jonnie. It was an enclosed bowl here and the blow-back of the blast– Jonnie shook his head and waved him away.
The Coordinator was introducing chiefs. A small man with a smiling Mongol face, wearing a fur hat, came forward. Jonnie shook his hand. The Coordinator said this was Chief Norgay, head of what remained of the Sherpas. They were famous mountaineers and used to run salt caravans clear across the Himalayas in Nepal above India. They used to be very numerous, maybe eighty thousand, but there were only a hundred or two now: they had hidden high up in inaccessible places. There was very little food; even though they were good hunters the game was scarce in high places.
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