“Ah—there was the matter of a suitable, er, cover identity . . . ?”
“Cover . . .” Ikk rolled up, waving the chastened sentries aside. He stared closely at Hish. “Hmmm. Yes,” he muttered. “I see the joints now; nice job. You look like a tribal reject with axle rickets and shorted windings, but I’d never have guessed . . .” He looked at Retief. “And this is a prisoner, you say, Hish?”
“This, my dear Ikk, is the leader of the rabble forces.”
“What—are you sure?” Ikk rolled quickly back, looking Retief up and down. “I heard he was a Stilter . . . maroon cuticula . . . rudimentary rotors . . . by the Worm, it fits! How did you manage—but never mind! Bring him along!” He whirled; his eye fell on the sentries huddled in a clump under the watchful oculars of the bodyguards.
“Send these good fellows along,” he shrilled merrily. “See that they all get promotions. Nothing like a show of spirit, I always say. Shows morale’s up.” Buzzing a merry tune, the Voion leader led the way through the wide door into the ambassadorial office, took up his pose under the large portrait of himself hanging where the Corps Ensign had been on Retief’s last visit.
“Now,” he rubbed his grasping members together, eliciting a sound effect reminiscent of a hacksaw cutting an oil drum. “Let’s have a look at the dacoit who had the effrontery to imagine he could interfere with my plans!”
“Ah, Ikk,” Hish made a fluttery gesture. “There are aspects to the present situation I haven’t yet mentioned . . .”
“Well?” Ikk canted his oculars at the Groaci. “Mention them at once! Not that they can be of any importance, with this fellow in my hands. A capital piece of work, Hish! For this, I may allow you to . . . But we’ll go into that later.”
“It’s rather private,” Hish whispered urgently. “If you wouldn’t mind sending these fellows along . . . ?”
“Umph.” Ikk waved an arm at his bodyguards. “Get out, you two. And while you’re at it, tell Sergeant Uzz and his carpenters to hurry up with the ten-Terry gibbet. No need to wait until morning now.”
The two Voion rolled silently to the door, closed it gently behind them. Ikk turned to Retief, making a clattering sound with his zygomatic plates indicative of Pleasure Anticipated.
“Now, criminal,” he purred. “What have you to say for yourself?”
Retief lifted the holster flap, snapped out the power gun and leveled it at Ikk’s head. “I’ll let this open the conversation,” he said genially.
* * *
Ikk crouched, slumped down over his outward-slanting wheels, his lower arms slack, his upper pair picking nervously at his chest inlays.
“You!” he addressed Hish. “A traitor! I trusted you! I gave you full powers, listened to your counsels, turned over my army to you! And now this!”
“Surprising how these matters sometimes turn out,” Hish agreed in his whispery voice. He had his headpiece off now and was smoking one of Ikk’s imported dope-sticks. “Of course, there was the little matter of the assassins assigned to eliminate me from the picture as soon as you had achieved your modest goal, but of course that was to be expected.”
Ikk’s oculars twitched. “Who, me?” he said dazedly. “Why . . .”
“Naturally, I eliminated them the first day; a small needle fired into their main armatures did the trick neatly—”
There was a small sound at the door; it snapped wide and Ikk’s two bodyguards rolled quickly through, guns at the ready, flipped the door shut behind them. Ikk came to life then, dropped behind the platinum ambassadorial desk as the two swiveled to face Hish. Behind the Groaci, Retief held the gun steady against his hostage’s back-plates.
“Shoot them down, Kuz!” Ikk shrilled. “Blast them into atoms! Burn them where they stand; never mind about the rug . . .” His voice faded off. He extended an ocular above tabletop level, saw the two Voion standing, guns at their sides.
“What’s this?” he shrilled. “I order you to shoot them at once!”
“Please, my dear Ikk!” Hish objected. “Those supersonic harmonics are giving me a splitting headache!”
Ikk rose up, his palps working spasmodically. “But—but I summoned them! I pushed my secret button right here under my green and pink inlay . . .”
“Of course. But naturally, your bodyguards are on my payroll. But don’t feel badly; after all, my budget—”
“But—” Ikk waved his arms at the Voion. “You can’t mean it, fellows! Traitors to your own kind?”
