The Robert Silverberg Science Fiction MEGAPACK® (19 page)

Harskin nodded. “We’ll make contact with the gnorphs again after Archer returns with the word of what the Rigelians are up to. We’ll profit by their mistakes.”

* * * *

Antares had set as far as it was going to set, which was about three quarters of the way below the horizon, and the blue sun was spiraling its way into the heavens again, when the quiet air of Fafnir was split by an earth-shaking explosion.

The men of the
Peccable
were awake in an instant—those eight who had been sleeping, at any rate. A two-man skeleton team had been guarding the ship. Harskin had been meditating in Control Cabin, and Archer and Lloyd had not yet returned from their scouting missions.

Almost simultaneously with the explosion came the clangor of the alarm bell at the main airlock, signifying someone wanted in. A moment later, Observer First Class Snollgren was on the wire, excitedly jabbering something incoherent.

Harskin switched on the all-ship communicator and yelled,
“Stop! Whoa! Halt!”

There was silence. He said, “Clyde, see what’s going on at the airlock. Snollgren, slow down and tell me what you just saw.”

“It was the Rigelian ship, sir!” the observer said. “It just left. That was the noise we heard.”

“You sure of that?”

“Double positive. It took off in one hell of a hurry and I caught it on a tangent bound out of here.”

“Okay. Clyde, what’s at the airlock?”

“It’s Lloyd, sir. He’s back, and he’s got a Rigelian prisoner with him.”

“Prisoner? What the—all right, have them both come up here.”

Radioman Klaristenfeld was next on the line. He said, “Sir, report coming in from the base on Fasolt. They confirm blast-off of a ship from Fafnir. They thought it might be us.”

“Tell the idiots it isn’t,” Harskin snapped. “And tell them to watch out for the Rigelian ship. It’s probably on its way back to Fasolt.”

The door-annunciator chimed. Harskin pressed
admit
and Lloyd entered, preceded at blaster-point by a very angry-looking Rigelian.

“Where’d you find him?” Harskin asked.

“Mousing around near the ship,” Lloyd said. The thin spaceman was pale and tense-looking. “I was patrolling the area as you suggested when I heard the explosion. I looked up and saw the Rigelian ship overhead and heading outward. And then this guy came crashing out of the underbrush and started cursing a blue streak in Rigelian. He didn’t even see me until I had the blaster pointing in his face.”

Harskin glanced at the Rigelian. “What’s your name and rank, Rigelian?”

“Three Ninety-Seven Indomitable,” the alien said. He was a formidably burly seven-footer, covered with stiff, coarse black hair and wearing a light-yellow leather harness. His eyes glinted coldly. He looked angry. “Espionage man first order,” he said.

“That explains what you were doing near our ship, then, Three Ninety-Seven Indomitable,” Harskin said. “What can you tell me about this quick blast-off?”

“Not a thing. The first I knew of it was when it happened. They marooned me! They left me here!” The alien slipped from Galactic into a Rigelian tongue and growled what must have been some highly picturesque profanity.

“They just
left
you?” Harskin repeated in amazement. “Something must have made them decide to clear out of here in an awful hurry, then.” He turned to Lloyd. “Convey the prisoner to the brig and see that he’s put there to stay. Then pick two men and start combing the countryside for Archer. I want to know what made the Rigelians get out of here so fast they didn’t have time to pick up their own spy.”

* * * *

As it developed, very little countryside combing was necessary to locate Archer. Harskin’s spy returned to the
Peccable
about three quarters of an hour later, extremely winded after his long cross-country trot.

It took him five minutes to catch his breath enough to deliver his report.

“I tracked the Rigelians back to their ship,” he said. “They were all gathered around it, and I waited in the underbrush. After a while they proceeded to the gnorph village, and I followed them.”

“Any attempt at counterespionage?” Harskin asked.

“Yes, sir.” Archer grinned uncomfortably. “I killed him.”

Harskin nodded. “Go on.”

“They reached the village. I stayed about thirty yards behind them and switched on my converter so I could hear what they were saying.”

“Bad, but unavoidable,” Harskin said. “They might have had a man at the ship tracing the energy flow. I guess they didn’t, though. What happened to the village?”

“They introduced themselves, and gave the usual line—the same thing we said, about peace and friendship and stuff. Then they started handing out gifts. Captain Fourteen Deathless said this was to cement Rigel’s friendship with Fafnir—only he didn’t call it Fafnir, naturally.

