Battlefield Earth (107 page)

Angus had heard it all. He shifted coordinates so that the recorder would view both the back of Asart and the hole.

He fired it and recalled it, and when the recoil died, Lord Schleim raced up to it, checked the claw pattern. It had not been broken.

He came back to the projector. He made absolutely sure it was not projecting something else. He put, “This is Lord Schleim!” on the disc and put it into the machine.

Did his ear detect a far-off whine in the sky?

     Lord Schleim felt there would be no diamond and slash beacon in the picture that would, in a moment, be shown. Only Tolnep eyes would ever detect that and only a Tolnep modified picto-recorder could film it. He would use this moment to distract the others.

Yes! That was a whine in the sky. The fleet would be over them in moments.

The timing was just right. How clever of him. But he had a well-deserved reputation as a slippery diplomat. Formidable in fact.

He walked over to his chair, made very sure his hamper was well within reach. He glanced back at the assembled emissaries. They were all craning forward tensely, waiting for the picture to come on- totally off guard. He spotted exactly where the devil was standing, slightly in front of them all and well clear of the projector. Schleim fingered the bottom ring of the scepter.

“Turn on the latest picture of your fake model!” jeered Schleim.

Jonnie hit the buttons. Off went the mine spotlights. On went the three-dimensional picture of Asart.

It was a new angle. It showed the back side of the moon as well as some of the front. Filtration gave it a bluish hue, but it was Asart. It seemed to float hugely before them.

And right there in the center, massive and unmistakable, was the diamond and slash insignia of Tolnep, jet-black on the surface of the moon.

Schleim gasped. It was real. That really was Asart.

One of the ends of the slash was supposed to point to a hangar door. And even as they looked, that door finished opening. The huge, yawning mouth of a Tolnep-made cavern!

The moon had deflated further now. It resembled a blue balloon with one side being poked relentlessly in, a great pucker that was growing bigger now and at a more rapid rate.

What appeared to be black gases were eddying up to fill the sunken part.

And then out of that yawning hangar bolted a war vessel! Although it must have been traveling very fast, the enormous size of it caused it to seem to move in slow motion. At least thirty thousand tons of Tolnep capital ship was seeking to escape into space.

But it was too late. It had already been touched by the pucker within the moon. A whole back section of the ship was gone!

Before the fixated eyes of the delegates, the vast space vessel was eaten up from tail to nose, its massive metal turned to gases.

Other hangar doors were starting to open.

But that was the extent of the picture. One last puff of black gas as the final bit of capital ship was overtaken by disaster and the recorded voice said “This is Lord Schleim!”

Schleim screamed! Then he acted.

He popped his earplugs shut. He leaped up. He wrenched at the bottom ring of the scepter and, as though it were a machine gun, swept it in an arc from left to right to freeze them all.

“Paralyze!” screamed Schleim. “Stand dead! Damn you, stand dead!”

It wasn’t happening fast enough! There was a surge of emissaries away from him, some falling.

He snatched the other scepter from the basket. He twisted the bottom ring and swept it all around, taking in guards in rifle pits.

They were not falling quickly enough.

Schleim dove into the hamper and came up with three grenades. With all his considerable might he hurled one into the open door of the ops room. He sent another at the bowl entrance. He hurled the third at the devil.

Before they could even land, such was his speed of reaction, he had the gun out of the hamper. He lined it up on the devil, square at his face thirty feet away. With joy he pulled the trigger.

It did not fire.

Lord Dom, a bulbous creature from a mostly liquid world, was bouncing to his feet and coming at him.

Schleim raised the pistol on high, preparing to bring it down on Dom and splatter him. A Tolnep could physically smash them all.

Straight as a sizzling arrow, Jonnie threw his knobkerrie. The hard butt end smashed into Schleim’s eye filters.

Lord Browl, the massive tree-like emissary who had sat behind him, wrapped Schleim in foot-diameter arms and held him from behind in a creaking vise.

