;
As Retief began to regain consciousness, he felt himself being half dragged, half carried by strong arms supporting him beneath the armpits. This seemed puzzling, in a muzzy-headed way; neither of the women on that stage could have dragged his six-foot-plus frame very far, and Groaci frames were frail and spindly, barely able to carry fifty pounds, much less almost five times that weight.
His hands were bound by a plastic lock-strip. He tried to shake his head to clear it, but pain exploded from the back of his skull. Better take it easy. . . .
"Okay, you wants him—Ssst!—in the back?" a gruff voice said from just above his head. It then added, "See?"
So Seven was in on this. Were the Groaci actually working with GOSH?
"I'll get the door," a woman's voice replied.
Retief heard the door to a vehicle hiss open. A moment later, he was unceremoniously dumped atop a dirty blanket on the floor of some sort of van or delivery vehicle. A moment later, other doors hissed and thumped shut, and he heard the vehicle's drive keening to life. He decided to feign unconsciousness; if his captives were at all chatty, he might learn something.
"Where are we taking him?" A woman's voice again.
"To the Farm." That was the breathy whisper of a Groaci; Shtliff must have removed the respirator and voice amplifier.
"We should just waste him, see?" Seven observed.
"No!" Shtliff replied sharply. "This happens to be the Terry diplomat who was kicked out of the CDT's exalted ranks the other diurnal period. He knows much. He may be useful."
"So he's going to end up on a Groaci conversation rack?" one of the women asked. "Pity."
"The ideal would be to turn him, which eventuality would be to our advantage."
"I still think we should—zzzzt!—waste da bum, see? Whirr-click!"
"Patience, patience, my dear Five. If our Terry friend back there fails to see reason, you will have your chance."
Shtliff had called the GOSH torpedo "Five." The guy sounded the same as Seven, right down to the programming glitch in his speech, but made men tended to be pretty much identical within each series. This must be another one. How many GOSH heavies were employed in this operation? And . . . was GOSH running the show, with Groaci help? Or was it the other way around?
Conversation ceased. Retief tried to make a mental note of the turnings the van was taking, but the information would do him little good, since he wasn't sure where the vehicle had been when it started. He would need to be alert to other clues if he was going to figure out where this "farm" they'd mentioned might be. Opening his eyes a slit, he was able to see the van's rear windows above and behind him. His vantage point on the floor meant he couldn't see anything but sky, but he did get a glimpse of the reddish light of firstsun. It was afternoon when they grabbed him; the van must be heading east.
Retief estimated that no more than ten minutes passed before the van finally whined to a stop. Given that such vehicles had a cruising speed of no more than 150, the Farm must be located within twenty-five miles of High Gnashberry.
He listened to the assorted bangs, hisses, and scrapings of people exiting the vehicle. A moment later, the back door sighed open.
"Please, Terry," Shtliff's voice whispered. "Cytheria couldn't have hit you that hard. Surely you are rejoicing to the fact that you yet possess life!"
"I don't know that rejoicing is quite the word I'd use," Retief said. He opened his eyes and sat up carefully. "You look better without the cloak, Shtliff. Black just isn't your color."
"Youz comin' outta there—zzzzt!—your own self?" Five demanded. "Or does I gotta drag youz, see?" Whirr-click!
"Patience, Five," Shtliff told the hulking GOSH thug. "Let the poor Terry get his bearings. Cytheria must have, to employ a Terry phrase, really walloped him."
"Cracked the butt of my pistol," the woman said. "He's got a thick skull."
Retief feigned weakness, moving to the edge of the van's open hatchback and taking the opportunity to study the landscape. They were, as he'd suspected, well out in the B'ruklian countryside. The characteristic gold and red canopy of a B'ruklian forest surrounded them, but several acres had evidently been logged out, creating a glade surrounded by woods. The clearing had been covered over, however, by a chameleonet, a thick webwork supporting living foliage fastened to the encircling trees. Sunlight filtered through the net, creating a dim, red-hued twilight.
And within that twilight, a number of young men and women labored with primitive tools in long, plowed furrows, tending the cultivated rows of spiky black shrubs that Retief guessed must be joyweed.
"Dis way, youz, see?" Zzzzzt!
Five grasped Retief's elbow and pulled him from the vehicle.
Shtliff was holding a Groaci power pistol in one spatulate-fingered hand. "Come along, Terry. The name is Retief, is it not? I believe we met at a formal diplomatic function several months ago."
"Not to mention on the Street of Much Walking," Retief said.
"To be sure. All of you Terries look alike to me, but I thought your sense-organ cluster was familiar. I have been following your recent exploits with considerable interest, Retief." He gestured with the pistol. "This way, if you please."
