The Return of Retief (7 page)

            "File
what?" Hy demanded. "A first-grade spelling bee'd make hotter copy
than this get-together."

            The
subdued hubbub which followed Felix's
gaffe
had hardly died down when
again the deliberations of the august body were interrupted by a rap at the
door. Grumpily, Crodfoller turned to rebuke the intruder, but the reprimand
died on his lips as he was greeted by the entrance of a tall, broad-shouldered
man clad in a scorched and torn garment barely recognizable as a CDT issue
coverall, informal, undeveloped worlds, for use on, and supporting on one
shoulder a bulky polyon bag.

            "What's
this, sir?" Crodfoller barked. "Your appearance is disgraceful!"

            "Not
nearly as disgraceful as his disappearance, Mr. Undersecretary," Magnan
objected, jumping up excitedly. "Retief," he went on more calmly,
addressing the newcomer, "we'd heard you'd been captured by the insidious
Ree, out on Icebox Nine!"

            "Not
quite, Mr. Magnan," Retief replied coolly. "I spotted them landing,
and decided to surround them, just in case."

            "Surround
them?" Crodfoller echoed hollowly. "You did nothing to create an
impression of hostility, I hope!"

            "Nothing
much, Mr. Undersecretary," Retief demurred. "I just gave them a good
scare, and let it go at that."

            "Indeed?
And how, may I ask, did you, a single individual, terrorize an entire
detachment of Ree?"

            "Easy,"
Retief said, as he seated himself and dumped on an adjacent chair the polyon
bag-he was carrying.

            "A
small Ree VIP scout-boat landed in an adjacent sector," he reported.
"Captain Fump, who seemed not only lost but at his wit's end, pulse-bombed
my bubble and sent a squad after me. I dodged the squad, boarded the scout, and
parleyed with Captain Fump."

            "Oh,
dear; oh, dear," Crodfoller mourned. "A VIP boat, you say; and you
waylaid the VIP himself. I do hope you didn't give offense. A complaint lodged
by an important Ree dignitary just at this juncture could prove disastrous to my
plans for a Ree-Terry accord."

            "Don't
sweat, Mr. Undersecretary," Retief soothed the great man. "Captain
Fump didn't complain. He got interested in my gun collection, and hardly
uttered a word."

            "How
did you get here, Mr. Retief?" Crodfoller demanded. "All unessential
travel has been suspended for the duration of the crisis." The
Undersecretary pulled at his ear thoughtfully. "And it was my
understanding you had been delivered to Icebox Seventeen or whatever by a Corps
lighter, which at once returned to base. You, I believe, were to await pick-up
at the conclusion of your assignment, some months hence."

            Retief
nodded. "I had to take Fump's boat," he explained.
"Unfortunately, it got shot up a little on the way in."

            "Worse
and worse," Crodfoller mourned. "You had the audacity to preempt,
confiscate, requisition—"

            "Steal
is the word you want," Retief put in. "Yep. I did. Steal Fump's boat,
I mean."

            "And
then permitted the borrowed vessel to be damaged by an alert Naval
Patrol," Crodfoller grieved.

            "Not
quite," Retief corrected. "Our alert patrols weren't around. Did you
forget? Today is the Inter-Arm Friendship Ceremonial. All patrols are grounded
for Maximum Fraternization. It was a Ree Dreadnought that opened fire on
me."

            "This,"
Crodfoller pronounced, "is disaster, unadorned. It's war, Mr. Retief! And
yon precipitated it." Hastily the Undersecretary scribbled out a whole row
of squares.

            "No,
just a routine foul-up," Retief corrected. "After all, the Ree fired
on a Ree boat by mistake; no official Terran involvement at all."

            "Let
us hope," Crodfoller said fervently, "that Captain Fump is
sufficiently large-minded to view the affair in that light."

            "A
fast Note of Apology ought to do the trick," the long-silent political
officer Proudfoot suggested quickly, thereby scoring a point for anticipating
his colleagues, a coup which the Undersecretary duly noted on his pad:
'Proudfoot—1 up.'

            "Why
don't we just send along a few billion GUC as a sort of subsidy or
something?" Hencrate wondered aloud.

            "What?"
Colonel Trenchfoot barked. "Pay tribute to these pirates, when they
haven't even demanded any?"

            "That's
far the best time, Colonel," Ambassador Sidesaddle pointed out, almost
kindly. "This way
we
get to set the amount of the
reparations," he finished, pointedly avoiding the word 'tribute.'

            "Yeah,"
Marvin Lackluster blurted, "but what are we paying reparations for?"
The young fellow scratched his scalp, miming Honest Confusion (32-b).

            "Marvin,"
the Undersecretary said gently, "don't waste that rather unsophisticated
32 on this simple question. After all, when offered ten or twelve billion GUC
in amends, are the Ree likely to query the philosophical basis of the
grant?"

            "But
it was Mr. Retief who got shot at," Marvin persisted, at which the
Undersecretary noted, 'Lackluster—stubborn' on his crowded pad.

            "Quick
action is essential, gentlemen," the Undersecretary rapped out in his most
authoritative tone, a modified 738-z (Patience Reluctantly Prodded to Stern
Action). "Initially, of course, I must prepare a formal apology to Captain
Fump, for the signature of the Deputy Undersecretary himself.