“Hold him still!” shouted Fowljopan. “Don’t let him touch his body!” With a flick of his wrist, Fowljopan snapped a beaklike knife into his right claw and advanced upon Schleim.

The Tolnep struggled but the huge arms held. Fowljopan peered with beady eyes all around the steel-like neck of the Tolnep. “Ah!” he said finally. “There is the half-healed incision!” His knife moved in and began to cut. Grey drops of Tolnep blood oozed from the shallow gash that was being made. Fowljopan squeezed the wound and a fragile glassine capsule popped out of it. It was intact.

“His suicide capsule,” said Fowljopan. “All he had to do was strike the side of his neck and he would have been dead.” He looked reprovingly at Jonnie. “Had you hit this with that throwing stick, we would have had no defendant!”

It was Jonnie’s first intimation that all was not going to go exactly as planned, and that all was not well.

Fowljopan turned to the others now crowding around. He shouted in a squawling voice, “Is it the will of the conference that this emissary be under conference arrest and be brought to trial?”

They thought. They pondered. They looked at one another. One said something about “invoking Clause 32.”

Jonnie could only think of getting in there and getting the war stopped now. Didn’t these lords realize people were dying? And as for Schleim, hadn’t they seen him try to use weapons on all of them? But he had collided with the ponderous idiocies for which governments and courts were renowned. There was even a growing whine in the sky. It threatened their own safety.

“I move that he be properly tried,” a lord at the back called out.

“All those in favor?” shouted another. All noncombatant lords said “Aye.”

The combatant ones said “No!”

“I hereby declare,” said Fowljopan, “that the emissary of Tolnep is a prisoner of the conference and is to be duly tried under Clause 32, threatening physical violence to the conference!”

That whine in the sky was much louder now. Jonnie shouldered his way through. He got right in front of the Tolnep. He pushed a scepter at his face.

“Is this what you were looking for, Schleim? This is the real one. The others were just copies we made. Duds like the rest of your weapons.”

Schleim was struggling and screaming. “Get me some chains!” shouted Fowljopan.

Jonnie came close to the Tolnep’s face. But Fowljopan was prying in among Schleim’s teeth to make sure there were no other capsules to bite down on. The moment that was done, Jonnie spoke again.

“Schleim! Tell your captain up there to draw off! Talk or I’ll shove this radio down your throat!”

Lord Dom tried to push Jonnie away. “This is a conference prisoner! He may not be communicated with until tried. Clause 51, governing trial procedures-”

Jonnie somehow controlled his temper. “Lord Dom, this conference is at this very instant under threat of bombing! For its own safety, I demand that Schleim-’

“Demand?” said Fowljopan. “Here now, those are very strong words! There are certain procedures that must be observed. And you are hereby officially informed that you yourself threw an object at an emissary. The conference-”

“To save his life!” cried Jonnie, pointing at Dom. “This Tolnep would have crushed his skull!”

“You were acting then,” said Fowljopan, “as master-at-arms of this conference? I do not recall any appointment-”

Jonnie took a breath. He thought fast.

“I was acting as the appointee of the host planet which is responsible for protecting the lives of invited delegates.” He knew of no such procedure.

“Ah,” said Lord Dom, “he is invoking Clause 41, responsibilities of the planet responsible for assembling emissaries.”

“Ah,” said Fowljopan. “Then you cannot also be charged. Where are those chains?”

A Chinese guard was running up with coils of jangling, mine-hoist chains. Two pilots followed him with another tangle of heavy links.

“Under Clause 41,” said Jonnie desperately, “I must demand of the prisoner that he surrender his offensive forces at once.”

Lord Dom looked at Fowljopan.

Fowljopan shook his head. “All that can be arranged, per Clause 19, is a temporary suspension of hostilities where warfare threatens the physical safety of a conference.”

