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Chapter Eight

 

1

The feeling was that of having a large wad of crisp cellophane crumpled and crinkled up inside his skull, like a sudden burst of white-noise static felt as much as heard. For a moment, he could see nothing, but he felt very strange indeed . . . as though he were both sitting cross-legged next to the supine form of the Krll body armor and, simultaneously and bewilderingly, lying flat on his back.

The foil cap, he decided, was giving him several types of feedback, but the most important were balance and the kinesthetic sense of knowing just where his torso and limbs were at any given moment. He found that by concentrating, he could cause the sensory input from his human body to fade into the background so that he could focus on the sensations arising from this new and awkward body lying on the floor.

Other sensations were invading his brain, alien sensations from alien senses. He was getting flnth vibrations through his antenna that registered a lot like smell . . . if an odor was bright purple and sounded like his reflection in a brightly polished desktop.

He frowned. That couldn't be right. But when he frowned, he became aware of the high level of snrgl radiations in the closet, making his hair tingle and the soles of his feet itch. Something would have to be done about that. . . .

He tried thinking about getting up. Awkwardly, he sat up. It was confusing, at first, since he was watching the armor clumsily fold itself to a sitting position in front of him with his human eyes, but the part of himself that was inside the teleoperated armor suit was blind. It actually helped to close his eyes and imagine himself wholly inside the armor. Focusing all of his will on the effort, he made himself rise . . . rise . . .

And then his legs tangled with one another; he fell to the floor with a metallically clashing clatter.

Shtliff started forward. "My darling! Are you all right?"

The Groaci's normally soft voice sounded quite loud; evidently, the suit was feeding him audio as well. Retief could also hear an overlaying high-pitched gargle of harsh guttural consonants—a translation of Shtliff's Standard into the Krll language, he presumed.

"I'm fine," Retief told the distraught alien. "Not so loud, though, okay? The cap is giving me kinesthetic feedback from the suit and is translating my physical intent into movement."

"To not worry about the aesthetics of the suit, Retief," Shtliff said, shifting to whispered Groaci. "To not be making a fashion statement."

"I know. It's not quite Savile Row. But kinesthetics is about knowing where your arms and legs are without having to look at them, being able to sense where you are in relation to your environment, and so on." He tried getting up again and again fell in a noisy tangle. "Trouble is, I feel like I need to have eight legs to make this work right. The Krll sense of balance is quite different from yours or mine."

"Perhaps that's because the Krll have eight legs," the Groaci replied archly, "not counting pincers and antennae."

Retief focused on the sensations coming from his human body again, reached up, and pulled the cap off. For a dizzying moment, the janitor's closet whirled around him as his sense of equilibrium readjusted.

And then he was just himself once more, with only a single body—a mercifully human one.

"True," Retief said, carefully folding and pocketing the foil cap. "I was hoping to be able to control this thing, but it's too much like walking and chewing gum at the same time."

"What's so hard about that?"

"It's hard when you think you have eight legs and only have two, and your mouth parts tend to go in six directions at once. Give me a hand, though. I have another idea."

Together, they rolled the once-more flaccid suit of armor onto its back and opened up the chest cavity wide. The armor's exoskeleton, Retief now saw, was a standardized model of Groaci design originally created for humanoids. Most of the suit was filled with wires and fiber-optic conduits, circuit boards, and lengths of a soft, gelatinous material like soft, translucent rubber that contracted to various degrees when electric current flowed through it—artificial muscles, in fact, similar to the jellylike myo-fiber used in human prosthetics, which controlled and moved the suit's limbs according to the operator's intent. Krll officers and NCOs apparently wore the cockpit version of the armor, while the private soldiers must have a chest-top computer—programmed in C++, of course—instead of a Krll control center.

It took only a few vandalous moments to rip out all of the artificial muscles, wires, and control circuits, emptying even the jam-packed helmet to create a completely hollow suit that Retief could wear, much like the combat armor of a human soldier. It was a bit big for him—standing as it did almost seven feet tall—and walking around was a little like balancing on foot-thick platform boots, but he could manage it okay after a little practice. Some spots chafed badly—around the ankles and knees, on the shoulders and elbows, but he found he was able to pad those areas with wrappings of the gelatinous myo-fiber, enough, at least, to keep from rubbing himself raw.

"That's better," Retief said, flexing his right leg a couple of times, then his left. "I can handle this." The respirator, built into the faceplate, continued to work, feeding him unfiltered air, and he could see—if in a sharply restricted fashion—through the narrow slit that once had housed the helmet's visual scanner.

"Darling, I hate to tell you this," Shtliff said, "but there's one important element missing." He held up part of the mechanism they'd removed from the helmet—the now unlit head of the optical scanner. "You don't have that red light moving back and forth in your viewing slit."

