Firmly, he passed over it and searched through the remaining sheets. He set the pile aside, it slipped off the table, and as he bent to pick it up he came across “Love Habits of the Lop-Tail Natives.”
He decided to just glance at the first page.
Fifty-one minutes later, Moffis rudely interrupted Horsip’s wide-eyed scrutiny of page eighteen by hammering on the door.
“Now what?” demanded Horsip, opening the door.
Moffis strode in angrily, a large piece of message paper fluttering in his hand.
“The double-damned boob won’t reinforce us, that’s what! Look at this!” Moffis thrust out the paper.
Horsip read through the usual dates and identification numbers, passed through some double-talk that all boiled down to, “I’ve thought it over,” and then came on the sentence: “Requests for such massive reinforcements at this date would create a most unfavorable atmosphere, and in so far as the Sector Conference on Allocation of Supplies is about to begin, it seems highly inadvisable at this end to produce a general impression of disappointment and/or dissatisfaction concerning the performance of any units of this command.”
Horsip’s teeth bared involuntarily. He took a deep breath and read on. There were vague hints of promotion if all went well, and subtle insinuations that people would be jammed head first into nuclear furnaces if things went wrong. It ended up with double talk designed to create a sensation of mutual good feeling.
Moffis glared. “Now what do we do?”
Horsip controlled his surging emotions, and took time to think it over. Then he said, “There’s a time to smile all over and be as slippery as a snake in a swamp, and then there is a time to roar and pound on tables. Go find out when this Sector Conference meets, and where.”
Moffis hurried out of the room.
Horsip went into his office, yanked down a book on protocol, and began drafting a message.
Moffis found him some time later and came in. “I’ve got the location and time.”
“All right,” said Horsip, “then send this.” He handed over a sheet of paper. “If possible, it ought to be timed so it will arrive just as the conference opens.”
Moffis looked at it and turned pale. He read aloud:
“Situation here unprecedented. Require immediate reinforcement by two full expeditionary forces to gain effective control of situation, which has exceeded in violence and danger that of Centralis II.”
Moffis swallowed hard. “Do I sign this or do you?”
Horsip glared at him. “I’m signing it. And it would be much more effective if you signed it, too.”
“All right,” said Moffis. He smiled gamely and went out of the room.
Horsip shivered, went back to his suite, wrapped himself up in a blanket, and began reading “Topics the Lop-Tail Humanoids Avoided Discussing.”
Horsip was very thoughtful after reading that paper. Apparently the humanoids were slippery as eels regarding any discussion of military principles or problems. They professed also a great ignorance concerning questions on nuclear fission. They were evasive concerning a glaring discrepancy between the numbers of cannon, traveling forts, et cetera, turned over to the Centrans, and the number that were estimated to have been used in action. Horsip made brief notes on a pad of paper, and turned without pleasure to the next report.
This was a paper headed “The Mikeril Peril.” As usual, he felt the hair on the back of his neck rise at mention of the word “Mikeril.” Uneasy tingling sensations went up and down his back, probably dating from the childhood days when his mother warned him, “Klide, do you know what happens to bad boys who don’t do what they’re told? The Mikerils get them.” The Mikerils ate Centrans. Or, at least, they had before the humans wiped them out in a series of wars. Horsip pulled the blanket around him and began reading the paper.
“I was discussing problems in statistics with one of the lop-tails,” the paper began, “and searching a test problem to put to him, I came across some old data concerning the numerous outbreaks of Mikerils on Centra and other planets we have occupied.
“On the basis of the partial data I gave him, the native was able to accurately date other outbreaks that preceded and followed the period concerning which I had given him information. I was preparing to concede the correctness of his calculations, when he screwed up his face, put his head on one side, and said, ‘I should estimate the next probable heavy outbreak to take place 67 days, 4 hours, and 13 minutes from now, plus or minus 7.2 minutes.’ ”
Horsip looked up, the hair on his back rose, and he experienced a severe chill as he seemed to see a big hairy Mikeril sinking its poison-shafts into its victim, its many legs spinning him round and round as it bound him helplessly and carried him off inert.
