It was a twenty-minute flight to the spot where the victorious troops of the Federated Tribes had been encamped eight hours earlier. Gerthudion settled in to a landing on the wheel-trampled ground, deserted now and littered with the debris of battle—and of hasty evacuation.
“Looks like our prisoners sneaked off when nobody was looking,” Retief observed. He studied the maze of trails leading off in all directions. “Which way did our lads go?” he inquired of a pair of Phips, hovering nearby.
“Here-here, there-there,” the nearest cheeped. “Run-run, quick-quick!”
“Don’t tell me,” Retief said. “Some of our more impulsive members started in on the chore of sawing the Voion up into convenient lengths, thereby panicking them into breaking out of the jam.”
“Check-check!” a Phip agreed. “All-all scat-scat!”
“And by now they’re scattered over a hundred square miles of jungle, with several thousand highly irritated Voion in pursuit. So much for the grass-roots movement—”
“Tief-tief!” a Phip buzzed in excitedly from a reconnoiter of the nearby cover. “Thing-thing, there-there!”
Retief drew his sword. “What kind of thing, small stuff? A Voion left over from the party?”
“Big-big, long-long, stilt-stilt!”
“A Stilter? Like me? Gertie, wait here!” Retief followed the Phip for a hundred yards, then paused, listening.
There was a crackling in the underbrush. A heavy-shouldered biped stalked into view—an unshaven Terran in a tattered coverall and scuffed boots, holding a heavy old-style power pistol gripped in one immense fist.
“Hold it right there, Bug,” Big Leon growled in tribal dialect. “I got a couple bones to pick with you.”
Retief smiled behind the mask, put a hand up to lift the disguising headpiece—
“Keep the flippers out from the sides,” Leon growled in dialect. “And drop the sticker. Maybe you never saw one of these before—” he gestured with the gun “—but it’ll blow a hole through you, tree and all.”
Retief tossed the sword aside. Leon nodded. “Smart Bug. Now, there’s just one thing I want out of you, wiggly-eyes: I hear there’s a native leader that’s popped up out here in the brush, organizing the yokels.” He motioned at the spare-parts littered ground. “It looks like there was a little action here, not too many hours back. I don’t know which side you were on, and I don’t care—just tell me where to find that Bug leader—fast.”
“Why?” Retief demanded.
Leon frowned at him. “For a Bug, you’ve got kind of a funny voice—but to hell with it. I want to ask him for help.”
“What kind of help?”
Leon drew a finger across his forehead like a wind-shield wiper, slung sweat from it. “Help in staying alive,” he said. “There’s forty-six of us Terries over at Rum Jungle. Ikk’s got us surrounded with about half a million troops and he swears he’s going to eat us for breakfast.”
“I see,” Retief nodded. “And you’d ask a Bug for help?”
“We’ll take any help we can get,” Leon stated flatly.
“What makes you think you can get it?”
Leon grunted. “You got a point there—but let’s can the chatter. Where’ll I find this Tief-tief character?”
Retief folded his arms. “That’s what they call me,” he said.
“Huh?” Leon’s mouth closed slowly. “Uh-huh,” he nodded. “It figures. The only Quopp on the planet I want to make pals with, and I stick a gun in his chest-plates.” He holstered the weapon. “Well, how about it?”
“I’d like to help you—” Retief said.
“Great. That’s settled, then. Call your army out of the bushes and let’s get rolling. Something tells me the Voion will hit us at dawn—”
“As I was saying,” Retief interrupted, “I’d like to help you Terries, but unfortunately I seem to have misplaced my army.”
Leon’s hand went to his gun. “What kind of a stall is this?” he grated.
“My hundred seasoned veterans wandered off while I wasn’t looking,” Retief explained.
“A hundred!” the big Terran burst out. “I heard you had half the Bugs on Quopp with you! I heard you were cutting Ikk’s troops into Christmas tree ornaments! I heard—”
“You heard wrong. The Federated Tribes were a spark glimmering in the night. Now they’re not even that.”
Big Leon let out a long breath. “So I had a little walk for nothing. OK. I should have known better. Now all I’ve got to do is get back through the Voion lines so I can help the boys pick off as many of those Jaspers as we can before they ride over us.” He half turned away, then faced Retief again. “A hundred against an army, huh? Maybe you Bugs are all right—some of you.” He turned and was gone.