They guided him around the edge of the joyweed field to a cluster of bubblehuts at the edge of the forest. A large, hand-lettered sign in front spelled out Camp Concentration in friendly block letters, while smaller letters beneath read A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Enlightenment Enterprises. Through the trees, Retief could see another clearing covered by a chameleonet, this one serving as the landing pad for a small grounded spacecraft. It was tough to see from here, but he thought it might be a Groaci Class J scout.
They were leading him to a small bubble off to the side with the word storeroom written in Groaci curlicues above the door.
"We'll see you back at the office," one of the women said.
"To be sure. Please check the break room on your way in. If, as is usually the case, one of my elite commando troopers is present, gilding rectilinear construction materials, tell him to report to the storeroom for guard duty."
"You got it, Broodie." Turning, they sauntered off toward one of the larger domes.
"I trust you won't mind somewhat spartan living conditions for the nonce," Shtliff told Retief breezily, using a magnetic-strip card to open the storeroom door. The interior was empty, save for a few sealed crates. "This facility is still new and lacks some of the civilized amenities, such as a dedicated confinement facility and interrogation chamber."
"Not a problem, Shtliff," Retief told him. "How about untying my hands, though? We Terries talk better if we can use our hands."
"Why not? Your helplessness is complete. Five? Cut his bonds."
"So," Retief asked casually as the GOSH thug used a penknife to slice apart the plastic strip binding his wrists. "How much of this little operation of yours does Mr. Bug already know about?"
All five of Shtliff's stalked eyes came to rigid attention, quivering with shocked surprise. "To be wondering what you know of . . . him!" the Groaci whispered harshly, slipping back into his own language.
"What, Mr. Bug?" Retief shrugged. "Sure, he and I go way back. Met him through a friend here on B'rukley, by the name of Louis the Libido."
"Huh?" Five said. "If'n youz know Mr. Bug . . . " Zzzzt! His head turned with a whining of servomotors, until he was looking at Shtliff. "Dis could be bad news, boss, see?" Whirr-click!
"Be calm, Five," Shtliff told him. "This is no time to panic!"
Five's head whined as it swiveled back to glare at Retief. "If'n youz know Louis—zzzzt!—who'z da guy what works wid him, see?"
"You must mean Seven," Retief replied. "A rather distinguished-looking made man of your series—Yakuza ichi-man . . . the ten-thousand series."
Five looked at Shtliff. "Can we—zzzzt!—panic now?"
"An excellent idea, Five. Please proceed. I will join you anon." He motioned Retief inside the storage dome with his pistol.
"Five seems a bit upset that I know Mr. Bug," Retief commented. "Could it be that GOSH doesn't know what it is you're doing out here in the woods, Shtliff?"
"To maintain silence, Terry miscreant! To be thinking you may not know as much as you claim to know about Operation Weed."
"To be thinking you have ingested more than you can masticate, Broodmaster Shtliff. To be offering you my help if you make a clean breast of things."
Shtliff gave a harsh and decidedly negative clack of his mandibles, sealing the door shut behind Retief.
A quick inspection of his new quarters showed no immediate possibility of escape. Floor was melded to dome walls seamlessly, and the structure was cast of a tough, all-weather, all-temperature polymer that he was unlikely to tunnel through with anything less powerful than a small Hellbore. He managed to pry open one of the crates and found it stuffed with leaves . . . dried and shredded joyweed leaves. Evidently, this was the first harvest from the commune farm.
Or . . . on second thought . . . those wooden crates were familiar. They were the same design as the one he'd examined at the starport yesterday. He could even see where the shipping manifests had been stapled. He was willing to bet that these crates had been used to ship economics textbooks to B'rukley, textbooks carefully hollowed out and stuffed with joyweed. This joyweed. The plants he'd seen in the field outside had been small and scraggly things, nowhere close to mature.
Perhaps this was a supply brought in by GOSH to keep the PEAS Corps workers content until they brought in the first harvest.
The wood was dry and hard. Pulling up several slats from the top of a crate, he exposed the nails that had held the top in place. Inside were dry, almost powdery crumbles of joyweed, half a crate full.
It gave him an idea.
Using one exposed nail, he began digging at the edge of one of the loose, wooden slats, sawing away at the soft wood to create a V-shaped notch in the middle of one long side. It took almost twenty minutes of scraping with his makeshift file, but at last he had the notch deep enough for his purposes and cut to a sharp right angle. Taking another slat, he slid the long side back and forth along the notch. Yes . . . that would work just fine.
A scrabble at the door warned him that he had company. Swiftly, he scooped up the two slats, put them back on the opened crate, and sat on it. The door sighed open.
