Retief and the Rascals (9 page)

            Retief picked up the fallen grille, lifted it
overhead, turned, and threw it into the darkness of the aisle to his left. A
chorus of yells mingled with the clatter of iron on defective concrete.

        "—dirty pool! I
never—" Bam Slang carped.

        "—easy, yuh
said!" Wim wailed.

            "—leave outa here!" Smig Bash
contributed. "I gotta club meeting to go to, or I lose my status as a
Intolerable. Tree misses inna row an' yer out—an' I already got two!"

            "Retief," Magnan objected. "I
hardly think further violence—"

            "What did you have in mind, Ben?"
Retief inquired. "I've just about run out of violent ideas."

            "Why, if one were to activate the emergency
purge system ..."

            "Good thinking, sir," Retief replied,
as he went to the service panel and hauled down on the big red knife-switch.
Immediately, with a roar like a primitive ramjet engine, the flushing fans
started up, flooding the storeroom with fire-damping nitrogen gas.

            "Yipes!" a voice Retief recognized as
that of Jum Derk exclaimed. "Perzon gas! Duh tricky Terries is tryna
expiate us!"

            "Dat's 'asphyxiate', Dum-dum!" Blarp
corrected. "You gotta steal a better translator; you'll give us locals a
bad name fer illegitimacy!"

            "Dat's 'illiteracy', " Jum corrected
in turn. "Skip duh fine points o' Terry syntax, OK? Right now we gotta
learn to live widout breadin'!"

            "Say, fellows," Foor contributed, with
a deep sigh. "I jus' noticed I'm breadin' good! Maybe we ain't dead."

            As the conspirators eagerly compared respiratory
notes, Retief got their location pinpointed and, with a brief instruction to
Ben Magnan, launched himself like a runaway switch-engine, impacting the tight
little group ana knocking them in various directions. Recovering his footing,
Retief delivered one, two, three, four hearty left hooks to as many unshaven
jaws. Only Blarp Show, staggering backward, remained erect. Magnan extended a
foot and tripped the burly lout, whose skull impacted the floor with a
satisfying
bonk!
The other three thieves, now sitting up and rubbing
their faces, saw Magnan towering over their fallen leader.

            "Jeez!" Wim Dit blurted. "I wudda
laid good odds Ben Magnan was no-price! But look at the sneaky rascal! He done
floored all four o' us, especially Bam the Boisterous, which he's a Champeen of
One Hunnert!"

            "Get up, you trash!" Magnan barked,
rubbing his unbruised knuckles tenderly on his pants leg. "Before you get
me irritated!"

            "Let's go fer it!" Wim blurted,
rolling a few feet before jumping up. He sprinted for the dark recesses at the
back of the cavelike storage room, and his henchmen followed, ignoring Magnan's
order to halt.

            "I'll bet they've got a private entry back
there," Magnan suggested to Retief. "They could have dug one under
cover of the supposed addition to their Consular wing!"

            Retief nodded. "We'd better get there right
behind them, Ben," he pointed out, "or they'll have pulled the
dump-line and closed it behind them."

            The two Terrans followed the retreating
Bloorians closely, and came up just in time to see Blarp Show slipping through
a ragged cleft in the crumbly masonry retaining wall.

            Arriving first, Magnan peered in. "I see
light!" he exclaimed, then turned sideways and leaned backwards, and
squeezed in, before Retief could dissuade him. Retief followed, barely able to
negotiate the narrow opening, but it widened after the first six feet. In the
dim light, Magnan was nowhere to be seen.

            Then Retief heard a sharp
yelp!
from
ahead. "Retief! They're—I'm—oh, dear, help!" Magnan's voice trailed
off.

            Retief pressed on as the passage widened further
into a roughly excavated rock-walled cave; the light was slightly brighter
here. Now he could see Magnan ahead, crouched in a curiously awkward position:
he was caught, Retief saw, in a rope net which had lifted him and was swinging
him sideways toward a dark aperture from which large, hard-knuckled hands at
the ends of arms like tree-roots reached for the net. Magnan
yip!
ped as
the ropes were caught, pulling him toward the opening. More hands grabbed and
yanked the loaded net inside the side-passage.