"I can't speak the Krll language, either, though maybe my translator will still do the trick. We'll just have to risk it."

"Risk what, Retief?"

Retief picked up the alien power gun from the floor and casually pointed it at Shtliff. "Risk pretending you're my prisoner. Let's go!"

"Retief! My darling! What?"

"Don't worry. Just play along and follow my lead."

And he ushered the confused and amorous Groaci out into the corridor once more.

2

They made their way down a long and gleaming passageway, searching for the route that would lead them back to the vehicle bay. Walking in the armored suit was a bit awkward, but Retief found it no more taxing than the full suit of Quoppina exoskeleton that had been his disguise back during the Voion troubles, when he'd been Second Secretary and Consul to the Terran Embassy on Quopp.

"So, tell me, Shtliff," Retief said conversationally. "Why are the Groaci supplying the Krll with robotic battle suits? That seems a bit brazen even for nobler Groac."

"I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about," Shtliff replied with a noseless sniff. "The Groaci have offered their services in ending this tragic conflict between the Concordiat and the Krll Empire. Why would we start a war and then seek to end it?"

"That's an excellent question, Broodmaster. Perhaps you'd care to tell me your thoughts on the matter."

"I . . . I'd rather not," Shtliff said. He was beginning to sag a bit, and his five eyestalks were drooping. "I find I have a terrible snarf-ache."

"I see the joyweed effects wear off as fast as they hit you."

"They also seem to leave quite a hangover."

"So I see. But I'm curious . . . why do the Krll go in for imitating bipeds in their battle armor? Was it just that the Groaci build such good copies of Japanese robotic designs and they were using what was available? Or is it something else?"

"To find your own answers, vile Terry! I'll not help you!"

"Ah . . . the old Shtliff I knew and love. Welcome back."

"To not know of what you speak."

"Does joyweed act as an amnesiac agent in Groaci as well as an aphrodisiac? Or are you just grumpy?"

"I am shocked at your undiplomatic behavior! Running around like that, in disguise!"

"I seem to remember you wearing a rather elaborate getup so you could represent yourself as a Grothelwaith guru."

"That was nothing like this! I assumed that guise to avoid frightening the poor misguided Terran children whom I was counseling. You . . . running around like this in a Krll Empire military establishment . . . you could be shot as a spy! And worse, I could be shot with you!"

"Well, considering the fact that they were going to shoot both of us anyway, we haven't lost anything, have we? Turn left here."

"Where are you taking us, Retief? This is madness!"

"Would you rather go back and have a chat with his Lord Generalship?"

"Ah, well . . . no. Not exactly."

"Then play along. If you're my prisoner, they can't blame you."

"Oh, Kreplach can blame me for just about anything he wants," the Groaci said. "That's the way he is. Oh, please . . . let me stop a moment. My organ cluster is pounding!"

"Just for a sec, then."

"Are you folks lost?"

Retief turned and saw a Bloggie, standing on six floor-polishing rags a few feet away. Shtliff started at the sight of the being, then sagged once more with a groan, holding his organ cluster between spatulate fingers.

"Hello," Retief said. "I take it you're the janitor here?"

"Yup. Zub-zloob's the handle. And you must be Retief."

"Good guess. How'd you recognize me?"

"Both my cousin Glom-gloob and my cousin Glob-jlob told me you might be coming up this way. And you're not exactly acting like your typical Krll officer."

"Oh?"

"Sure. The drfl vibrations are all wrong, for one thing. And your headlight is out."

"Very observant. But I'm curious. Glom-gloob told me you were mayor of Glooberville. Why are you working here?"

"Oh, hey. Even a mayor is allowed to study the fine points of culture and civilization, right? Besides, there's not much to the job of mayor since the Krll and the Gruckies took over the town."

"I see. And what have you learned about civilization from the Krll?"

"That the Krll higher-ups like their floors brightly polished so's they can see their antlitzwrm in them . . . whatever 'antlitzwrm' are. That civilized folks like playing a game called 'war' where they get to blow things up and kill other beings. That they like their groffltrays and wastebaskets emptied every day, while they're not around, but don't want their desks touched. That you should never, ever touch their lebberstones. That they really like lots of toys and electronic gadgets, like that suit you're wearing. That they define civilization by comparisons with other people rather than by specific accomplishments—like saying 'we're more civilized than they are.' That some of their ideas about what civilization is are really bizarre . . . like living in houses you build instead of grow, or having linoleoplastic on your floors instead of mud, or covering up by wearing artificial bodies. That the civilized word for stealing is requisitioning or taxation. That—"

Retief held up a gauntleted hand. "I get the idea, Zub-zloob. Glob-jlob gave me pretty much the same litany."

"So, how come you're pretending to be a Krll officer?" Zub-zloob asked.