"To exit, Terry prisoner of noble Groac," a guard in flared hip cloak and dun-colored eyeshields demanded in a breathy whisper. "To keep your manipulatory appendages in plain view, and to come along quietly."
"To come in and get me," Retief suggested.
"To not be permitted. To emerge from vile durance on your own, or to be burned down where you sit!"
"When you're that persuasive, how can I refuse?" Retief walked out of the storeroom. One Groaci soldier kept him covered with a power pistol, while the other relocked the door. "To come with us, soft one."
They led him along a dirt path to the largest of the bubbledomes. Along the way, Retief took note of several human students working in the fields. They had a dead, empty look to them and didn't seem to notice when he passed.
He also noticed that their crop wasn't doing well at all. The plants were puny and shriveled, the long, slender leaves half-wilted.
A made man waited impassively for them inside the main dome, leaning against the door frame endlessly flipping a quarter-guck piece. "Hello, Five," Retief said. "Holding up the wall?"
"I'm not—zzzt!—Five," the GOSH thug said, his grammar better than that of the other ichi-man. "I'm Eight, see? This way." Whirr-click!
Eight dismissed the Groaci soldier and led Retief down a hallway to a guarded door. Inside was a nicely appointed office, complete with lush shag carpeting in an eye-crossing pattern of plaid and paisley, a nine-foot desk and a floor-to-ceiling wall screen. The screen was on, but set at the moment to show only the Groaci coat of arms—Groaci warrior rampant upon a bar sinister sable, beneath five eyes erect, bestriding a world azure, holding aloft a vaguely humanoid figure by the ankles gules, spilling coins argent et or from its pockets, and with the motto, in Groaci, "All the traffic will bear, and then some."
Shtliff stood to one side. A second Groaci, wearing jewel-studded platinum eyeshields and the rank insignia of a field general, leaned back in a Hip-U-Matic contour chair of Terran manufacture, puffing at a Groaci dopestick.
"Well, well," Retief said. "General Snish, isn't it?"
"Your lies have caught up with you, Retief," Snish told him. "I've been checking up on your story."
"Oh? I trust you found it entertaining."
"Most." He leaned back in the chair, and its servos whined in protest. "Broodmaster Shtliff, here, tells me you claim to work for Mr. Bug. However, it seems that Mr. Bug has never heard of you."
"Very interesting."
"Might you have an explanation?"
"Mr. Bug runs a rather large and complex operation, true?"
"Quite true, Terry. One interplanetary in scope!"
"Exactly. Mr. Bug can't possibly keep track of everyone on his payroll now, can he?"
"A plausible supposition, Retief. However, for a crime lord, even one of Mr. Bug's stature, to have a diplomat of the CDT on his payroll would, you must admit, be something of a coup. I would think he would remember hiring such, don't you?"
"That assumes the diplomat in question represented himself as a diplomat when he was hired."
"Ah." Two of Snish's eyestalks drooped at that, an expression meaning, roughly, Oops. Didn't think of that. "But . . . could it be, my dear Retief, that you are playing some sort of dangerous double game? Perhaps seeking to learn more of Mr. Bug's organization for your CDT masters?"
"I don't have CDT masters anymore, Snish. You should know. Your helicopter was watching the eviction proceedings the other day."
"Indeed, though one wonders if that might not have been a clever sham designed to perpetrate an erroneous impression for motives still unclear."
"Do you really think that GNN would have participated in a hoax? My departure was displayed on the evening news rather prominently, you'll recall."
"Very true." Snish exchanged a five-eyed glance with Shtliff, and clacked his lower mandibles thoughtfully. "And GNN is a class-triple-A unimpeachable prime intelligence source, trustworthinesswise."
"Besides, the CDT isn't interested in a little drug trafficking here and there. The B'ruklian embassy is here to represent Terran interests on B'rukley, not fight the Galactic Organized Syndicate of Humanoids."
"True, though I daresay there are those within the Concordiat government that would like to see GOSH put out of business, especially here in the Shamballa Cluster, and with the threat implicit in the Krll incursion."
"Enough!" a deep voice boomed in basso profundo from hidden speakers in the walls. "Snish, you five-eyed little parasite, if you keep blabbing like that, you'll give away the whole shebang!"
The Groaci coat of arms vanished from the wall screen, replaced by the immense, chitonesque visage of a monstrous insect. The face, Retief thought with interest, looked like that of a cockroach, with glittering black eyes peeking out from beneath the flat, red-brown curve of a heavy carapace. Two sets of whip-slender antennae flicked this way and that; a disturbing tangle of complex mouthparts worked this way and that behind delicately mobile palps.
"Mr. Bug, I presume," Retief said.
"You presume right, little human," the giant arthropod thundered. "But you're playing way out of your league, pally. You don't work for me, and I ain't never seen you before in my life."
