hoped to get anything done, they had to be jolted out of it
as fast as possible.
At first he thought he had made it. “Certainly noti” the
Consort of State said indignantly. “You’re a man, sergeant,
not a Callean. Nothing the Calleans do is any excuse for
your behaving otherwise than as a man.”
“I’d rather eat an enemy than a friend,” Oberholzer said
cryptically. “Have you got any supplies inside there?”
“I1 don’t know. But that has nothing to do with it.”
“Depends on what you mean by ‘it.’ But maybe we can
argue about that later. What are your orders. Your
Excellency?”
“I haven’t an order in my head,” 12-Upjohn said with
sudden, disarming frankness. “We’d better try to make some
sensible plans first, and stop bickering. Robin, stop snuffling,
too. The question is, what can we do besides trying to survive,
and cherishing an idiot hope for a rescue mission?”
“For one thing, we can try to spring the man from the
Dragon’s crew that these worms have still got alive,” Ober-
holzer said. “If that’s what he meant when he said they
dissected all but one.”
“That doesn’t seem very feasible to me,” 12-Upjohn said.
“We have no idea where they’re holding him”
“Ask them. This one answered every question you asked
him.”
“and even supposing that he’s near by, we couldn’t
free him from a horde of Calleans, no matter how many
dead bodies they let you pile up. At best, sooner or later
you’d run out of ammunition.”
“It’s worth trying,” Oberholzer said. “We could use the
manpower.”
“What for?” Robin One demanded. “He’d be- just one more