"I have been wondering much the same myself," Shtliff put in.

"The Lord General and I don't quite see eye to eye on something, and this seemed like the best way to leave gracefully and without causing a disturbance."

"Good idea. I've heard the Lord General when he's peeved, which is most of the time. Everybody wants to leave quietly then, believe me."

"Could you direct us to the vehicle bay?"

"Sure. Right down this passageway, turn right at the second intersection, and straight on ahead. You can't miss it."

"Thank you."

"My pleasure."

"One other question. What do you know about a Mr. Bug?"

"The head of the local criminal syndicate? They have their headquarters in the warehouse district over at the Glooberville spaceport. We Bloggies don't have much to do with them, though."

"Were you aware that Mr. Bug is a Krll?"

"I never saw Mr. Bug or a Krll, not outside his armor, anyway, so I couldn't say. But my third cousin five times removed on my mother's side, old Flob-vlobb, he works in the warehouse section. Maybe he knows something."

"Great. Thanks again."

"Don't mention it."

Retief thought for a moment. "Tell me . . . if I asked you to find a place for my friend here to hide, someplace where he'd be safe from the Lord General and he could be kept out of trouble, could you do it?"

"Sure thing. I've got a janitor's closet just around the corner."

"Perfect. Shtliff, why don't you go with this nice Bloggie. You're no use to me with that hangover, and I'd rather you not fall into Kreplach's claws."

"I would rather the same myself. But what happens if they catch you?"

"Zub-zloob . . . if you don't hear from me by this time tomorrow, find a way to smuggle Shtliff out of here and back to his embassy. Can you do that?"

"Not a problem, Retief."

"I'll leave him with you, then. Treat him gently. He's got an organ-cluster ache that won't quit."

"I may have just the remedy. Some of our simple, Bloggie folk songs, sung very fast and very loudly, can have a most salubrious effect."

"And if you see the Lord General, you never saw me."

"I understand. Just don't get caught. Ta!"

Retief watched the six-limbed being skate off with the battered-looking Groaci in tow. Then he turned and headed for the vehicle bay.

He wanted to pay the interstellar gangster, Mr. Bug, a little visit.

3

Retief reached the cavernous vehicle bay without further encounters. The bay was as busy as it had been upon his arrival, with armored Krll officers, robotic privates, and armored maintenance personnel attending the half-score metallic giants—Krll warwalkers. He stood in the shadows observing for a time, watching as a Krll with officer's markings on his helmet climbed into the chest cavity of a Type-70 Deathwalker combat unit, forty feet tall in its gantry access cradle and bristling with weapons.

Zub-zloob had been right. The Krll liked their military toys as much as did the Concordiat.

The homeriform Krll, he saw, wore their seven-foot armor suits when they climbed into the much larger walker armor in a way that reminded him of assembling nested wooden Russian dolls. Apparently the same teleoperational connections that let them pilot the human-sized suits also controlled the giant economy size.

That was very good to know.

But for now, Retief preferred to remain mobile and inconspicuous. Stepping from the shadows, he walked briskly across the vehicle bay floor toward the yawning entrance.

It had been night when they'd brought him inside the fortress. The eternal overcast outside was growing light with the approaching day and casting a pale gray light through the barbican and open inner gates. To Retief's eye, activity in the vehicle bay was somewhat less than it had been upon his arrival. Evidently, the Krll were attuned to a nocturnal existence . . . or, possibly, they'd adapted a nocturnal lifestyle when they emerged from the sheltering embrace of the ocean.

Near the entrance, a small military cargo sled had been parked next to some supply crates. He stepped onto the flatbed and examined the controls. It was an old Groaci design, right down to the curlicue script identifying power on, ducted fan settings, and foot-massage controls.

The power cells were half-charged. Good enough. He flipped on the power switch, brought the fans whining up to speed, and felt the craft rise skittishly under his boots. A tiller bar gave directional control. He swung the nose left, pushed forward to pick up speed, and drifted casually through the inner gates and into the barbican.

The lines of soldiers were still in place—all of the lower-ranked robotic variety, he noted, save for one with a sergeant's gold insignia on his helmet, who stepped into the hoversled's path, one arm raised in a most officious manner.

"Halt!" the Krll called, the raspings of his gargled command rendered into Standard by the electronics in Retief's commando suit. "Let's see your base exit authorization, destination validation, intended cargo manifest, name, rank, and serial number!"

"Sergeant, do you see my rank insignia?"

The red light in the NCO's optical scanner slot hesitated, vibrating uncomfortably. "Uh, yessir, Double Battleaxe Captain!"

"And what is your rank?"

"Uh . . . Second Mace Sergeant, sir!"

"And why is a Second Mace Sergeant challenging a Double Battleaxe Captain, interfering with his performance of important duties of a secret military nature?"

