And then abruptly any worry he had was dispelled. The devil with the strange beast on his helmet said, "Could I ask all your lordships to come outside? Seats have been placed for your ease. And there will be what I think you will find an interesting demonstration."
He had just unwittingly solved Schleim"s problem!
Chapter 5.
Lord Schleim was making very sure that he was the last to leave the room. He wanted n.o.body left in here. He had noticed that the room had a door and that it had a lock. By leaving last he could quite naturally close the door and turn the lock. That would be one less door he would have to watch and he could be certain that n.o.body lurked in this nearly soundproof room to see what would go on and leap out to surprise him.
All the other emissaries filed out. As the one deepest in the room, it was natural that he be the last to leave. The devil had tagged after them and he was gone. The small gray men had departed.
But this confounded host! The elderly man in the fancy Chinese gown seemed to have acc.u.mulated some papers and they were on the floor beside the chair where he had sat. Guest lists, of course! And one must have fallen back of the chair for he was searching it out. He finally found it and then stood there going over it, evidently rehearsing some hard-to-p.r.o.nounce names. So Schleim had to pretend that he had misplaced something and stood there going through his pockets and looking thoughtful. It was a bit of a strain waiting the host out. The man did not seem to notice him but just stood there, running a finger down a list and muttering. Fine time to rehea.r.s.e, thought Schleim acidly. In another few moments his own delay would become noticeable. But he had to be sure this was an empty room. Too soundproof! And it might have screens in it- he looked about. There was a device in one upper corner. Could it be a viewing device? Hard to tell. Bad light. This projector might also be a viewer. No, he better wait in case somebody should look in here.
At last! The host moved with a sort of sailing walk up the aisle to the door, still muttering over his list. Schleim went along right behind him.
The Tolnep was almost to the door, was even reaching to close it, when the host stopped.
Lord Schleim, almost in the doorway now, eyes only for the door, was distracted by two technicians appearing. The same technicians who had set up the projector. They were rushing in to move it.
The collision was sudden and violent. The scepter flew from Schleim"s hand.
A technician caught a glimpse of fangs right in front of his face and raised his arm. Unable to check its forward crush, the technician"s heavy sleeve banged into Schleim"s mouth.
The reaction of a Tolnep was inevitable. He bit! He bit hard and repeatedly, hissing in rage as he struck!
With a yell the technician reeled back. He staggered away, holding his sleeve close to his body with the other hand, and vanished into another doorway.
The second technician was chattering horrified apologies in some tongue. Chinese? He reached down and picked up a gold object from the floor and shakingly handed it to Schleim.
Schleim gripped it. He felt the perforations at the top and the rings at the bottom. He straightened up his gla.s.ses and heaved a sigh of relief. At least the scepter was secure!
The host was brushing him off with heavy, frantic apologies. The host took a second to gesture impatiently at the second technician and only then did the hovering man go in and get the projector and wheel it out.
Managing to hang back and seem offended, Schleim at last got the room empty and, without the concerned host remarking it, closed and locked the door. Schleim even pretended to limp a bit. He told the host not to mind. And he went to join the others.
In the hospital, Dr. Allen and a nurse were getting the Chinese "technician" out of his jacket. They did it very delicately. Dr. Allen took the padded sleeve and, without touching it, cut it off the jacket and let it fall into a wide-mouthed jar. Drops of poison were visible on the cloth, oozing back up out of the padding.
Dr. Allen looked at the arm. In Psychlo, he said, "Not a scratch, but a good thing we put the leather lining in. That was a brave thing to do, Chong-won."
The chief ignored his compliment. He threw down a thin knife and a small blast gun. "He had the knife in the back of his neck and the gun in his boot. I thought we might as well have them, too."
"Are you sure he might not have had something else?" said Dr. Allen. "I don"t want to patch up any more holes in Jonnie than I have to."
"Nothing else," said Chong-won, "unless he bats somebody over the head with that scepter."
"I"m sure Jonnie can duck that if it comes to a fight," said Dr. Allen. "This Lord Schleim is a very dangerous creature." He gestured toward the jar which held the sleeve. "Nurse, add that to our collection so we can develop some antivenin for it."
Chapter 6.
Colonel Ivan lay in the dark, a flame thrower resting on the sandbags piled before him. He was at the first turning of the underground pa.s.sages that labyrinthed down into the base. At every turn behind him lay more sandbagged abutments, every one of them manned.
His beard was singed off. His hands were covered with blisters.
In front of him, fifty feet away, the main entrance door, steel armored, had begun to glow from the pounding it was taking. Hot blast shots were hitting the outside every few seconds.