            Retief eased around the corner and slid along
the wall toward Magnan. There was an abrupt dropoff in the floor, he saw, like
a well dug in the center of the confining space, leaving him only a three-inch
ledge along which to advance. He reached the opening into which Magnan had been
yanked and, leaning forward over the dark abyss, caught a glimpse of
dark-silhouetted figures retreating rapidly. Magnan's protests mingled with
sharp commands to "shut yer yap!" and the sound of a blow. Retief made
the tunnel with a lunge and moved quickly up behind the struggling group. He
managed to get close to Magnan's agonized face.

            "Take it easy, Ben," he whispered.
"Relax and keep it quiet."

        "Jim! Do
something!" Magnan blurted. At once the party of abductors halted, thrust
Magnan aside and started back toward Retief. He flattened himself against the
rock wall and waited until Blarp was eighteen inches away, then felled him with
a straight right. The others shoved their stricken comrade aside as he stumbled
back. Retief decked a second lout; then he found the net entangling him. He
fought free of it, but Wim stooped and threw another fold of the webbing at
him. He fended it off, and had just secured a grip on Wim's neck when Magnan
leaped at him.

            Jim! I must report this outrage at once! Come
along, do you hear? Don't bother with Wim just now!" Magnan grabbed at
Retief's hand, clamped on Wim's throat. "You mustn't stoop to their level,
Jim! That would undermine our position, moral superioritywise! His Ex will deal
with this precious Grand Inquisitor!"

            "Go past me, Ben," Retief urged.
"Get clear; watch out for the pit."

            "Pit?" Magnan clung to Retief's arm,
inhibiting his effort to avoid the knife with which a local named Smig was
making efforts to slash Retief's biceps. The sharp blade made contact, laying
Retief's sleeve open in a three-inch gash and causing him to lose his grip. At
once Smig slashed again, missing Retief's throat, but cutting his shoulder.

            "Ben! Get back!" Retief demanded, and
pushed his boss away, toward the mouth of the passage.

            "Retief!" Magnan objected. "I'm
surprised at you! Laying hands on your very own direct supervisor!"

            There's no time for the civilities just now,
Ben," Retief pointed out, pushing Magnan ahead.

            By now all three thugs were piled up against
Retief. He Knocked two of them back and Magnan took their place, scolding
Retief, "Jim! You're wounded! How careless! What—?"

            Bam thrust Magnan aside and dived past Retief to
a wall panel. He grabbed for a switch and Magnan dropped abruptly from view. A
trapdoor in the uneven floor snapped shut over him. Retief delivered a hearty
kick to Bam's short ribs; the Bloorian boss lunged for the control panel,
opening the trap again just as Retief moved to deliver another kick. Retief
fell ten feet to a concrete floor. Magnan was not to be seen. Retief called; no
reply. He looked up in time to see Bam's lumpy face above, bruised but
gloating, in the opening just before the trap slammed shut. A profound silence
descended. Suddenly Wim's voice spoke, with a crackle of defective electronics:

            "Terran spies! Confess your crimes, and
perhaps I will agree to release you!"

            "Certainly, Your Ferocity!" Magnan
spoke up from somewhere above Retief. "Just get me out of here, and—"
Magnan's voice was cut off as if by a blow.

            "What about you, Retief?" Wim Dit
insisted. "You gonna cooperate, or what? We usely keep ulsios in that
cage. They ain't been fed fer a week. It's time to let em in so's they can chow
down!"

            There was a small
clank!,
a ratty
rustling sound, and a chorus of squeals.

            In the dim light from the partly closed-off
shaft above, Retief saw a pack of the three-pound, hairless rodents erupt from
an opening near the floor. As they charged him, crawling over each other's
backs in their eagerness to reach food, he did a broad jump, landing in their
midst with both feet, leaving a dozen of the creatures in their death
struggles. At once, the pack turned to devour their wounded members. Retief
jumped clear and looked around for another opening, but the one from which the
ulsios had come was the only one. He jumped on the ravenous creatures twice
more, diverting them long enough to allow him to go into their burrow
head-first. It led around a sharp curve and into what appeared to be an
abandoned storeroom. A feeble glare-strip on the low ceiling shed enough
greenish light to allow him to explore the dusty chamber. Except for some empty
crates stacked against one wall, the room was empty. Just as he was about to
turn away from the crates, he heard muffled voices, one of which was Magnan's.
He paused to listen.