“They’re a couple of chaps you ordered disassembled for forgetting to light your dope-stick,” Hish said. “I countermanded the order and planted them on you. Now—”
“Then—at least let them shoot the Stilter!” Ikk proposed. “Surely you and I can settle our little differences—”
“The Stilter has the drop on me, I’m afraid, Ikk. No, these two good lads will have to be locked in the W.C. Attend to it, will you, there’s a good fellow.”
“You handled that properly, Hish,” Retief commended as Ikk rolled dejectedly back after snapping the lock behind his former adherents. “Now, Ikk, I think we’d better summon Ambassador Longspoon here to make the party complete.”
Ikk grumbled, pressed a button on the silver mounted call box, snapped an order. Five minutes dragged past. There was a tap at the door.
“You’ll know just how to handle this,” Retief suggested gently to the prime minister.
Ikk twitched his oculars. “Send the Terry in!” he snapped. “Alone!”
The door opened cautiously; a sharp nose appeared past its edge, then an unshaved, receding chin, followed by the rest of the Terran ambassador. He ducked his head at Ikk, shot a glance at Retief and Hish, whose face was again concealed behind the Voion mask. He let the door click behind him, tugged at the upper set of chrome-plated lapels of his mauve after-midnight extra-formal cutaway, incongruous in the early evening light that gleamed through the hexagonal window behind Ikk.
“Ahh . . . there you are, Mr. Prime Minister,” he said. “Er, ah . . .”
“Hish, tell him not to get in my line of fire,” Retief said in Tribal. Longspoon’s eyes settled on Retief, still fully armored, jumped to the disguised Groaci, then back to the prime minister. “I’m not sure I understand . . .”
“The person behind me is armed, my dear Archie,” Hish said. “I fear he, not our respected colleague, the prime minister, controls the situation.”
Longspoon stared blankly at Retief, his close-set eyes taking in the maroon chest-plates, the scarlet-dyed head, the pink rotors.
“Who—who is he?” he managed.
“He’s the Worm-doomed troublemaker who’s had the effrontery to defeat my army,” Ikk snapped. “So much for visions of a Quopp united in Voionhood.”
“And,” Hish put in quickly, “you’ll be astonished to learn that his name is . . .” He paused as though remembering something.
“Why, I know the bandit’s name,” Longspoon’s mouth clamped in an indignant expression. “As a diplomat, it’s my business to keep in touch with these folk movements. It’s, ah, Tough-tough or Toof-toof or something of the sort.”
“How clever of Your Excellency,” Hish murmured.
“Now that the introductions are out of the way,” Retief said in Tribal, “we’d better be getting on with the night’s work. Ikk, I want the entire Embassy staff taken to the port and loaded aboard these foreign freighters you’ve impounded and permitted to lift. Meanwhile, we’ll use the hot line to Sector HQ to get a squadron of CDT Peace Enforcers headed out this way. I hope they arrive in time to salvage a few undamaged Voion for use as museum specimens.”
“What’s he saying?” Longspoon pulled at his stiff vermilion collar, his mouth opening and closing as though he were pumping air over gills.
“He demands that you and your staff leave Quopp at once,” Ikk said quickly.
“What’s that? Leave Quopp? Abandon my post? Why, why, this is outrageous! I’m a fully accredited Terran emissary of Galactic Good Will! How could I ever explain to the under-secretary—”
“Tell him you departed under duress,” Ikk suggested. “Driven out by lawless criminals wielding illegal firearms.”
“Firearms? Here on Quopp? But that’s . . . that’s—”
“A flagrant violation of Interplanetary Law,” Hish whispered piously. “Shocking . . .”
“Give the orders, Ikk,” Retief said. “I want the operation concluded before Second Jooprise. If I have to sit here any longer with my finger on the firing stud it may begin to twitch involuntarily.”
“What? What?” Longspoon waited for a translation.
“He threatens to kill me unless I do as he commands,” Ikk said. “Much as I regret seeing you depart under such, ah, humiliating circumstances, Archie, I fear I’ve no choice. Still, after your dismissal from the Corps for gross dereliction of duty in permitting shipments of Terry-manufactured arms to the rebels—”
“I? Nonsense! There are no Terran weapons on Quopp—”