He had pulled his planes back in- when was that- yesterday? They were out of fuel and ammunition and of no further use in the air. Pilots were scattered below, behind the abutments.
His radio antennae had gone out. Was that yesterday too? It seemed like half a year ago.
Every mine they had planted out front had now been exploded. A thousand mines? And although the terrain out front was carpeted with strange, dismembered corpses, it had not stopped the attack.
The door was growing hotter now, gone from red to blue in some spots.
How long would it last? How long could he stand the searing heat of it?
He wondered what Marshal Jonnie was doing.
Chief of Clanfearghus lay on his unwounded side, looking along the face of the rock. There was no retreat. The tunnels had caved in behind him.
They had the last antiaircraft gun that would fire. They were not using it to shoot upward now. They had it trained on the spot the enemy would most likely attack to breach the last barricade to the rock.
The firestorm that had been Edinburgh roared ceaselessly above the din of small arms fire.
How long could old buildings burn? They had thought they had the enemy halted until just now. A new ship was high, high up there. It had just arrived and it was now sending down plane after plane of troops.
There was only Dunneldeen flying now. There he came from the direction of Cornwall where he had gone to refuel.
Why hadn"t they listened to MacTyler and crowded everyone into the old Cornwall minesite? Sentiment for Edinburgh. Well, what would Edinburgh be now but ashes?
A wave of enemy troops was gathering now, getting ready for an a.s.sault upon that other entrance. He hoped Dunneldeen would live through this. The Scots, if any were left, would need him. The Chief of Clanfearghus did not think that he himself would. Too much blood was coming from his side.
He wondered what MacTyler was doing now.
"Fire low into that first wave," he told the gunner. "And keep firing as long as you have ammunition left. At least we can gae oot i" a blaze o" glory!"
At Singapore, the Scottish officer turned to the blaze-blackened communicator and lowered his infrabeam binoculars. "I don"t understand it."
Tolnep marines had been using artillery to pound a hole under the atmosphere armor cable to the north. It had cost them very dearly. They had lost twelve tanks trying to do just that. But a running group of them had rushed up to that distant cable before they could be stopped and had blown a hole wide open beneath it at a cost of five marines.
The Scottish officer had fully expected that with the next wave some of them would get to the powerhouse and turn all their power off and leave them defenseless.
But they had suddenly withdrawn.
For the past twenty minutes they had been picking up wounded and salvaging equipment and boarding launchcrafts, hara.s.sed continually by the terrestrial battle planes.
Now they were soaring up out of reach.
The Tolnep fleet was circling. Some minutes ago, the antiaircraft control men had reported all non-Tolnep ships up there had pulled out, one for Edinburgh, three more for Russia.
Now there were just Tolneps up there.
"They"re leaving!" said the Scottish officer. Well, this point at the Singapore minesite had served as a diversion that pinned enemy forces down. And for quite a while with very light losses. The cost to the enemy had been great.
While he watched, the last of his own planes pulled back. None were equipped with door seals to let them fly out of the atmosphere.
His planes were landing now. The last one came in. When its motor went off, the silence after all the constant din almost hurt the ears. There was only the sizzle of armor cable.
Way to the south and east, black smoke still soared above the ancient ruins of Singapore.
"Those ships up there are heading west!" the antiaircraft control officer called across to him. "Slightly south of west."
"Speed?" said the Scottish officer.
"They"re still accelerating. Wait. I"m plotting this. On that course they are going to arrive at Kariba minesite. They must be low on solar charge because their speed is only about two miles a second. They would get to the Kariba site...in thirty-seven or thirty-eight minutes."
The Scottish officer said to the communicator, "Warn Kariba ops they"re about to have company."
The smoking terrain all about them showed the h.e.l.l that flotilla could raise. Without the armor cable the defenders here would have been dead ten times over.
A bird sang somewhere. Funny in these charred ruins.
The Scottish officer wondered what Jonnie was doing just now. Whatever it was, they had better get a move on at Kariba. G.o.d, he was tired. Those Tolneps played rough games! If they had not pulled out so strangely, the whole force here at the Singapore minesite, armor power off, would have been slaughtered in another twenty minutes. Yes, they better look alive at Kariba.
Chapter 7.