"I, ah, knew that all along, Your Supreme Scuttlery," Snish said. "I was simply cleverly drawing him out to see what I could learn of his perfidious plans."
"Yeah, and while you were doing it, you were telling him everything he wanted to know." The glittering eyes seemed to shift slightly, back to Retief. "I was listening to the whole thing, with my camera off, so you didn't know I was here." He spoke slowly, almost ponderously, though Retief couldn't tell if that was his actual speech pattern, or the result of the giant being trying to speak slowly so that intellectual inferiors could keep up.
"Very clever," Retief said.
"Yeah. That's why they call me the brain bug, because I'm the brains of this whole operation." A harsh buzz sounded. "Bah!"
Mr. Bug turned away from his screen pickup, and as he did so, Retief caught a glimpse of the room behind him. It appeared to be decorated in Early Period Disaster; a large window bathed the room in a harsh, bluish light, like the glare of an arc lamp. "I told you I didn't want to be interrupted!" Mr. Bug rumbled off-camera. "What's that? No! Tell the Lord General to wait! I'm busy!"
The giant insect turned back, the roachish face once again completely filling the screen. "Excuse me. Interruptions, interruptions. Where was I?"
"You were telling me that you were the brains of this outfit."
"Yeah. And don't you forget it! Or . . . rather . . ." The being broke off, emitting a sound like a head-on collision between two Mark XVIII Bolos. "I guess you can forget it, if you want. You won't be around long enough for the memory to do you any good! Snish, you slimy, sticky-fingered little gweech!"
Snish's eyestalks worked furiously in a barely repressed expression of cold fury. "Yes, Your Crawliness!"
"Take this bum out and fit him for a pair of poured-stone slippers!"
"You mean . . . !"
"Yeah! Let him doze with the dishes!"
"Um, don't you mean, Your Omnivoracity, 'sleep with the fishes'?"
"Don't you tell me what I mean, five-eyes! Just do it!" And the screen blanked off.
"I hate him," Snish said after staring at the dead wall screen a moment. "I mean, I really, really hate him."
"Really? Do you hate him enough to pull a fast one on him?"
Two of Snish's five eyes swung around to stare unwinkingly at Retief. "No. I don't hate him that much. Not enough to risk my currently and thankfully intact exoskeleton."
Casually, Retief sat down in a chair next to Snish's desk and plucked a Groaci dopestick from the built-in humidor. "I find that attitude fascinating, Snish," Retief said evenly, flicking the dopestick alight, "in view of the fact that you're already hip-cloak deep in some double-crossing intrigue with GOSH."
All five of Snish's eyes whipped around to face him, followed by the rest of the triangular head. "Ulp! How did you . . . that is . . . what gives you, um, that idea, my dear Retief?" Three of the eyes swung about to face Eight, who'd been standing quietly by the door the whole time, silently flipping his quarter.
"Don't look at me, Boss," the made man said, "I didn't tell him nuttin', see?"
"To appear to know entirely too much, soft one," Shtliff told Retief in Groaci. "To be a state of affairs not entirely conducive to your good health and future happiness!"
"To be not overly concerned about me, Broodmaster," Retief replied. "To be of the understanding that my good health and future happiness are somewhat in doubt just now."
"To tell me this instant in mind-numbing detail what you know about Operation Weed and how you know it!" General Snish demanded.
"To be a good-cop, bad-cop interrogation?" Retief asked. Holding his hand up to his forehead, palm out, he waggled his fingers in a way suggestive of Groaci eyestalks telegraphing an anatomically impossible suggestion involving the Groaci's head and his ssnrff organs. "To go take a flying leap, littermate of drones."
"To promise you safety if you confess all!" Snish whispered. "To present to Mr. Bug a somewhat fictional account of your gory demise, while you in fact enjoy a new life and a new identity among the countless worlds of the Greater Groac Co-Prosperity Sphere!"
"Sounds like a good deal, General," Retief said in Standard. "But I don't really need your help. I've already taken steps to transmit everything I've learned to the safekeeping of . . . certain associates, let's say. If I don't turn up again, hale and hearty, that information just might be published."
"What? You wouldn't!"
"It should make the GNN nightly news. I feel sure that Mr. Bug gets his intelligence information from GNN too, don't you think?"
"You . . . you are having a jape at my expense, of course. Ha-ha. A very good jest, my dear Retief . . ."
"And then there's the Galaxy News and Planetary Report. A bit on the conservative side, probusiness, and all of that, but they might still run the story. I happen to know one of the feature-desk editors."
"Retief! You mustn't! If Mr. Bug learns the details of Operation Weed, his henchmen will feed me to the fishes, a scrap at a time! Surely we can reach a reticent composure on this."
