The Return of Retief (3 page)

            "Hoo,
that really smarted!" he wailed. "I done that zinger just like it
says in the handbook, and it didn't work! No fair! Course, you ain't built like
a Ree—if you would've been a Ree that woulda smacked you right square in the
nerve plexus." He fingered a pinkish patch on his pale, muscular torso.
"Woulda took the starch outa you," he added. Fump paused to massage
his face gently, wiping the exudate on his desk blotter.

            "Never
mind," Retief said comfortingly. "After all, it's not as if you
planned to try it again."

           
"Another
zinger?" Fump echoed in a shocked tone. "The handbook says
one
will do it every time. See, us Ree got this reasonable sorta approach: if
it looks like we're losing, we lay off and estivate until the coast is clear.
If we're winning, of course we take charge. Like now: I figgered with you alone
and on foot, and me here with my vehicle, which has got plenty firepower,
I
was
in charge; anybody'd of done the same. But now, while I got this here
furb-ache, it seems like maybe I shoulda played it a little different." Fump's
tentacles caressed his furb gently.

            "That's
all right," Retief reassured the captain. "No harm done. The strategy
now is to make friends, right?"

            "What
for?" Fump asked wonderingly. "That ain't in the handbook."

            "Never
mind," Retief told Fump. "The first friendly item is for you to
relinquish this vehicle without the need for me to do anything violent; that
wouldn't be friendly, you know."

            "Figgers,"
Fump acknowledged. "Well, it's the breaks of the game, I guess. What you
want with my vehicle, anyway?"

            "Thought
I might use it to go home in," Retief explained. "Since you
carelessly cracked my bubble, I've got no place to stay."

            "What
am I s'pose to tell Sneak Command?" the captain demanded.

            "Just
tell them the truth," Retief suggested. "That you lent it to a
friend."

            "And
what if I don't?" Fump demanded. "Hand it over, I mean," he
amplified.

            "Why
worry about that?" Retief queried. "Since it isn't going to
happen."

            "Sure,
no use borrowing trouble," the Ree agreed. "See how friendly I can
be?" He was edging toward a wall locker, Retief noted.

            "You
don't want anything from the arms locker, do you, Captain?" Retief asked
casually.

            Fump
halted abruptly. "Funny you should ask that," he said. "I was
just going to show you where I keep my hand-guns."

            "Later,"
Retief said, and spun the combination dial on the locker, causing the tumblers
inside the vault-like door to seat with a complicated
click!
Behind him,
Fump spoke into his PA talker:

            "Assault
squad, to the bridge on the double."

            "They
won't be coming," Retief told Fump. "They seem to be trapped on the
far side of the pass."

            "I
saw it fall in," Fump acknowledged. "But I was hoping maybe they
hadn't got that far yet."

            "It's
all right," Retief said soothingly. "I can handle this thing well
enough, single-handed. But I wouldn't want you to be tempted to get into
mischief behind my back, while I'm busy at the controls. So maybe I'd better
just shoot you."

            "Who,
me?" Fump wailed. "You wouldn't do that, Retief, after we been pals
and all!"

            "There
might be an alternative," Retief mused. "Do you happen to have an old
potato bag aboard? Or a grenade sack, anything big enough for you to fit in
it."

           
"Me
fit in it?" Fump asked. "What for?"

            "Because
if you object, you might get another furb-ache," Retief explained
patiently. "After which the question of shooting you would arise
again."

            "Durn,"
Fump said. "What good is a command with commandees that're someplace
else?"

            "You
don't seem to feel much sympathy for your boys," Retief observed.
"They must be frozen solid by now."

            "Sure,
but freezing don't hurt us Rees. We evolved from bottom-feeders, you know,
hadda get through the winter when the ponds froze solid, so no sweat. I can
send a warm-up squad in for them in a few years and thaw 'em out and they'll be
as happy as clams."

            "That's
handy for extended campaigns in cold country," Retief commented. "But
it also makes them rather vulnerable to being dozed up and captured."

            "No
fair telling," Fump reminded his captor. "It's a kind of what you
call a military secret and all."

            "I
wouldn't dream of betraying military secrets," Retief said. He stepped
around Fump and tapped the intercom button. "Ho there, Goop," he
said. "Your captain wants you to bring a large sack."

           
"What
for?"

           
"Yours not
to reason why. Just bring it."
"Eye, eye, I guess."

           
A few moments
later the gunnery officer appeared, carrying a folded sack of tough, greenish
polyon, clearly of Groaci manufacture.

            Retief
took the sack. "Thank you, Goop," he said politely. "You may go
back to your sweeping and dusting."

            Goop
ruffled a tentacle. "What's that?"

            "Study
the Crew Manual. About face! March!"

            Goop,
looking dazed, withdrew.

            Fump
eyed the capacious bag and sighed. "You ain't never gonna get me in that,"
he said with finality.