It had taken a little while to get the emissaries settled back down outside. Some had wanted to change their breathing cartridges, another one or two had wanted a bite of something. Others had just strolled around, looking over the inside of the bowl, curious but friendly enough. One of them had gone so far as to haggle with a Chinese among the village refugees over buying a dog. He had never seen a dog before and he thought it was cute, especially after it snapped at him. He couldn"t understand that the Chinese, who spoke no Psychlo, refused. Five thousand credits was a lot of money to pa.s.s up. It would buy a house and farm on Splandorf, his home planet.
But they were all settled down now. Even Lord Schleim, who had done an awful lot of wandering about, chin parked most of the time on the rounded top of his scepter.
It was night. The platform was lighted with mine spots. The emissaries were seated on benches and in chairs which had been arranged in a half-circle just out of the danger range of the huge metal square. Some were still talking to one another but they were interested.
Jonnie was standing in the middle of the platform and for a bit they wondered whether he was going to send himself someplace or something like that. The spotlights flashed off his b.u.t.tons and the creature on his helmet seemed to be alive. Interesting even to a bored lord.
"My lords," said Jonnie, "may I ask further forgiveness for absorbing your valuable time. But to settle this thing with Schleim, I fear we have to have a demonstration. It is a demonstration of excessive appet.i.te.
With your permission?"
All but the combatant lords and Schleim laughed. A demonstration of appet.i.te. Some sort of eating contest? They"d seen those before. But yes, by all means go ahead.
Jonnie slapped the wand into his hand twice. Two mechanics came rushing out of the shadows with a very splendidly decorated mine cart.
And on the cart sat a dragon like the one on his helmet. It was about five feet long. It had wings. It had a neck. And it had a very ferocious head, a gaping fanged mouth, glaring red eyes, and horns. And from head to tail it had spines jutting out all the way along. A gold-scaled, scarlet-mouthed dragon.
The mechanics made as if to lift the dragon down off the cart but Jonnie warned them back as though the dragon might bite.
Schleim guffawed. Engrossed as he was in listening and knowing well it didn"t matter what the devil did, he still could not restrain himself. "That"s not a live beast!" he hectored. "That"s just a painted figure made of clay! There are more like it right over there!" And he pointed toward the unfinished works where they lay unmounted. "It"s just a hollow image!" Theatrics, good lord; the poor fool thought he could take these lords in like they were children!
But the lords looked at him a bit reprovingly for interrupting, particularly the one behind him who leaned over and said, "Hush." Schleim looked at him. He was a huge creature who must have had a genetic line back to trees. His skin was bark-like and he had ma.s.ses of leafy-looking "hair." His arms were about a foot in diameter. Schleim decided he"d have to watch this one when he made his move. Not long now.
"Forgive Lord Schleim," said Jonnie. "He has been under a strain and doesn"t see well."
The lords guffawed now. "This beast on the cart," continued Jonnie, "is called a "dragon." If you look, you will see his mother at the console over there."
The lords looked at the bigger dragon that wrapped around the console. They laughed. His mother!
Sir Robert was standing in the door of the ops room. Behind him Stormalong, with reports in his hand, was arguing with him in a low voice. But Sir Robert was shaking his head. Finally Sir Robert said audibly, "Let the lad alone!" And Stormalong went back inside.
Lord Schleim had noticed it.
Somebody had reported the flotilla somewhere? Maybe he"d have to act faster than he had planned. He c.o.c.ked an ear at the sky. They would arrive and launch something into the atmosphere he could hear. That was his instruction.
"Now if you will notice," said Jonnie, "the dragon on the cart is different from the dragon on my helmet." He pointed to his forehead. "The tiny one has been fed."
Yes, that one on his helmet did did have a small round ball in its mouth. A small, round, white ball. have a small round ball in its mouth. A small, round, white ball.
"And the one on the cart is hungry!" said Jonnie. "For your collection of data on the flora and fauna of various worlds, you should have these facts. This is an imperial Dragon! It eats moons and planets!"
They thought it was a pretty good joke. Rulers were always eating up planets. Imperial diet! Get it? Good joke. The emissaries laughed. They understood it was an allegory they were watching. Clever.
Jonnie cautioned back the mechanics again, petted the clay dragon on the head soothingly. Then he suddenly put his arms under the neck and belly, the way you might catch a wild beast by surprise, and staggered back. That dragon was heavy!
The mechanics whisked away the decorated mine cart and vanished. Schleim carefully watched them as well as he could see into the shadows. Oh, they just went back and stood there watching. All right, no problem when the paralysis beam was turned on.
Jonnie had set the dragon down on the center of the platform. And now he did a most interesting thing. He leaned over the dragon"s head and he was talking into its ear.
"Very good," said Jonnie. "I know you are hungry. SO GO EAT UP ASART!"