The Krll noncom leaped aside, coming to rigid attention and rendering a Krll military salute, holding his first and middle fingers up to the top of his helmet and waggling them like antennae. "My mistake, Double Battleaxe Captain, sir!"

"That's better. I'll tell your superior that you're on your toes."

"Thank you, sir!" He dropped the salute as Retief urged the hoversled toward the fortress's outer gate. "Uh . . . sir? Your headlight is out. . . ."

"I told you this was a secret mission, Sergeant. No lights! Do you think I want to give away my location to the Enemy?"

"Oh. Of course, sir." He seemed to think about this a moment. "Hey! Wait a minute!"

But Retief was already past him and sliding through the gate and into the open air.

"Halt! Halt!"

Retief urged the sled's howling fans to a higher pitch. The sledbed slewed sharply beneath his feet as he flashed over a pothole in the dirt road, but he held his balance, clinging to the steering tiller.

The sharp bzzzt! of a medium-gauge power pistol snapped past his head, and the branch of a weirdly twisted Odiousitan tree off the side of the road twenty feet ahead burst into flame. He could hear the shrill clangor of an alarm going off and the metallic clatter of dozens of armored boots on the pavement. A second shot gouged a chunk of wood from the trunk of another tree.

"Save our forests," Retief said aloud, and he leaned hard to the right, pulling the tiller around and banking sharply in a hard turn that sent him flying off the road and into the light woods that surrounded the fortress.

They would have something out to catch him pretty soon now, he thought. He needed to put as much distance between himself and his pursuers as he could.

At high speed, the hoversled steered more with the leaning of his body to left or right than with the tiller. Skittering over uneven ground, Retief shifted his weight back and forth, canting the sled to avoid trees as they flashed toward him . . . and past.

Another power-gun bolt snapped a branch on his left with a loud crack. In Krll armor, and with only a narrow vision slit to see through, he couldn't chance a glance back over his shoulder—a surefire way to steer the sled smack into a tree. Instead, he hunkered down and leaned forward, urging the sled to move just a bit faster.

A powerful energy bolt tore through the side of the sled's flatbed, leaving a half-molten furrow that missed his right boot by inches. He needed to take some evasive action and get an idea of how many were chasing him.

Ahead, almost dead in his path, a young tree with a five-inch-diameter trunk swiftly flashed toward him. He veered slightly right, holding his left arm out to the side. As he passed, his open palm slammed into the trunk; he gripped and leaned, his shoulder shrieking painful protest, as the sled whipped around the tree in a hairpin one-eighty.

As he released his grip on the tree trunk, his new course had him hurtling directly toward his pursuers. There were three of them—riding off-the-ground airbikes that looked like Bogan military scout vehicles. Two were single-seaters, the third mounted a sidecar, carrying a Krll soldier armed with a heavy power rifle.

He had only an instant to take it all in and lean his sled into the narrow opening between the two oncoming single-seater OTGs. The two veered sharply left and right to avoid Retief's unexpectedly charging cargo sled; one sideswiped a tree and sent its driver somersaulting heels over head a dozen times before he came to rest in a patch of alien ferns. The other whined as the driver fought for control, then bellied into a raised-earth embankment with a solid whump that launched its driver over the handlebars.

The OTG with the sidecar slewed sideways, narrowly avoided a clump of trees, and swung about, the passenger shifting back and forth as he tried to get a clean line of fire on Retief. Retief decided to discourage the notion and circled around to keep the OTG's driver between him and the rifle-bearing passenger.

As the OTG swung back onto Retief's tail, he decided to try another sharp course reversal. A skinny tree trunk appeared ahead. He reached out . . . grabbed hold . . .

The tree was dead—nothing more than a branchless pole sticking twenty feet up out of the ground, and as he swung around it, bark splintering, the three-inch trunk snapped off in his hand. For a dizzying moment, the sled skewed through the woods sideways as Retief fought to regain his balance. He managed to slow the out-of-control vehicle . . . and then it slammed into a clump of young trees that, fortunately, cushioned his stop rather than serving as a solid wall.

He gunned the cargo sled's ducted fans, maneuvering clear of the trees. The OTG was charging straight toward him, the rider already taking aim. Retief was still holding the snapped-off length of dead tree trunk in his left hand, twelve feet long with a forked Y at the far end.

"Well, why not?" Retief asked himself. He maneuvered the sled into position, dropped the pole across the instrument platform in the front, tucked the broken-off end beneath his right arm with the Y extending off to the left, and gunned the vehicle full-throttle forward.