Then Horsip sank down in his seat, looked over the prediction again, and his eye caught on ” ‘plus or minus 7.2 minutes.’ ” Horsip decided the native was either vastly overenthusiastic, or else just liked to poke people in the ribs to see them jump. He turned to the next paper.
This one, on “Why the Lop-Tails Do Not Have Space Travel,” made difficult reading. Horsip could not reconcile the straightforward title with the involved argument and minute dividing of hairs in the body of the paper. After a hard fight, Horsip got to the last paragraph of the report, which read:
“Summary: In summary, this author states the conclusion that the beings provisionally known as ‘lop-tailed humanoids’ failed to acquire space-traversing mechanisms owing to a regrettable preoccupation with secondary matters pertaining principally to interests other than those regarding the traverse of interplanetary and interstellar regions, primarily; and secondarily, owing to use of that characteristic provisionally known as ‘pseudointelligence,’ the aforesaid beings were enabled to produce locally satisfactory working solutions to certain difficult and specialized problems the solution of which, in a different state of affairs, might well have eventuated in the discovery of the principle known briefly in common professional parlance as the positive null-void (PNV) law. With these conclusions, the native known as Q throughout this paper was in complete accord.”
Horsip, dazed from the rough treatment the paper had given him, stared at it in vague alarm. Unable to pin down the exact point that bothered him, he moved on fuzzy-brained to the next report.
This one started off as if it consisted of vital information about the very core of lop-tail psychology. But on close inspection, it turned out to contain a collection of native fairy tales. Horsip read dully about “Pandora’s Box, the highly-significant, crystallized expression of the fear-of-the-unknown syndrome, the reaction of retreat-into-the-womb; the tale symbolizes the natives’ attitude toward life and their world. The protagonist, Pandora, receives a box (significance of angular shape of typical native container), which she is not supposed to open (see taboo list, below), and a variety of afflictions emerge into the world (Pandora’s world)—”
* * *
Horsip looked up angrily to hear a knock sound on the door. He let Moffis in.
“I sent it off,” said Moffis.
“What?” snapped Horsip.
“The message to the Sector Conference, of course.” He looked sharply at Horsip. “What hit you?”
“Oh, these stinking reports,” said Horsip angrily. “Come in and lock the door.”
Horsip went back to the reports and told Moffis about them.
“Some are good, and some are bad,” said Horsip, “and some are written so you need a translator to explain them to you. It’s always been like that, but on this planet, it seems exaggerated. I suppose for the same reason that a ground-car makes more trouble in rough country.”
“Well,” said Moffis, “maybe I can help you. Let me look over that bunch you’ve finished. That business about the significant quantities of guns, et cetera, that are missing, makes me uneasy.”
“Help yourself,” said Horsip.
Moffis picked up the pile and leafed through it. He paused at one report, looked at it, started to pull it out, put it back, scowled, looked at it again, shrugged, pulled it out further, held his place in the pile with one hand, and pulled it out all the way to look at it.
Together they read the reports, Horsip uttering groans and curses, and Moffis saying, “Hm-m-m,” from time-to-time.
At last, Horsip threw down several reports with a loud whack, and turned to speak to Moffis.
Moffis was absorbed.
Horsip looked impressed, turned away considerately, stiffened suddenly, turned back, got down on his hands and knees, twisted his head around and looked up from below at the title of what Moffis was reading. The letters stared down at him:
“Love Habits of the Lop-Tail Natives.”
Horsip untwisted himself, stood up, brushed himself off, and disgustedly left the room. He strode down the corridor, resolved on action. He was fed up with this feeling of struggling uphill through a river of glue. He was in charge of this planet and he aimed to make his influence felt. The first thing obviously was to take these natives the staff had been questioning, get one of them alone with some guards, then put the questions to him. This business of getting it second or third hand was no good.