"Reticent composure?" Retief frowned. "I'm not catching all of your Obfuscese."
"Indeed. Reticent composure? That would be a modest vivaldi, as they say. . . ."
"If they do, they should be shot. Just for that, forget it, Snish. I won't tell you a thing."
"You will, Terry scum! You will! Eight!"
"Yeah, Boss . . . see?"
"Take this misguided miscreant back to his vile durance! Then prepare the instruments for a Class A-for-Apoplexy interrogation!"
"Sounds intriguing, Snish," Retief put in. He blew a stream of smoke across the desk at the raging Groaci. "But the only way for you to get out of this with your precious exoskeleton intact is to turn world's evidence."
"We shall see, Retief." Snish interlaced his long, spatulate fingers and leaned forward. "We have a very special tape, one derived from our spy microphones in your embassy, a nonstop twelve-hour staff meeting wherein Ambassador Crapwell waxes eloquent no fewer than five times! He tells over a dozen anecdotes of his experiences as a young diplomat in happier days! Yes! Three of our technicians went mad while assembling that tape! You will talk, Retief, or we shall strap you to a chair, fill your circulatory fluid with a drug designed to keep you awake under all circumstances, then subject you to the unending horror of that staff meeting!"
"I was already at that meeting, Snish. Three weeks ago, Tuesday. I have to admit, the mere thought is enough to make a grown man cry . . . but all I can tell you is, do your worst!"
"Away with the creature!" Snish screamed. "He has sealed his own dire fate!"
Back in his storeroom cell once more, Retief listened at the door for a moment. He could hear two Groaci soldiers outside, whispering at each other . . . something about a female Groaci clerk-typist at headquarters, one with really startling ornamental knobs on her ventral carapace, and what she would look like in a tubful of hot sand. They did not sound particularly interested in the prisoner they were guarding.
Returning to the center of the room, he retrieved the two pieces of wood. Taking a double handful of crumbled joyweed leaves, he made a pile on the storeroom floor, and placed the notched piece of wood over it, bracing it in place between his feet. Taking the second piece of wood then, he rested it inside the notch and began drawing it back and forth, scraping hard, wood against wood, maintaining a heavy pressure . . . moving it faster . . . and faster . . .
It would have been somewhat more efficient to make a bow to turn a dowel inside a pit dug into a block of wood, but he had neither string nor a rounded length of wood. This ought to work, though. He needed to create friction enough to create a temperature of about eight hundred degrees. He kept scraping the wood through the notch, up and down, up and down, faster . . . faster . . . harder . . . harder . . .
A telltale thread of smoke appeared above the notch. He stopped working and leaned over, looking close. Sure enough, a tiny, glowing ember had appeared in the pile of joyweed. Shielding the pile with his cupped hands, he breathed on the ember very, very gently, until it flared into an inch-high flicker of yellow flame. Scooping up enough of the crumbled leaves to pick up the infant flame, he carefully transferred it to the open box and set it inside, allowing the flame to spread.
Thick, white-gray smoke began boiling out of the box as the contents caught fire. He blew harder on the flame, then stepped back.
The room was full of joyweed smoke now. Careful to breathe only through his nose and the filter plugs in his nostrils, Retief pounded hard on the storeroom door. "Help! Fire!" He shifted to Groaci. "To render assistance in the shortest possible interval of time!"
The smoke was so thick he could hardly see now. It was rising, collecting near the ceiling, so Retief dropped down on all fours where visibility—and breathing—were better. His nose filters could only handle so much in the way of atmospheric contaminants. If someone didn't open that door pretty soon . . .
He heard muffled voices outside, and the click of the cardkey lock. The door sighed open, and the confusion of voices was louder.
The Groaci guard stumbled into the room and promptly began wheezing. Retief wrenched the power pistol from his grasp and leaped out through the door. He sidestepped a second Groaci trooper, chopping down on his spindly forearm to make him drop his weapon, then poking two rigid fingers hard into his sensitive zaz-patch. The soldier gurgled faintly and folded up on the ground.
Retief took several steps, then stopped, head down, trying to steady the whirling sensation between his ears. He must have picked up a bit of the active element of that smoke. He actually felt pretty good, but his feet felt like they were a long, long way below him and were having a bit of trouble connecting with the ground.
"To halt!" the second guard yelled, though his soft voice didn't carry well. He reached for his pistol, still on the ground. Retief raised the weapon he'd appropriated inside. He didn't want to shoot, but . . .
The first Groaci stumbled out of the smoke-fuming doorway, took one look at the other guard, and leaped on him from behind. The two began wrestling with one another, rolling back and forth on the ground, hip-cloaks flapping wildly.
