Part 5 (2/2)
”Oh, Orgzild wouldn't be crazy enough to try anything like that,”
Commander Dirk Prinsloo, of the _Aldebaran_, declared. ”He'd get away with it for just twelve months--the time it would take to get the news to Terra and for a Federation s.p.a.ce Navy task-force to get here. And then, there'd be little bits of radioactive geek floating around this system as far out as the orbit of Beta Hydrae VII.”
”That's quite true,” von Schlichten agreed. ”The point is, does Orgzild know it? I doubt if he even believes there is a Terra.”
”Then where in s.p.a.ce does he think we come from?” Keaveney demanded.
”I believe he thinks Niflheim is our home world,” von Schlichten replied. ”Or, rather, the string of orbiters and artificial satellites around Niflheim. Where he thinks Niflheim is, I wouldn't even try to guess.”
”Yes. After he'd wiped us out, he might even consider the idea of an invasion of Niflheim with captured contragravity s.h.i.+ps,” Hideyos.h.i.+ O'Leary chuckled. ”That would be a big laugh--if any of us were alive, then, to do any laughing.”
”You don't really believe that, general?” Keaveney asked. His tone was still derisive, but under the derision was uncertainty. After all, von Schlichten had been on Ullr for fifteen years, to his two.
”Any question of geek psychology is wide open as far as I'm concerned; the longer I stay here, the less I understand it.” Von Schlichten finished his brandy and got out cigarette-case and lighter. ”I have an idea of the sort of garbled reports these spies of his who spend a year on Niflheim as laborers bring back.”
”You know the line Rakkeed's been taking, of course,” Colonel Cheng-Li put in. ”He as much as says that Niflheim's our home, and that the farms where we raise food, here, and those evergreen plantings on Konk Isthmus and between here and Grank are the beginning of an attempt to drive all native life from this planet and make it over for ourselves.”
”And that savage didn't think an idea like that up for himself; he got it from somebody like Orgzild,” the black-bearded brigadier-general added. ”You know, the main base off Niflheim is practically self-supporting, with hyproponic-gardens and animal-tissue culture vats. And it's enough bigger than one of the _City_ s.h.i.+ps to pa.s.s for a little world. Yes; somebody like Orgzild, or King Firkked, here, could easily pick up the idea that that's our home planet.”
”The Company ought to let us stockpile nuclear weapons here, just to be on the safe side,” another officer, farther down the table, said.
”Well, I'm not exactly in favor of that,” von Schlichten replied.
”It's the same principle as not allowing guards who have to go in among the convicts to carry firearms. If somebody like Orgzild got hold of a nuclear bomb, even a little old First-Century H-bomb, he could use it for a model and construct a hundred like it, with all the plutonium we've been handing out for power reactors. And there are too few of us, and we're concentrated in too few places, to last long if that happened. What this planet needs, though, is a visit by a fifty-odd-s.h.i.+p task-force of the s.p.a.ce Navy, just to show the geeks what we have back of us. After a show like that, there'd be a lot less _znidd suddabit_ around here.”
”General, I deplore that sort of talk,” Keaveney said. ”I hear too much of this mailed-fist-and-rattling-sabre stuff from some of the junior officers here, without your giving countenance and encouragement to it. We're here to earn dividends for the stockholders of the Ullr Company, and we can only do that by gaining the friends.h.i.+p, respect and confidence of the natives....”
”Mr. Keaveney,” Paula Quinton spoke. ”I doubt if even you would seriously accuse the Extraterrestrials Rights a.s.sociation of favoring what you call a mailed fist and rattling sabre policy. We've done everything in our power to help these people, and if anybody should have their friends.h.i.+p, we should. Well, only five days ago, in Konkrook, Mr. Mohammed Ferriera and I were attacked by a mob, our native aircar driver was murdered, and if it hadn't been for General von Schlichten and his soldiers, we'd have lost our own lives. Mr.
Ferriera is still hospitalized as a result of injuries he received. It seems that General von Schlichten and his Kragans aren't trying to get friends.h.i.+p and confidence; they're willing to settle for respect, in the only way they can get it--by hitting harder and quicker than the natives can.”
Somebody down the table--one of the military, of course--said, ”Hear, hear!” Von Schlichten came as close as a man wearing a monocle can to winking at Paula. Good girl, he thought; she's started playing on the Army team, and about time!
”Well, of course....” Keaveney began. Then he stopped, as a Terran sergeant came up to the table and bent over Barney Mordkovitz'
shoulder, whispering urgently. The black-bearded brigadier rose immediately, taking his belt from the back of his chair and putting it on. Motioning the sergeant to accompany, he spoke briefly to Keaveney and then came around the table to where von Schlichten sat, the Resident-Agent accompanying him.
”Message just came in from Konkrook, general,” he said softly.
”Governor Harrington's dead.”
It took von Schlichten all of a second to grasp what had been said.
”Good G.o.d! When? How?”
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