            "How's
your furb-ache feeling?" Retief asked kindly.

            "It's
holding up good," Fump replied. "You don't need to freshen it up
none."

            "That
won't be necessary," Retief reassured the discouraged fellow. "Now, I
could just order you outside, or shoot you here, if you prefer."

            "Probably
go off and leave me here to freeze up solid," Fump predicted. "That
ain't fatal, but it smarts some; I shoulda filled up on Prestone like the
troops. SOP for surface ops on these here ice-hells," he explained.

            "It's
just as well," Retief said. "You won't need it."

            "You
mean—you're really gonna kill me—in cold blood?" Fump inquired in a
faltering tone. "Looky, fella, I never figgered on this, as I'd of never
let you inside my vehicle."

            "I
don't intend to plug unless I see you outside that bag four seconds from
now," Retief reassured the Ree. "OK?"

            "That's
not hardly OK," Fump came back. "But I got no choice, I guess. You
gonna keep me inside this here poke now?"

            "Soon,
Cap," Retief informed his captive. "It's a lot of work, but it's the
only alternative to shooting you, and I need you alive, up to a point."

            "Oh,"
Fump replied glumly. "I was kind of hoping you'd accept my parole or
something, and leave me have a chance to use my firepower. But you outsmarted
me. OK, let's get to it." He submitted meekly as Retief pulled the sack
over him and secured the top.

            "They
can't say I abandoned my command," Fump boasted muffledly. "Even if I
am
kinda cramped up in this here specimen sack. How's about you let me
out now, and I'll put in a good word for you when the relief expedition
arrives. The one I'm gonna send out a call for as soon as I get a chance, I
mean."

            "Actually,
Captain," Retief replied. "I think for the present you'd best remain
where you are; later I'll put you in the aft lazaret. But no distress signals.
Anyway, we won't be here long."

            "Whattya
mean we won't be here long?"

            "I
have to be back at Sector for some sort of a tribal pow-wow," Retief told
the Ree. "So just get busy estivating, and I'll see how good your lift
gear is."

            "You
don't mean yer gonna try and lift my vehicle without my say-so?" Fump
demanded indignantly.

            "I
thought I might," Retief conceded.

            "Don't
try it, Terry," Fump warned. "You activate all that machinery wrong
and she'll blow sky-high."

            "Don't
worry," Retief soothed the excited Ree. "I'll read the Owner's
Manual."

-

            Sector
Headquarters of the
Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne
at Aldo Cerise was
a hundred-story slab of glass and blackish-gold eka-bronze, rising from a
velvet-green lawn ornamented with the picturesque ruins of an angel fountain
which had adorned a formal garden built on the site twenty-three thousand years
before. The remainder of the ancient tiled street was essentially intact, lined
with the vari-colored ceramic-faced palaces of the long-dead aristocrats of the
deserted world.

            A
group of five Terrans disembarked from the CDT spinner which had transported
them from the port which lay well beyond the limits of this long-dead city, on
a deserted world of an alien star.

            "This
place always gives me the, ah, 'creeps' is the appropriate term, I
believe," said Ben Magnan, currently serving as First Economic Secretary.
His thin, narrow shoulders shuddered as his gaze darted along the silent avenue
which thirty thousand years (standard) before had echoed to the tread of
victorious legions.

            "Cripes,
Ben," muttered Hy Felix, the Information Service Attache. "Can't you
just say the joint gives you the creeps just like it does everybody, without
making it sound like a bailout clause in a treaty?"

            "This,
gentlemen," Career Ambassador Sidesaddle rebuked sternly, "is not the
time for creeps, faced as we are with an awkward negotiation with a
de facto
invader of Terrestrial space."

            "What's
so awkward about it, Mr. Ambassador?" inquired Colonel Trenchfoot, the
newly-assigned Military Attache, with only a touch of his well-known
irascibility. "All we have to do is tell 'em to scram, right?"

            The
Ambassador turned on the colonel a look of Restrained Impatience (621-C), not
unmixed with Greatness Sorely Tried (623-N). "That, my dear Colonel,"
he said coolly, "is hardly the diplomatic spirit, if I may say so. Perhaps
you've not yet had time to read through the orientation binder, providing as it
does the background to the present conference to which we've been
summoned." The great man glanced at his watch, then up at the classical
stainless steel facade which graced the ground-level entry, where two Marines
in dress blues stood at parade rest.

            "Sure,
Chief, I read all that jazz," the colonel replied testily. "I still
say if we run a bluff on them they'll fold like a three-card flush to a
hundred-C raise."

            "The
allusion, one assumes," Sidesaddle returned coldly, "is to some
ruffianly game of chance, which is precisely the diametrical opposite of the
scientifically exact approach of enlightened diplomacy, which alone proffers
hope of an equitable accommodation with the insidious Ree."

            "Give
these suckers an inch and they'll take a couple of lights," the colonel
said stubbornly garbled (37-M).