            As
if to refresh himself, Crodfoller took a deep breath and surveyed a
yet-untapped sector of the conference table.

            "Manny,"
he prompted, fixing a steely gaze on his Communications Officer, who had been
contentedly resting on his oars, "What's our best mode for a fast contact
with this confounded worm troublemaker, 'Our esteemed colleague,' that is to
say?"

            The
officer, who had allowed his eyes to glaze, blinked and offered, "Well,
sir, with all travel out for the duration like you said, I guess we better get
off a quick flash on the hot-line—only it's broken down, I hear."

            "If
it's broken down, how the heck are we going to get off any flashes, hot or
otherwise, on it?" Crodfoller demanded.

            "You've
definitely got a point there, Mr. Acting, uh, Assistant Deputy, sir,"
Manny conceded forthrightly. "I was just coming to that."

            "Maybe,"
a heretofore silent Political Section type from the Consulate at Dobe hazarded,
"maybe we'd better try to get the word through via the Groaci Minister at
Prute. He's handling Terry affairs out there vis-a-vis the Ree."

            "
'Maybe' Eustace?" the Undersecretary queried. "Do you intend that to
be a firm proposal?"

            Eustace
protested, "I only said—I mean, I was noodling. Why not shove it into the
reactor and see if it melts the rods?"

            General
Otherday rose. "Gentlemen, I predict that Fleet orders declaring a Red
Alert Status are even now being issued. Thus I will make every effort to see
that my command is on a war footing. Action must not be delayed."

            "Swell,
General," Crodfoller acceded with a sour-sweet smile, his personal
modification of the time-hallowed 29-c (Toleration of the Intolerable in the
Interest of Chumship). "But," he went on, "just what is this
action you contemplate?"

            "I
figure to have my Supply Sergeant stock up on smokes and ammo and stuff,"
the general replied. "No telling how bad the rationing will be."

            "There
is that," Crodfoller agreed sagely, noting on his pad 'See Mel re
essentials'. "But even before that we must, I say MUST, gentlemen, proffer
appropriate balm to the wounded Ree ego. We—Mr. Retief, that is—have, or has,
offered an affront which will doubtless, as the general suggests, elicit a
maximum response from the confounded worms. After all, until now, they have met
with nothing but sweet reasonableness, unless you want to count the abortive
efforts at interference which General Otherday attributes to our extended
patrol units, and even so, their response has been less than conciliatory.
Presented with the outrage to Captain Fump, I shrink from contemplating the
repercussions. The apology must be made at once!"

            On
the last words, his voice broke, as did his pencil point as he attempted to jot
a note. Then he looked up, his reddened eye falling in turn on each underling
sitting slumped along the table. "Are there any, ah,
less-than-totally-idiotic proposals, gentlemen?"

            "I
have one, which might qualify, Mr. Undersecretary," Retief spoke up,
netting a glare like a fish-spear from the Undersecretary.

            "And
what might it be, sir?" Crodfoller grated in an ominous tone.

            "Why
not tell him yourself?" Retief suggested, as he unknotted the thong
securing the lumpy sack beside him. He upended the container, and dumped onto
the chair a blunt cylindrical mass which, the assembled diplomats judged from
its restless writhing, was a living creature.

            "Whoof,
Retief," a gluey voice issued from the alien, which was decorated on its
upper end-plate with a complex pattern of orifices and tentacular growths, from
which the sound came. "Bagging me up was a pretty cheeky thing to do, you
know—" the complaint was interrupted by a muffled sneeze. "Dusty in
that spud sack, too," the alien continued.

            "I
seem to recall that at the time you were quite enthusiastic about it,
Fump," Retief pointed out. "But I didn't bring you here to talk about
all those promises you made when you were begging me to bag you instead of
scragging you."

            "A
moment," the Undersecretary interrupted. "You suggest, Mr. Retief,
that the captain was placed in that rather informal container at his own
request?"

            "Actually,
I stated it quite definitely, Mr. Undersecretary," Retief corrected.

            "Why
in Tophet would he make such a request?" Crodfoller demanded
incredulously.

            "Because
it was better'n getting recycled with the rest of the garbage," the alien
pointed out.

            "And
why, my dear captain, did you imagine yourself faced with such a Draconian
choice?"

            "That,"
Retief spoke up, "was because I was aiming my gun at him with one hand and
holding the bag open with the other. He reached his decision quite
promptly."

            "I
bet there's some kind of rule against that," the alien ventured. "A
CDT rule, I mean. Us Rees are practical about stuff like that."

            "Don't
make a speech right now, Fump," Retief cut in. "Undersecretary
Crodfoller has something to say to you, I think."

            "Sure,
I heard," Fump said impatiently, "the sucker wants to offer me a
bribe to put the hush on the outrage you slipped over on my boys and me. Go
ahead, Herky."

            "Uh,
you know my name, Captain Fump," Crodfoller responded in a surprised tone.

            "Sure,
our Confidential Source boys are on the ball," the Ree dignitary
confirmed. " 'Hercules Crodfoller'; how could a guy forget a handle like
that?"

            "I'm
flattered, Captain," Crodfoller said shyly. "One was unsure that
one's reputation had been noised so far abroad."

            "Don't
close out your memoirs just yet," Fump cautioned. "I found your name
in a pamphlet entitled
Reliables in Event of Ree Occupation of Tip Space.
A
list of easy marks, you know, Herky."