“Hm-m-m,” said the colonel. With an effort, he put his mind on the Chief’s comment. “Well, the Skagas and the other religions may not get along with each other, but they may work together, all the same.”
“Informally, you mean?”
“Maybe without even thinking they are working together.”
The Chief nodded, and sat back.
“The trouble in dealing with a whole race, such as this bunch, is that you think you’re dealing with so many individuals—and it’s true, you are—but it also involves more than that. In such numbers, there are unseen inter-relationships, and statistical effects. It’s as if the whole race together made up an organism. One section may do one thing, while another section does another thing, to create an overall result neither section appears to aim at. In this case, the religionists disarm the Space Force, the Skagas rob them, and the guerrillas kill them. And the Terexians, as a whole, draw the conclusion that humans are inferior beings.”
“As if,” said the colonel, “the overall situation were a kind of test?”
“Yes. And conducted according to Terexians’ idea of what constitutes superiority.” He looked through the stack of reports, separated one from the rest, and read: ” ‘ . . . Characteristic saying of the local pundits is that “any beast may be strong, but it takes a man to be wise”. . . .’ ”
“Well, that fits. Their actions have been such as to eliminate the effect of the Space Force’s superior strength.”
“Hm-m-m. And the human race then proved ‘inferior.’ ”
The colonel nodded. “Only strong—not wise.”
“Correct.”
“Well,” said the colonel, “they’ve tested the Space Force. But unfortunately for the Terexians, we have now been called in.”
The Chief sat back with a speculative expression.
“Considering this judo hold the Terexians have on the Space Force, exactly what do we do?”
“Break the hold. Of course, the Terexians may lose a few fingers in the process.”
“How are you going to get at those guerrillas?”
“Through the Skagas.”
The Chief glanced thoughtfully off in the distance, and suddenly nodded.
“What will you need?”
“Some stuff from Special Devices, the local language, transportation to the planet, an H-ship and crew, and permission from the Space Force to operate at one of their supply centers where goods are shipped to the planet, before they’re transshipped by the local transportation system. Plus twenty or thirty men to do the job I have in mind at the supply center.”
The Chief shook his head. “You can have everything but that last item. You know our manpower situation.”
“In that case, get me permission to recruit from among the Space Force veterans who survived that ambush.”
“Wait a minute. You’ve got at least four unassigned men—Roberts, Hammell, Morri—”
“They’re still in Basic.”
“And everyone else is tied up?”
“Completely.”
“In that case, I suppose there’s nothing to do but try this idea of getting some volunteers. But how you’re going to get volunteers from amongst those veterans is a good question. These aren’t impressionable recruits. How are you going to get them to leave a comparatively soft—” He paused suddenly.
“Ordinarily,” said the colonel, “they’d only smile. But there’s nothing ordinary about what they’ve been through lately. I think they’ll join us fast enough—if we promise them that their first assignment will be revenge on the Skagas and the guerrillas.”
The Chief nodded.
“O.K. Make your arrangements, and I’ll get permission for you to recruit.”
The colonel’s arrangements went with a combination of smoothness and jarring inconsistency. S-Branch promised a timed explosive, minute quantities of which would do everything the colonel desired, with delivery on Terex in two days at the most. T-Branch then patiently explained that it was absolutely impossible to get a human being to Terex in less than ten to twelve days, if the idea was to get him there alive. I-Branch obligingly offered to put the colonel, by transposition, onto a Space Force ship near Terex, within twelve hours, and in the guise of a Space Force officer. This would incidentally have put the colonel, as head of Operations, at the mercy of Intelligence, and he politely refused to do it. I-Branch then grudgingly went along with his original plan, but pointed out that the Space Force could lose a lot of men while he was spending twelve days on the way to the planet. The colonel exasperatedly got in touch with S-Branch, and demanded to know how the timed explosive could be made and gotten to Terex in only two days, all told.
“Nothing to it, Val,” said the head of S-Branch cheerfully. “It happens that we’re testing direct-contact with a G-class ship off Terex. The contact cross-section is only about two feet in diameter, but there’s no difficulty getting our stuff through. For that matter, we could put you through, lengthwise, if you were in a hurry.”
“I am in a hurry.”
“No problem. We can shove you through in about six seconds. Then the G-ship can deliver you to the planet, or to another ship in the region. How’s that?”
“That’s fine.”
“Let us know when you’re ready.”
A few moments later, the screen was blank, and the colonel was considering that what T-Branch stated to be impossible in under ten days, could be almost completely done by S-Branch in six seconds. And the beauty of the thing was that transportation was the specialty of T-Branch.
Exasperatedly, he tapped out the Chief’s call number. The important thing was to make sure the Space Force veterans ended up at the right place at the right time, with permission to join the Patrol.
When his arrangements were complete, the colonel went down to S-Branch, was strapped flat on a kind of stretcher on rails, and pushed through what appeared to be a porthole looking into the interior of a patrol ship, and through which the narrow rails of the stretcher passed. He was slowly slid through and unstrapped on the other side, where an Interstellar Patrol major apologized, and explained that it was “bad business to hit the edge of the contact zone,” so they had to strap anyone who passed through when the cross-section was so narrow. A moment later, a package containing the colonel’s explosive came through, and fifteen minutes after that he was talking by communicator to the captain of the H-class ship assigned to the job. Late the next morning, the colonel and the captain of the H-ship were on Terex, wearing civilian clothes for disguise, and talking to a Major Brouvaird, the officer in charge of Space Force Offloading Center 2 Terex.
“You see,” growled Major Brouvaird, “they’re all wearing loose coats and those damned oversize floppy straw hats.” The major moved closer to the edge of the platform looking down on a crowd of Terexians working in the unloading line. “Watch this. You see that bird knocking open that ammo case, halfway down the line? Watch his hands. There he goes. Twenty-two magazines went out of the case into that damned keg, and two went under that loose coat of his into the pouches on a leather harness underneath. He must be about loaded up, now. You notice how he moves? Sort of careful? All that stuff in those pouches is getting heavy. The square edges are digging into his ribs. There he goes now.”
Down below, in the jostling line, the Terexian held up his hand. His voice drifted up. “Tika b’wip, tul!” the euphemistic translation came to the colonel simultaneously: “Ship must lighten load, quick!”
A demoralized Space Force private nodded, and the Terexian, walking with a peculiar swaying motion, headed for the rear of the line, where a door stood open to the outside. The private stared at the floor or the wall—anything to avoid watching the Terexian workers as they manhandled the Space Force cargo.
“And there he goes,” said the Space Force major, watching the Terexian go out the door. “Out back, near the latrine, there’s a Terexian refreshment stand. This bird will step into the booth, and come out with a fresh harness. The candy wagon back there will lug out all the loads from the workers, and that’s just the first skim, off the top.”
The colonel nodded, and adjusted his civilian suit. Considering the haste with which this assignment had been prepared for, the suit was like a bad omen. It had a shirt that seemed to have no pores, a collar that dug into his neck, and cuffs that felt like slippery plastic bands around his wrists. The jacket was made out of some kind of bristly hair that looked all right in the mirror, but the bristles stuck into his neck above the collar. The trousers were made out of the same material, so that it felt like poison ivy around his neck, and from his belt to his shoes. The shoes were too small.
Possibly as a result of the frame of mind these clothes put him in, when the colonel spoke, his voice came out with a bite like a high-speed drill.