"Have fun, fellows," Retief told them. Then, taking a deep breath of blessedly fresh air, he began jogging toward that Class-J scout he'd seen a little ways off through the forest.
Students labored in the Camp Concentration field, hoeing around sickly looking joyweed shrubs. Tucking his power pistol into a pocket, he slowed his pace to a rapid walk. If he looked like he belonged there, if he didn't act in a suspicious fashion . . .
He'd not traveled more than fifty feet, however, when a hulking humanoid in a cheap suit stepped out from behind one of the compound huts. In one hand, the made man gripped an antique slug thrower aimed at Retief's midsection. The other casually flipped a silver coin in the air. "Hold it right there, pally," zzzzt! "See?"
"I'm sorry, Eight," Retief said. "I don't have time to play right now."
"I ain't Eight, see?" the robot replied. "I'm Five. And youz are comin' wit me, see?"
Retief raised both hands, took a step closer, and looked deeply into Five's glassy eyes. "Five," he said, "listen carefully: wait paren close-paren semicolon."
The robotic GOSH thug froze in place, unmoving. The quarter-guck piece spun in the air, dropped onto the robot's open palm, and bounced off onto the ground, uncaught.
Retief waved a hand in front of the unseeing eyes and nodded. Back in the Embassy's resource center, he'd taken the precaution of running a quick brain-tape download of an ancient computer language—C++. The command "wait();" would leave the GOSH robot immobile and harmless until it received a new set of commands. He picked up the dropped quarter-guck and placed it in the robot's motionless hand.
Threading his way through the woods, he emerged minutes later in the clearing where the spacecraft was grounded. A Groaci guard with a power rifle stood by the boarding ramp. "To halt, soft one!" he commanded, raising the rifle.
"To put that thing down before you hurt someone," Retief replied. "To not recognize General Snish's personal ship engineer and maintenance technician?"
"To . . . not recognize you," the Groaci replied. "To not wish to point out the shortcomings of alien inferiors and thereby give offense, but to fear that all Terry slaves look alike."
"To not let it worry you, warrior heir of noble Groac. To show you my papers."
"To make it snappy. To have business onboard the Field General's personal yacht?"
"To need to prepare it for a quick trip," Retief replied. Stepping closer, he reached inside his jacket as though reaching for his papers, then snapped his fist out in a cracking backhand that slammed the hapless sentry into the hull of the ship.
"To stop him!" A small mob of Groaci soldiers was spilling through the woods from the direction of the bubblehut compound. "To stop the vile trespasser!"
Retief snatched the power rifle from the guard's nerveless fingers, thumbed off the safety, then sent a triplet of energy bolts sizzling above the heads of the oncoming Groaci soldiers. Instantly, the mob reversed course, spilling through the woods back into the Camp Concentration clearing. "To retreat! To make a strategic withdrawal! To attack again in a different direction!"
Pounding up the ramp, Retief entered the ship and palmed the close panel, sealing the vessel. Squeezing into the narrow control room—little more than a cockpit with delusions of grandeur—he scanned the tiers of controls and readouts. Spotting the button with the Groaci word for "power up," he slapped it, then checked the power gauges. With a rising whine of spooling turbines, the scout's power plant came online. A moment later, a pink light signaled that the fusion reactor had switched on, bootstrapped by the turbines, and that power levels were at forty-five percent and rising.
Loud pings and cracks sounded against the hull. He was taking small-arms fire from the forest. One hand on the guide yoke, the other on the power plant controls, Retief began feeding power to the craft's gravitics repulses and to the inertial stabilizers. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the guard he'd knocked down scrambling for the safety of the tree line. Good. He didn't want to fry a soldier bludgeoned in the performance of his duty.
Wang! Okay, that was something larger than small arms. The Groaci were getting serious now. Retief pushed the power controls full forward and brought back the yoke. With a shrill whine, the scout lifted from the earth, catching the canopy of chameleonetting almost at once.
No matter. Tilting the hovering spacecraft's nose higher, Retief shifted his right hand from the power controls to the aft thrust controls, ramming them forward. Despite the efforts of the craft's inertial fields, the boost slammed him back in the too-narrow, too-short pilot's seat as the vessel accelerated at a sudden five Gs. His view through the craft's canopy was obscured by the netting; apparently, he'd brought all or most of it with him. Leveling off at five miles, he continued to accelerate, swiftly surging through the sound barrier. In moments, atmospheric friction had set the entangling net ablaze. Then, with a final flash, it was gone, burned away completely, and Retief began angling higher once more, heading for space.
"Calling space yacht Hanky-Panky . . . uh, that is . . . calling Class-J scout N88V309W" sounded from the ship's commo speakers. "Retief! Are you mad? Bring my yacht back here instanter!"