“They handed mirrors all around, and little forcewave generators, and all sorts of trinkets and gadgets. The gnorphs took each one and stacked it in a heap off to one side. The Rigelians kept handing out more and more, and the stack kept growing. Then, finally, Fourteen Deathless said he felt the gifts had been sufficient. He started to explain the nature of the treaty. And one of the gnorphs stepped out and pointed to the stack of gifts. ‘Are you quite finished delivering things?’ he asked, in a very stuffy tone. The Rigelian looked flustered and said more gifts would be forthcoming after the treaty was signed. And that blew the roof off.”

“How do you mean?”

“It happened so fast I’m not sure. But suddenly all the gnorphs started waving their spears and looking menacing, and then someone threw a spear at a Rigelian. That started it. The Rigelians had some handguns with them, but they were so close they hardly had a chance to use them. It was a real massacre. About half the Rigelians escaped, including Captain Deathless. I hid in the underbrush till it was all over. Then I came back here.”

Harskin looked at Sociologist Yang. “Well? What do you make of it?”

“Obviously a greedy sort of culture,” the sociologist remarked. “The Rigelians made the mistake of being too stingy. I suggest we wait till morning and go to that village ourselves, and shoot the works. With the Rigelians gone we’ve got a clear field, and if we’re liberal enough the planet will be ours.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” Harskin said broodingly. “That Rigelian was no bigger a fool than I am. When we go to that village, we’ll go well armed.”

* * * *

The gnorph village was a cluster of thatched huts set in a wide semicircle over some extremely marshy swampland. Both Antares and the blue companion were in the sky when the Earthmen arrived; Fasolt was making its daily occultation of the giant sun.

Harskin had taken six of his men with him: Yang, Leefman, Archer, Mawley, Ramos, and Carver. Six more remained at the ship, seeing to it that the
Peccable
was primed for a quick getaway, if necessary.

The gifts of the Rigelians lay in a scattered heap in the center of the village, smashed and battered. Nearby lay half a dozen mutilated Rigelian bodies. Harskin shuddered despite himself; these gnorphs were cold-blooded in more than the literal biological sense!

A group of them filtered out of their huts and confronted the approaching Earthmen. In the mingled blue-and-red light of the two suns—one huge and dim, the other small and dim—the blank, scaly faces looked strange and menacing, the bone-hooded sockets cold and ugly.

“What do you want here, strangers?”

“We have come to thank you,” Mawley said, “for killing our enemies, the fur-men.” He had been instructed to stress the distinction between the group of Rigelians and the Earthmen. “The fur-men were here last night, bearing niggling gifts. They are our enemies. We of Earth offer you peace and goodwill.”

The gnorphs stared squarely at the tense little party of Earthmen. Each of the seven Terrans carried a powerful blaster set for wide-beam stunning, highly efficient if not particularly deadly as a close-range weapon. In the event of a battle, the Earthmen would at least be ready.

“What is it you want here?” the gnorph leader asked with thinly concealed impatience.

“We wish to sign a treaty between your world and ours,” said Mawley. “A bond of eternal friendship, of loyalty and fellowship between worlds.”

Somewhere in the distance an unseen beast emitted a mumbling reptilian honk—quite spoiling the effect, Harskin thought.

“Friendship? Fellowship?” the gnorph repeated, indicating by a quivering shake of his wattles that these were difficult concepts for him to grasp.

“Yes,” said Mawley. “And as signs of our friendship we bring you gifts—not piddling trinkets such as our enemies foisted on you last night, but gifts of incomparable richness, gifts which will be just part of the bounty to fall upon you if you will sign with us.”

At a signal from Harskin, they began unloading the gifts they had brought with them: miniaturized cameras, game-detectors, dozens of other treasures calculated to impress the gnorphs.

And then it began.

Harskin had been on the lookout for the explosion ever since they had arrived, and when he saw the spears beginning to bristle in the gnorph ranks, he yanked his blaster out and fired.

The stunning beam swept the front rank of gnorphs; they fell. The others growled menacingly and advanced.

The seven Earthmen jammed together in a unit and fired constantly; gnorphs lay unconscious all over, and still more came pouring from the huts. The Terrans started to run. Spears sailed past their heads.

It was a long, grim retreat to the ship.

* * * *

They were still a quarter of a million miles from Fasolt when Radioman Klaristenfeld reported that Captain Fourteen Deathless of the Rigelian ship was calling.

“We see you have left also,” the Rigelian said when Harskin took the phone. “You were evidently as unsuccessful as we.”

“Not quite,” Harskin said. “At least we got out of there without any casualties. I counted six dead Rigelians outside that village—plus the man you left behind to watch over us. He’s in our brig.”