Retief couldn't see the lobster faces of his pursuers, but the body language transmitted by their armored suits suggested emotions that, in humans, might have been either a 298-G (Wide-Eyed Surprise) or a 440-R (Stark Terror). The driver tried to put on the brakes, but airbikes are not known for stopping on proverbial tenth-guck coins. The fork of Retief's improvised lance caught the driver just at the juncture of helmet and torso armor, picking him up out of his saddle and flinging him back off his mount even as the tree trunk itself shattered in Retief's grasp.

The jolt nearly knocked Retief off of his machine, but he kept control, leaning into the impact and releasing the splintered remnant of the lance as he rocketed past the other vehicle, which was now in a fast end-for-end tumble. The sidecar passenger crashed into the side of a tree as the vehicle hit the ground and skipped. Two bounces later it exploded, but Retief was already racing clear.

"That," he said to no one in particular, "was joust in time."

His sled, not designed either for high-speed cross-country races or jousting tournaments, was developing an unpleasant clatter in one of its fans and was beginning to sag a bit to the left. Retief throttled back to a power-conserving pace not much faster than a jog on foot, angling for the direction that, according to his innate bump of direction, should take him to the Glooberville spaceport.

An hour later, the sled's engine died with a mournful whimper of downspooling turbines. Retief left the machine in the woods next to an oddly colored stream and continued on foot.

He was pretty sure that the spaceport was close, now . . . just over that next rise.

4

It wasn't the spaceport that greeted his eyes when he reached the top of the next ridge, but a scene of bizarre, alien devastation. The trees were gone here, replaced by twisted, spiky growths colored a dull, chalky yellow. Evidently, a sizeable Bloggie city had existed here. Several of the characteristic mushroom-shaped buildings were in evidence, but all were ripped open, toppled, burned, and smashed.

Trudging down the slope, Retief took a closer look at the yellow growths. A piece snapped off in his hand.

Crystalline sulfur. This must be the edge of the Sulfur Forest Sergeant Caldwilder had first mentioned. The ground was a powdery yellow ash that kicked up in dense clouds along his trail as he walked through it.

The sulfur "trees" and "bushes" were particularly strange. They looked like they'd grown that way, but Retief couldn't imagine a chemical or physical process that would cause sulfur to accrete in such blatantly biological shapes. From the look of things, this valley had once been covered by somewhat more terrestrial-type vegetation, such as the woods he'd just emerged from. He could see the remnants of fallen logs scattered across the ground half covered by sulfur ash, and many of the sulfur growths appeared to have crystallized over the trunks and branches of dead trees, which served now as skeletons for the delicately branching sulfur shapes.

The crystallized sulfur, he finally decided, was almost certainly the product of some biological process—the excretions of some sulfur-metabolizing bacteria or other microorganism that had moved into this valley. Where the sulfur had come from in the first place, he didn't know.

At least this explained the oddly colored stream he'd seen on the other side of the ridge and gave some hints to the nature of the highly acidic seawater on this world.

As he reached the edge of the ruined city, he became aware that it was not wholly abandoned. Several Bloggies peered at him from the shadows of wrecked mushroom-building shells. They seemed uncharacteristically shy at first, but after a few moments, several emerged into the light bearing banners covered with crudely drawn Krll characters.

"O mighty Krll conquerors!" one of the Bloggies cried out, his rumbling Krll speech translated by Retief's suit electronics. "We, the humble population of the fair metropolis of Xathgloober do hail and welcome you to this, our happy little village, as our liberators and our benefactors! We happy, primitive natives do—"

"Take it easy," Retief said, holding up a cautioning hand. "Don't stand on formality with me. I'm not even a Krll."

The speechmaker blinked several tiny eyes rapidly. "Not a Krll? That artificial hide you're wearing says otherwise."

"Actually," Retief told him, "I'm a Terry in disguise."

"A Terry!" another Bloggie said, emerging from the shelter of a wrecked home. "You must be that Retief we've heard tell about!"

"News does get around on this planet," Retief said, "doesn't it?"

"O mighty and powerful Terry liberators! We welcome you to—"

"Thanks for the heartfelt sentiment, fellows," Retief said, "but I'm not here to liberate anyone. I'm just passing through."

"Whoo! Thank the Great Druzlwit! I don't think we can survive being liberated even one more time!"

"I gather things have been pretty tough for you folks."

"You could say that. First we get liberated by Terries. Then we get liberated by Krll. Then Terries. Krll. Terries. Krll. Sometimes we wish the Gruckies would conquer us, just for a change of pace."

"The Groaci don't usually conquer something if they can steal it instead."

"If they want to steal the planet, they'd better hurry up. There might not be a lot left of it if they wait much longer."

Retief looked around, eyeing the devastated town. "Why do you stay here?"

"Hey, it might not look like much, but it's home!"

"I understand that. But why not move over to Glooberville? At least that's still in one piece, last time I saw."