* * *
Retief motioned a hovering Phip over.
“No sign of any other Stilters in the neighborhood?”
“Not-not,” the Phip stated.
“How each one of you fellows knows what all the other ones know beats me,” Retief said. “But that’s a mystery I’ll have to investigate later. Keep looking for her; she can’t have gotten far through this growth in the dark with a Voion behind every third clump of brush.”
“Sure-sure, Tief-tief! Look-look!” the Phip squeaked and darted off. Retief pulled off his helmet, unbuckled the chest and back armor, laid it aside with a sigh of relief. He removed the leg coverings gingerly; there was a nasty blister above the ankle where the Voion jailer had plied his torch carelessly. Clad in the narrow-cut trousers and shirt he had retained when donning his disguise in Sopp’s shop, he stacked the armor together, tied it with a loop of wire vine, concealed it behind a bush, then made his way back to the place where he had left Gerthudion.
“All right, let’s go, Gertie,” he called, coming up her port quarter. The Rhoon started nervously, tilted a foot-long ocular over her dorsal plates, then gave a rumbling growl.
“It’s all right,” Retief soothed. “I’m wearing a disguise.”
“You look like a Terry,” Gerthudion accused.
“That’s right; it’s all part of an elaborate scheme I’m rapidly getting wrapped up in like King Tut.”
“Kink Tut? Who’s he? Sounds like a Voion. Now royal they’ll declare themselves—”
“Steady, girl. Just a literary allusion.”
“But now, Tief-tief, what of dear Aunt Vulugulei, I long to seek her out, or her destroyers to rend!”
“I’m afraid you Rhoon are on your own, Gertie. Those fighting tribes I told you about won’t be available to carry out their end of the war after all.”
“No matter; even now the tribal host circles far to the west in a wide sweep, our enemies to spy. Then retribution will me take in full measure—allies or no.”
“How long would it take them to get here?”
“Many hours, Tief-tief—if their search they’d abandon to heed a call.”
“Do you know where Rum Jungle is?”
“Certainly—if by that you mean that clustering of huts yonder to the south, whence emanate curious odors of alien cookery with a disfavorable wind—”
“That’s the place. I need a lift in there. And there’s another Stilter up ahead; he’s wearing the same kind of disguise I am. We can gather him in on the way.”
“As you wish, Tief-tief.”
“Gertie, now that the Federated Tribes are dispersed, I can’t hold you to our agreement. This is a dangerous trip I’m asking you to make. You might run into the whole Voion Air Force.”
“Why then, I’ll know where to find the ghouls!” Gerthudion honked. “Mount up, Retief! Fly where I will, that will I—and let the villains beware!”
“That’s the way to talk, Gertie.”
Retief climbed into position on the Rhoon’s back. “Now let’s go see if things at Rum Jungle are as bad as reported—or worse.”
Nine
“I don’t get it,” Big Leon said between clenched teeth from his position just behind Retief atop Gerthudion’s ribbed shoulder-plates. “How’d you get out here in the woods? How’d you spot me? And how in the name of the Big Worm did you tame this man-eater? In forty years in the jungle I never—”
“You never tried,” Retief finished for him.
“I guess I didn’t,” Leon sounded surprised. “Why would I?”
“We’re sitting on one reason. I’ll go into the other answers later, when things quiet down.”
Gerthudion’s rotors thumped rhythmically; wind whistled past Retief’s head. A thousand feet below, the jungle was a gray-green blanket, touched with yellow light here and there where the afternoon sun reached a tall treetop.
“Hey, Retief!” Leon called above the whine of the slipstream. “Has your friend here got a friend?”
Retief looked back, following Big Leon’s pointing arm. Half a mile behind, a Rhoon was rapidly overhauling the laden Gerthudion.
“Goblin at seven o’clock,” Retief called to her. “Anyone you know, Gertie?”
The Rhoon lifted her massive head, then swung her body sideways—a trick she performed with only a slight lagging of forward motion.
“That’s—but it couldn’t be! Not Aunt Vulugulei!” the great creature honked. At once, she banked, swept in a tight curve back toward the trailing Rhoon, now closing fast.