“Good!” said Jonnie. He knew he was at risk. These emissaries were not as friendly now. But he would push it all he could. He had to save lives. Not only theirs but those of any survivors of Edinburgh. He shoved the radio close to Schleim’s mouth. “Declare an immediate suspension of hostilities, Schleim! And tell that captain up there to draw his forces off!”

Lord Schleim simply spat at them.

They were wrapping him in chains now. Somebody had found a spare filter in the hamper and replaced the shattered ones over his eyes so he could see. They had him on the ground and he looked like a huge coil of hoist chain. Only his face was visible now. His lips were drawn back and nothing but hisses were coming out of him.

Jonnie was about to rage at him that if he didn’t talk into this radio, the planet of Tolnep would get one big dragon. The thought that this, too, might violate something made him hesitate for a moment, searching for words.

Lord Dom accidentally solved it before Jonnie could speak. “Schleim,” said Lord Dom, “I am sure it will go much easier with you at your trial if you call off your forces.”

This was the bit of grass that Schleim had been wriggling to get. “On that condition, and if the captain of that fleet up there will forego his piratical venture and follow my orders, give me the radio.”

It was promptly shoved to his mouth by a Jonnie who would rather have smashed his fangs in with it. “No codes! Just say, ‘l have hereby declared a temporary suspension of hostilities’ and ‘You are ordered to withdraw into orbit remote from all combat areas.’ “

Schleim looked at the faces above him. When Jonnie pressed the hidden talk switch, Schleim surprised them all by saying exactly what Jonnie had told him to say. But was there a lurking smile on the Tolnep’s mouth?

Some prearrangement or regulation must be going into effect up there in space. Rogodeter Snowl’s voice came back through the scepter, “It is my duty to inquire whether the emissary of Tolnep is under any physical threat or duress.”

They looked at each other. It was obvious that Tolnep naval regulations covered such sudden and otherwise inexplicable orders.

Schleim, wrapped to the chin in heavy, mine-hoist chain, smiled. “May I speak to him again?”

“Tell him to comply at once!” said Jonnie. He didn’t want to make an overt threat against the Tolnep planet in this company and at this time.

Again, Schleim said exactly what Jonnie had told him to say.

Rogodeter Snowl’s voice came back, “I can only comply if I am assured that the personal safety of the emissary of Tolnep is guaranteed and that the conference promises to return him unharmed to the planet Tolnep.”

Fowljopan said to Lord Dom, “It simply precludes execution.”

“By Clause 42,” said Lord Browl, “a trial can still be held. It is quite normal.

I move we guarantee this emissary’s safe return as a personal matter. All those in favor?”

The ayes came back, unanimous this time.

Fowljopan was looking around. “Where is…where is…?”

The small gray man appeared among them. He took the scepter from Jonnie. He looked around at the faces of the lords and then, as they nodded, he spoke into the mike. First he gave a code word followed by a peculiar buzz which seemed to come from the lapel of his gray suit. Then he said, “Captain Snowl, it is certified that the emissary of Tolnep will be returned, physically unharmed, to his planet in due course but not with any unreasonable delay.”

Snowl’s voice came back: “Thank you, Your Excellency. Please inform the emissaries that I will honor a temporary suspension of hostilities and at this moment am withdrawing to an orbit clear of this and all Combat areas. End transmission.”

Jonnie was pointing at the emissaries of the other combatants. They were the ones wrecking Edinburgh and Russia! “Lord Fowljopan,” said Jonnie, “I am certain any temporary suspension of hostilities includes all combatants.”

“Ah,” said Fowljopan. He thought. “We have no guarantee that only Tolnep ships were up there. It would be irregular for these others not to agree.”

But the Bolbod, Drawkin, Hawvin, and other combatant lords were pointing at Sir Robert who was standing outside the ops room.

“We agree!” shouted Sir Robert with an expression of disgust for their delays.

The combatant emissaries started to look around for communication facilities. A mob of communicators with mikes rushed out and almost knocked them down.

With a spatter and batter of many tongues, the other combatants ordered a temporary suspension of hostilities for all their ships.