"Huh. Glooberville was built by Bloggies who left Xathgloober after about the sixth time or so it was destroyed. We told 'em good luck, and wrgle if you find work. You see, most of us figure that growing a town right next to the spaceport and the Krll headquarters is kind of like setting up housekeeping right smack on the center of the X next to the sign reading bomb here."

"Yeah, Glap-glupp," another Bloggie said. "We heard tell that the terrible Terries bombed Glooberville just last night. Dropped a whole load of leaflets. They have no mercy."

"Watch it, Ylup-yloop," the first Bloggie said. "This here's one of them terrible Terries."

"'Scuse me. My mistake. Long live the victoriously terrific Terries. Sorry . . . I don't have my flag on me at the moment."

"Don't worry about it. I'm not much for flag-waving myself."

"You asked why we didn't leave," the first Bloggie said. "I suppose we should, with yellowrock overrunning everything. But we can't just give up, you know what I mean? We keep planting the foo-foo and trying to fight the Scourge back. . . ."

"Whoa, hold on a second. That one went right over my head. What does foo-foo have to do with it?"

"Oh, well, you being an offworlder and everything, maybe you don't know about the delicate balance of nature and all. You see, the foo-foo plant not only nourishes us Bloggies, it sucks up the Tiny Yellow Demons at the same time."

"Tiny Yellow Demons?"

"Hey, we're primitives, without that sophisticated offworlder science you guys are always going on about, okay? Tiny Yellow Demons are these itsy-bitsy critters that are so small you can't see them with your bare eyeball. But they grow in the soil all over the planet, and when enough of them are in one place, they start pulling yellowrock out of the soil and the rainwater and spit it all over the ground, over the trees, slow Bloggies, everything."

"Mmm. Sounds like you're describing some sort of microorganism—a bacterium, maybe, that metabolizes sulfur."

"Like I said, Tiny Yellow Demons."

"And the foo-foo keeps them in check?"

"Well, it does if the Krll and the Gruckies don't come along and strip the fields bare—'putting it on the tab' or 'requisitioning,' as they call it. Or if the Terries and the Krll don't get to fighting with one another and burn the surface vegetation away. When that happens, the Tiny Yellow Demons move in and take over pretty quick."

"I can imagine. The sulfurous equivalent of desertification."

"Dessert who?"

"Never mind. You know, guys, I get the feeling that you would be happiest if everyone just left you alone."

"What kind of Terry-talk is that? I thought you were trying to liberate this here planet for the good of all Bloggiehood."

"Does it make sense to liberate you by burning off your planet? Or letting you get covered with solid sulfur?"

"Well, no. Not to me. But you Terries are aliens, at least to us. We figured you just had a very, well, alien way of looking at things."

"Maybe some of us do. That doesn't make it right, though. Tell you what, Glap-glupp. If you can point me at the Krll spaceport, I'll see what I can do to get the offworlders off your backs."

"Hey!" the Bloggie said brightly. "My cousin Glom-gloob said you were an all right sentient being, Retief!"

"Well, I can't make any promises just yet. Right now, it's just me against a whole lot of Terries, Krll, and Groaci who all seem to be interested in your little corner of the Galaxy. But with a little help I might be able to get them to see reason."

"You got yourself a deal, Retief! C'mon. I'll take you to Glooberville!"

5

An hour later, Retief and Glap-glupp stood atop a low ridge overlooking the starport. They'd approached from a different direction than Retief's rather public arrival the evening before. The starport tarmac spread out like a blanket immediately below them, with the town of Glooberville visible in the valley beyond. Retief counted twenty-five cargo starships of various designs and tonnages scattered about the field—an unusually large number for a world of Odiousita V's Class T status.

Unless, of course, most of those ships were Krll military transports. Five of them were huge bulk-cargo jobs massing at least forty thousand tons apiece. What were the Krll expecting to haul off of the planet, anyway? Not joyweed, surely, not in those quantities.

Off in a far corner, he could just make out the sleek lines of the GNN yacht, the Archangel-class Story at Eleven. Retief thought he could just make out some black specks in the floodlights around her tail, the Krll troops guarding her. She was dwarfed by the behemoths crowding the rest of the landing field.

"See over there to the left?" Glap-glupp said, pointing with a foot-arm. "That there's the starport warehouse district. The Krll they call Mr. Bug has his headquarters in there someplace."

"It's a big place, Glap-glupp. Do you know where?"

"I'm afraid not."

"You wouldn't happen to have any cousins working in the warehouse district, do you?"

"Not anymore. When Mr. Bug moved in, he ordered all of us Bloggies out. Either his own troops keep the place tidy, or he's not as much of a neat freak as the army-types are." The Bloggie considered the question a moment. "But my cousin Nurk-nakk has been helping load stuff onto the Krll transports. He says a lot of the activity down there is focused around Warehouse Three. He doesn't think it's their headquarters, but there's a lot of coming and going there, both the Krll and Mr. Bug's troops."