“Ah. I had wondered what became of him. Well, Harskin, do we declare Fafnir a neutral planet and leave it at that? It’s a rather unsatisfactory finish to our little encounter.”

“Agreed. But what can we do? We dumped nearly fifty thousand credits’ worth of trinkets when we escaped.”

“You Terrans are lavish,” the Rigelian observed. “Our goods were worth but half that.”

“That’s the way it goes,” Harskin said. “Well, best wishes, Fourteen Deathless.”

“One moment! Is the decision a dual withdrawal?”

“I’m not so sure,” Harskin said, and broke the contact.

When they reached Fasolt and rejoined the men in the dome, Harskin ordered a general meeting. He had an idea.

“The aliens,” he said, “offered the gnorphs twenty-five thousand credits of goods, and were repulsed angrily. We offered twice as much—and, if Archer’s account of the Rigelian incident was accurate, we were repulsed about twice as fast. Yang, does that suggest anything to you?”

The little sociologist wrinkled his head. “The pattern still is not clear,” he said.

“I didn’t think so.” Harskin knotted his fingers in concentration. “Let me put it this way: the degree of insult the gnorphs felt was in direct variance with the degree of wealth offered. That sound plausible?”

Yang nodded.

“Tell me: what happens when an isolated, biologically glum race is visited by warm-blooded aliens from the skies? Suppose those warm-blooded aliens want a treaty of friendship—and offer to
pay
for it? How will the natives react, Yang?”

“I see. They’ll get highly insulted. We’re treating them in a cavalier fashion.”

“More than that. We’re obliging them to us. We’re
purchasing
that treaty with our gifts. But obviously gifts are worth more than a treaty of friendship, so they feel they’ll still owe us something if they accept. They don’t want to owe us anything. So they chase us away.

“Now,” continued Harskin, “if we reverse the situation—if we make ourselves beholden to them, and
beg
for the signing of the treaty instead of trying to
buy
a treaty—why, that gives them a chance to seem lordly.” He turned to Ramos, the military attaché. “Ramos, do you think a solar system is worth a spaceship?”

“Eh?”

“I mean, if it becomes necessary to sacrifice our ship in order to win the Antares system, will that be a strategically sound move?”

“I imagine so,” Ramos said cautiously.

Harskin flicked a bead of sweat from his forehead. “Very well, then. Mawley, you and I and Navigator Dominic are going to take the
Peccable
on her final cruise. Klaristenfeld, I want you to get a subradio sending set inside my spacesuit, and make damned sure you don’t put it where it’ll bother me. Snollgren, you monitor the area and keep me posted on what the Rigelians are doing, if anything.”

He pointed to the Navigator. “Come up to Control Cabin, Dominic. We’re going to work out the most precise orbit you’ll ever need to compute.”

* * * *

Antares was sinking in the sky and the blue sun was in partial eclipse. Suddenly, the
Peccable
flashed across the sky of Fafnir, trailing smoke at both jets, roaring like a wounded giant as it circled in wildly for its crash landing.

The three men aboard were huddled in their acceleration cradles, groaning in pain as the increasing grav buffeted and bruised them. Below, Fafnir sprang up to meet the ship.

Harskin was bathed in his own sweat. So many things could go wrong…

They might have computed one tenth-place decimal awry—and would land square in the heart of the swampland.

The stabilizer jets might be consumed by the blaze they had set too soon, and the impact of their landing would kill them.

The airlock might refuse to open.

The gnorphs might fail to act as expected…

It was, he thought, an insane venture.

The ship throbbed suddenly as the stabilizer jets went into action. The
Peccable
froze for a fraction of a second, then began to glide.

It struck the blood-red ocean nose first. Furiously, Harskin climbed from his cradle and into his spacesuit.
Now, if we only figured the buoyancy factor right
…

Two spacesuited figures waited for him at the airlock. He grinned at them, threw open the hatch, and stepped into the outer chamber. The door opened; a wall of water rushed at him. He squirted out of the sinking ship and popped to the surface like a cork. A moment later he saw Mawley and Dominic come bobbing above the water nearby.

He turned. All that was visible of the
Peccable
was the rear jet assembly and the tips of the once-proud wings. An oily slick was starting to cover the bright-red water. The ship was sinking rapidly as water poured into the lock.

“Look over there!” Mawley exclaimed.

Harskin looked. Something that looked like a small island with a neck was approaching him: a monstrous turtle-like thing with a thick, saurian neck and a crested unintelligent head, from which dangled seven or eight fleshy barbels.