"Sorry, Snish," Retief told him. "I've decided to forego the pleasure of the staff meeting this one time. I have urgent business elsewhere."
"Retief . . . we are both gentlebeings of the planet! We can discuss this amicably! I was—ha-ha—totally in jest about the A-for-Apoplexy interrogation, truly I was! Return my yacht to the Farm, and we shall let gone-byes be gone-byes!"
"Actually, Snish, I thought I'd go visit Mr. Bug. Now that I know where it is he keeps office hours. . . ."
"Retief, no! This is madness! You will get my beautiful Class-J yacht dirty! Or . . . or worse!"
"She is a sweet boat," Retief said agreeably. "Looks like a Groaci military scout on the outside, but you've got her interior souped up something fierce. The control suite looks more like the panel on a Sunbeam X-12000, and right now she's pushing six gravities when one of your scouts would barely manage three!"
"To be because she is a Sunbeam X-12000," Snish told him with something approaching despair in his faint voice, "with a Class-J outer hull. To be very fast and very, very expensive. To hold you responsible if I find upon her pristine hull the smallest scratch!"
"Really? Even the one where your boys hit me with what felt like a twenty-millimeter power bolt on liftoff?"
"What? How dare they! Heads will roll!"
"Well, I'll just leave you to it, Snish. Sounds like you're having fun."
"Retief! Wait!"
He switched the commo unit off.
Around him, the sky deepened to a vibrant, azure iridescence, which darkened further, then, to velvet black, thickly strewn with a blaze of stars. The system's two suns, one huge and orange, one pinpoint-tiny and fiercely blue, glared from the blackness. The myriad suns of the Shamballa Cluster glowed to starboard, and, beyond, shone the knotted and coagulated tangle of stars and nebulae, the Galactic Core.
Letting the yacht fall into orbit, Retief took some time to familiarize himself with the controls and especially with the navigational computer. His destination, he was pleased to see, was already laid in. Apparently, Shtliff made this trip frequently.
He also examined the rest of the vessel, which was cramped, but luxuriously so. Snish, it seemed, believed in living well and had the gucks to do it. The hot tub in the captain's quarters seemed a bit extravagant—a pool filled with sand kept at a constant toasty 115o F.—until Retief remembered the bit of conversation he'd overheard between his guards just before his breakout. Perhaps Snish liked to travel in style and in comfort.
Hanky-Panky indeed.
But it must make a real mess if the artificial gravity ever cut out.
At last, when Retief felt he knew the ship well, he touched a control, and the ship again accelerated, slipping into hyperdrive for a star-blurring fraction of a second.
Drive time was short, for his destination was not far at all. The world of B'rukley orbited a large K-class star known elsewhere by an alphabet soup of a galactic catalogue number but known to its inhabitants as Firstsun. Technically, B'rukley was Firstsun II, the second world of three, but the only planetary body capable of sustaining life.
Firstsun, however, was part of a double star system; its companion, Secondsun, was a class-B giant, blasting ambient space with a fierce blue light. Fortunately for the sun-worshipping naturists among the USC student body, First- and Secondsun were comfortably far apart as stellar companions—almost a tenth of a light year, about the same remove as Alpha Centauri A and B from little Proxima. At that separation, Secondsun remained a brilliantly dazzling pinpoint bright enough to be fully visible in B'rukley's daytime sky, bright enough even to cast shadows on its own, but too distant to burn unprotected skin with ultraviolet or X-ray radiation.
Against all astronomically erudite expectations, Secondsun had its own planetary family—fourteen worlds, of which the fifth was just marginally habitable, at least by human standards. The first human explorers surveying the fifth planet's steaming oceans, radiation-blasted swamps, and sunbaked badlands had named the blue star Odious; somehow, the world eventually became known formally as Odiousita V.
Retief used part of the flight time between the two stars to review information he'd downloaded into his PDA from the embassy's online information resource center. Odiousita V was of little interest to humans in the sector or had been until the arrival of the Krll from the teeming cauldron of radiation that was the Galactic Core. Krll death commandos had grabbed a number of uninhabited worlds throughout the cluster and posted the electronic equivalent of signs reading keep out; the Concordiat had taken to drawing lines with sword points in the sand when the Krll arrived on Odiousita V. The sunbaked little world, after all, was inhabited.
Once out of hyper, and with Snish a comfortable tenth-light away, Retief switched his commo unit back on. Almost at once, warning messages began coming through from the environs of the still-distant blue star.
"This is the Terran Concordiat dreadnaught Eximious on outer perimeter patrol, calling unidentified inbound vessel," called one. "Identify yourself and prepare to be boarded!"