"Interesting. So is Mr. Bug working with the Krll military? Or is he just along for the ride?"

"Hard to tell, Retief. His soldiers 'requisition' our crops just like regular Krll troops. Kind of hard to tell the difference."

"I see. This cousin of yours, Nurk-nakk. Does he say what it was he was loading onto the transports? It wasn't foo-foo, was it?"

"Nah, nothing like that. Just lots of Krll and Gruckie stuff . . . rifles, armor, power packs, military vehicles, stuff like that."

"Okay, Glap-glupp. Thanks a lot. I'll take it from here."

"Don't you want help getting in down there? The whole warehouse area's walled off by a high fence."

"I shouldn't have any trouble. Besides," he rapped the metal torso of his Krll armor, "I've got this tin can to protect me if someone starts shooting. You just have your hide."

"There is that," the being said with a sage rumble. "Okay, then . . . but if you need help, Retief, just yell."

"You'll hear me all the way up here?"

"You'll be heard, one way or another."

Retief made his way down the slope of the ridge, found a paved road leading around the southwestern end of the tarmac, and followed it to the warehouse-district gate. Several dozen large, two- and three-story buildings with enormous doors were huddled behind a chain-link fence. The gate, he saw, was open . . . but guarded by a couple of men in technofedoras, cheap suits, and dull expressions. They leaned on either side of the gate, flipping quarter-guck pieces in perfect unison.

"Hold it right there, Pally," one of the GOSH soldiers said as Retief approached. "The boss already delivered Kreplach's cut, so's you can just turn that walking stack o' junk around and stilt back ta where ya came from."

"Yeah," the other thug growled. "See?"

"You misunderstand, gentlemen," Retief said. "I'm not here for the cut. I'm supposed to check out Warehouse Three."

"Uh-uh, Pally. Warehouse Three's closed now. You know that."

"Yeah. It won't open for another hour, yet, see?"

"Maybe I didn't get the word. Tell me more."

"Geeze, can't you lobsters tell time? Warehouse Three is closed. Come back later." The GOSH thug leered knowingly. "An' bring plenty of gucks if ya wanna have a real good time."

"Ah," Retief said, nodding his helmet in a knowing manner. "I think I see the problem. Mr. Bug sent me to inspect Warehouse Three . . . to make sure everything is set for an hour from now."

"Huh? Nobody told me nuttin' about that."

"Tsk, tsk, tsk," Retief tsked. "Whatever happened to good communications skills?"

"Communications are—zzzzt!—open on normal channels," the made man said. "See?"

"Well, obviously somebody didn't tell you boys what was going on. Do they often leave you boys out of the loop that way?"

"Geeze, ya got that right, mister. Nobody never tells us nuttin'!"

"That's awful! Why? Don't they trust you?"

"Nah, that's not it. I think the big bosses just get too wrapped up in their own stuff, y'know? I mean, it's hard work, doin' all that high-level boss stuff."

"Actually—whrrrrr, zzzzt!—Mr. Bug trusts no one, see?"

"I was given my orders by Louis the Libido. You know him?"

"Sure. I knows Louis. Da bum owes me a c-note. Thing is, I don't know you."

"Well, I'm Captain Hollishkes. And you two would be . . . ?"

"Huh? I'm Freddy da Finger."

"An' I'm Forty-seven. See?"

"Forty-seven! I'm glad to run into you! I have a message for you. A private message." He looked at Freddy. "Do you mind?"

"Huh? Nah. Go ahead."

Retief guided Forty-seven to one side, just out of earshot. "Listen to me carefully, Forty-seven. Sleep paren thirty close paren semicolon. Puts paren I think this guy's okay, and we should let him in, see? Close paren semicolon."

As soon as he'd given the sleep command, Forty-seven's already glassy eyes grew a bit more so. Retief had thirty seconds from that moment.

He patted the unmoving ichi-man on the shoulder, nodded, then walked back to face Freddy. "Sorry about that. I was told to give Forty-seven some personal news about his family."

"What kinda family does a made man have, anyway? An assembly line?" He leaned over to look past Retief's shoulder. "Hey, Forty-seven. You okay?"

The ichi-man remained unmoving, his internal clock counting off the seconds.

"He'll be okay," Retief assured the gangster. "So . . . how about it? Can I go check out Warehouse Three?"

"Well . . ."

Forty-seven suddenly stirred and turned. "I think this guy's—zzzzt!—okay, and we should let him in, see? See?"

"Ya think? We could get in lotsa trouble with da Boss."

"There's obviously been a screwup in communications," Retief said. "Now I can go back and tell my superiors that you wouldn't let me in. Or you can let me in and I won't tell a soul."