            "—I'm quite sure," Magnan was saying,
"that as we're both beings of the world, Mr. Dit, we can come to some
mutually agreeable accommodation—and I've already forgotten this trifling
incident."

            "Yivshish!" Wim Dit's gravelly voice
came back. "I've caught you red-handed, Ben, snooping in my most highly
classified area! You'll answer for this!"

            "But, Mr. Dit," Magnan protested.
"I was only— that is, Retief only—"

            "Bah!" Wim cut him off. "I've
heard reports of your assistant's brutal mistreatment of my people! I
seen
duh
fellow's undisciplined behavior wit my own eyeballs! Wondered why you kept such
a boisterous fella around a diplomatic mission. Use him to do your dirty work,
I suppose. Still, as his supervisor,
you're
responsible, Ben! An' you
can depen' on it, you shall feel duh full weight of Tribal justice, to say
nuttin' of duh just and passionate revenge dat will be exacted by duh various
clans, unions, blood-brotherhoods, sects, civic clubs and political parties
you've savaged dis day! Take him away!"

            Once again, Retief heard the faint sibilance of
Groaci voices nearby. He put an ear to the wall, which as he had discovered was
not a mass of solid masonry, but was more like Swiss cheese, riddled with
passages.

            "To be at ease!" a stern voice snapped
in formal Groaci; the hubbub diminished slightly. "Jump-off at oh-fifteen
hundred hours," the non-com went on. "To not worry: you'll get all
the action you want before the day is done. To have to wait until
Lugubrious
is docked and the Terry big shots are all present or accounted for: then
there's the Interplanetary Brigade under General Hish to await. Don't sweat,
it's all bought and paid for—some neat tactics, eh, fellows? Good to know High
Command is on the ball; OK, our top negotiators euchred the CDT into
dispatching a full brigade of seasoned veterans here that
we'll
use as
support troops! Remember, no name-calling. We all know Blovian root-suckers got
funny-looking faces, but we just play it cool as a penal colony on Iceberg
Five."

            Retief listened a little longer to the
assault-troop briefing, then eased along to a gaping crack in the under-spec
masonry and got a glimpse of at least a battalion of Groaci Planetary Shock
Troops in full battle regalia, seated on benches, shuffling their feet while a
top sergeant in simulated-jeweled greaves paced up and down before them, waving
from time to time at a detailed map of the port facilities, with the Terran
receiving-stand outlined in red.

            Retief carefully moved crates aside and exposed
a small door, adjacent to the barrack-room. Through it, he could hear Magnan's
entreaties and Dit's curt dismissal. He checked the edge of the door, found a
tiny aperture, and inserted a lock-pick from his lapel kit. There was a faint
click!
and the door slid aside, revealing an only slightly larger chamber,
dim-lit, and fitted up with the latest in Bogan torture devices. Magnan was
strapped, spread-eagled, into a massive frame, which, as Retief watched,
expanded half an inch in two dimensions. Magnan
yip!
ped and tugged
uselessly at the tight straps securing his wrists. Wim was not to be seen.

        "Easy, Ben,"
Retief said quietly. "I'll cut you free."

            He stepped into the room and with a quick slash
of the ceremonial dagger that was part of his semi-demi-formal early late
afternoon regulation uniform, freed him. Magnan slumped and rubbed his wrists.
"Heavens, Retief!" he bleated. "There was no need to damage the
device! You could have simply unstrapped me. Dit will be furious! I sensed that
he treasures the equipment in this installation: it's of his own design, you
know. He ordered part of the Bogan Set Number Four, and added the autotongs
from a Groaci catalog. Now you've spoiled his rack!

            "Tough E-pores," Retief remarked.
"What was he after? I hope you didn't spill anything of importance, like
where His Ex keeps his private stock of Bacchus red."