"This is the Barrier Bastion Ineluctable, of the Greater Krll Prosperity Sphere!" declared another. "Attention unidentified scout craft! Surrender or be flammageried into hygrogellinated drallifer shavings! Yeah, this means you!"
If Snish made frequent runs in this boat to this system, he would have a way either of slipping in unnoticed or of fooling the various perimeter patrols. Groaci were not known for risking their precious protective integuments for any reason whatsoever. He flipped through the computer commo log, found stored automated IFF transmissions, and keyed them in. Minutes passed and no further challenges came through. The Hanky-Panky had been rendered invisible . . . or innocuous.
The tiny vessel continued to fall toward the blue star, which glared ahead brightly enough now to darken the ship's polarized canopy and blot every other star from the sky. Soon, a brilliant point of light separated from the glare of the star, resolving swiftly into a bright crescent. Snish's autonav was working splendidly. After a brief search, Retief found a very important item of survival equipment—long-wear sunblock with an SPF of ten million. He stripped down, lathered the stuff on, and waited as the stuff crawled rapidly across his entire body, forming a tight, UV- and X-ray-opaque film invisibly covering his body. Eye drops went into each eye, forming a dark, liquid coating that did the same thing. Then, suitably protected at least for a day or two until the nanogoo began to wear off, he got dressed and returned to the cockpit.
He was less than a thousand miles out, the planet forming a vast scimitar of silver-blue sun-dazzle ahead, when the radio crackled another warning. "Attention, unidentified spacecraft! This is the Concordiat battlecruiser Inenarrable! Your IFF codes are invalid! We have locked on to your craft and are tracking! Heave to and prepare to be boarded, or we open fire!"
Swiftly, Retief punched a series of alphanumerics into the commo board—his clearance status for flight approaches under diplomatic immunity. An instant later, a brilliant flare of light, brighter even than the local sun, exploded ahead and to port.
"Inenarrable to unidentified craft! You will not be warned again! Surrender or be destroyed!"
"This is class-J Scout N88V309W, en route under special diplomatic status. Please allow me to pass."
Another explosion rocked the scout, closer this time. "I guess you boys don't like diplomats," Retief said aloud. He settled himself in at the controls, feeding more power to the drive. This was about to get interesting. . . .
"This is the Krll Planetary Defense Station Inappeasable! We have you in our sights, diplomat! Surrender now, or suffer the consequences!"
Radar showed not one but two waves of missiles bearing down on the scout from opposite directions. Ramming the thrust controls full forward, Retief barrel-rolled high, then boosted hard on a new vector, angling for the relative safety of atmosphere. Explosions blossomed in space behind him as missiles detonated; a 30cm hellbore bolt narrowly passed astern. Another explosion jolted him, and he heard the sharp ping-ping-ping! of high-velocity shrapnel.
"What am I going to tell Snish?" Retief asked of no one in particular as he fought the hurtling craft into the first tenuous wisps of planetary atmosphere.
He was losing attitude control. The Hanky-Panky had taken some serious damage aft, and blue warning lights were popping on all over the control panel. He fought to hold her as the balky craft shuddered. A fireball of ionized gases billowed around him, blocking out the crazily tilted sweep of the planet's terminator. Altitude fifty miles . . . forty . . . but his velocity was dropping fast too, down to Mach 10. He might be able to pull this off. . . .
"Unidentified spacecraft! This is Concordiat Planetary Defense Fortress A-12, of the Police Action Concordiat Military Authority Nexus. You have trespassed into a war zone and are advised to turn back immediately, or we shall open fire."
"PACMAN, this is N88V309W. I have taken damage and am on my way in. How about keeping your fingers off the firing button long enough for me to wrestle this bucket down."
"Negative, N88V309W. You could be a Krll intelligent missile with a good story line. Turn back or be destroyed."
The falling scout broke free of the ionized trail thirty miles above Odiousita V's night side, with the dawn terminator a silver curve dead ahead. A half-dozen pinpoints of light were racing up toward him from below, the exhaust flares of the missiles illuminating the solid cloud deck below.
Retief tried to maneuver the craft to starboard, but his lateral controls were dead. He tried to use the gravitics to slow his fall, but those were dead as well. In fact, there wasn't much he could do except continue to fall . . . and those missiles were closing fast.
He hunkered down as far in the too-small Groaci pilot's seat as he could and yanked the emergency eject lever. A metal shell clanged shut around him, sealing him into the emergency escape pod, and a moment later a loud bang! slammed him down through the scout's ventral hull. For a long half minute, he was in free fall. Then a succession of far-off explosions told him that Snish's luxury yacht would be hosting no more Groaci sand- tub parties.
Helpless now, he fell from the night sky. . . .