"Geeze, thanks," Freddy said. "You're an okay guy, fer a lobster."

"Thank you. I feel the same way about you."

"Just stay outta da tanks, okay?" He turned sideways and nudged Retief a couple of times with his elbow, leering meaningfully. "Know what I mean, Pally?"

Retief held up two metal-gloved fingers. "Lobster-scout's honor."

"Go on, then."

"Thanks."

He'd walked a half-dozen steps into the warehouse compound when Freddy called out, "Hey! Captain!"

"Yes?"

"You know your headlight's out?"

"Thanks. I'm taking the suit in to be inspected tonight. I think there's a screw loose somewhere."

"Okay. Just so's ya know."

Warehouse Three was easy enough to find. The road leading to it was thickly hung with signs in Krll lettering, some of them in neon or with flashing marquee bulbs. The huge door yawned open, admitting him to a cavernous structure—an ordinary warehouse, in fact, that appeared to have been converted into something else.

Just what, Retief wasn't entirely sure. He saw dozens of stalls under garishly lit flashing signs. There were oddly shaped and articulated racks that could have been either furniture for something the size and shape of a large lobster, or kitchen utensils. And, most numerous and most prominent, there were dozens of twelve-foot tanks filled with murky water. The bottoms of those tanks were covered with sand and each held eight or ten Krll—lobsterish-looking green and brown creatures watching him with beady stalked eyes like their terrestrial analogs in a pick-your-own seafood restaurant on Earth.

"So, see anything you like, Big Guy?" a sultry voice said from a speaker mounted on the side of the nearest tank.

"I'm not sure," Retief said. "I just got here." Evidently, one of the Krll was speaking to him, his words translated by Retief's commando suit.

Correction. Her words. The Krll in the tanks all appeared to be female—slightly smaller than the one he'd pulled from the captured armor and with prominent thoracic knobs on the ventral carapace. Looking closer, he noted that long, black cilia surrounded each stalked eye, like extra-long eyelashes waving at him seductively in the water.

"I'm sure we can work something out," the voice said. "But you'll hafta come back later. The joint's closed right now."

"Yeah," another voice cut in. "Come back when the place is hot!"

"I don't know, Bun," a third voice said. "I think he's kind of cute. We could give him a special preview. . . ."

"Cute? How can you tell with that silly-looking artificial carapace?"

"Yeah, Captain. Shuck the fake shell and let's see whatcha got in the claspers department."

"Thanks, ladies," Retief said, "but actually, I was sent down by the Lord General to check everything out and make sure the place was ready."

"What do you mean?" Bun said. "Kreppie's our best customer!"

"Yeah. He was down here a week ago when Warehouse Three first opened for business, and he checked out everything, believe me!"

"That's for sure. My swimmerets are still sore!"

"I see. And is business . . . good?"

"The best, Captain. Come on in and find out!"

"Thanks, but I'll have to pass on that." He looked around the cavernous warehouse at some of the other structures. "What are all those booths for, anyway?"

"Goodness, you are new!" Bun told him. "What are you, fresh off the sea farm? You got your painting booths and your buffing racks, for the warrior who wants to pamper himself. You got your suit polishers if your armor gets all dirty on the battlefield, and a garage service if your armor needs a lube job and touch-up. And of course, there's the casino in back. Everything the well-endowed Krll warrior on a twenty-six-hour pass and with grples to spend could want."

"Grples?"

"Well sure, Handsome! What, didja think we was entertainin' you guys 'cause we like your looks? Kreplach contracted with Mr. Bug and the Groaci to set up this here fun-town strip for you soldiers. You can get your carapace buffed and painted, your claws sharpened and your antennae preened, all in the same place! You can eat someplace besides the fortress canteen, or sit down with your buddies in a bar, guzzle zkkk-water until you're blind, and ogle the she-Krll waitresses for as long as you can see. You can head for the casino and blow a few thou on games of almost-chance, or enjoy a few hours out of those damned suits and back in sweet-tasting, nonacid seawater! And then there's the big draw . . . us! Fifty tanks, no waiting, twenty-five grples for an hour, or two hundred for all day."

"Sounds like heaven. It almost makes war sound like fun."

"Nothing's too good for our guys at the front, right, girls?"

"Right. As long as they can pay for it. . . ."

"This is all very interesting, ladies, but I wonder if you could tell me where I can find Mr. Bug."

"Oh, he's upstairs, in his office," Bun said. One of the lobsters in the tank waved her antennae toward a set of stairs on the nearest wall. "He's probably up there counting his grples. You sure we can't interest you in a quick tumble in the tank?"

"Thanks. I'm sure."

"What kind of a green-blooded Krll are you, anyway?"

"One who is definitely not your type, Bun. I'm afraid it would never work out."

He walked over to the stairs and started up.

 

 

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