The other drew a coin from his belt pouch and solemnly passed it over. Kana shut his mouth. For the High Brass who had just dropped that metal token in the Blademaster’s waiting palm had, not long before, sat granite-faced to sentence him to a labor camp for life.
Now Hansu’s attention came back to him and Kana found himself measured with a critical stare.
“Rather lively for a dead man,” was the Blademaster’s strange comment. “You”—he pointed an accusing finger—“were blasted an hour ago when you tried to force your way on board a transport to the Islands.”
For the second time Kana opened his mouth and this time he was able to get out words.
“Interesting—if true—sir—”
Hansu was grinning with an open light-heartedness Kana had never seen him display before.
“Amusing dramatics.” Still his explanation made little sense. “Welcome to Prime—the real Prime. And meet its governor—Commander Matthias.”
“You pick up your cues well, son.” The Commander nodded at Kana approvingly. “Made that escape as smoothly as if you had had a chance to rehearse it.”
“I told you,” Hansu broke in. “He’s good enough to make it worthwhile enlisting him.”
Kana began to understand why he had been left in that corridor waiting room at Headquarters, how he had been able to trick the guard so easily.
“You set up that break for me,” he said, half accusingly. “Did you have me tailed?”
“No. Your escape had to look natural. We just supplied the time, place, and opportunity—the raw materials as it were. The rest was up to you,” Hansu replied.
“Then how did your men find me?”
“Through those paks you dialed out of the archives. That combination was a give-away—History of Prime, Ancient Remains in the Prime District, The Sea Coast, Map of Prime—all asked for at the same time by one person. So we just sent the boys along to pick you up.”
Kana dropped down on a bench without having been invited to such relaxation. This was moving a little too fast for him. Easy—logical— But everything Hansu said spoke of a city-wide net of surveillance, of a tight and well-functioning organization. What kind and for what purpose?
“And the labor camp?” He asked the first question of the many in his mind at that moment.
“Oh, there are labor camps right enough—supposedly established for criminals and malcontents of all kinds,” the Commander returned cheerfully. “Only we differ somewhat from the C.C. Agents in our definition of both ‘labor camp’ and ‘crime against the Galactic peace.’ And those Agents would be quite surprised if they visited any camps except the two or three we maintain for official display purposes. Right now you’re in what might be termed ‘Camp Number One.’ And we can introduce you to a lot of hardened offenders against the status quo if you wish. So you’re going to serve the sentence which was imposed on you this morning—there’s no getting around that. However, I don’t believe you will offer any objections to your fate. Hansu hasn’t. Or do you harbor some deep, dark reservations, Trig?”
The Blademaster’s grin grew even broader. “Not that you can see, Matt. I’ll toil under your whips just as long as you’ll persuade the powers that be to let me. I only wish that I had been let into the whole secret a lot earlier in life—there’re a lot of things I could have done—” He ended on a wistful note.
“What about Kosti and Larsen, sir? And the rest of the Horde on Fronn?”
“Kosti and Larsen earthed in the far south and have been picked up by our men—the C.C. Agents won’t ever know about them. As for the Horde—well, that will take some arranging here and there. For the present they’re safe with the Venturi—and I think we can make a deal with those traders. They’re the sort we want to contact. We’ll lift the Horde out of that pinch before those renegades and the C.C. get to them. On the other hand we can’t slap Device down or spill all we have discovered about his backers. But the Venturi will be allowed in on part of the secret so that they will know you have not gone back on your word. Here in Prime Two we have a rather odd idea that promises should be kept—if it is humanly possible.”
Kana felt as if he had been whirled through space without benefit of a ship. If someone would just explain everything from the beginning, carefully, and in words simple enough for his reeling mind to gather in, he would be happier.
“You’d like a few facts, wouldn’t you?” Commander Matthias might have been reading his thoughts. “Well, this set-up isn’t so simple that it can be explained in a couple of sentences. The whole project reaches back into our past—three hundred years back. You know—if you asked an Ageratan or a Rassami what he thought of a Terran, he’d paint you a mighty crude picture of a simple-minded barbarian. That has been our shield all along, and we have fostered the idea that we are rude savages of limited intelligence. It inflates the ego of the enemy and doesn’t bother us at all.
“In reality Terra for at least two hundred and fifty years has been a double world—though that fact is known to a relatively small number of her inhabitants. One Terra and one Prime was fitted quickly and neatly into the pattern Central Control demanded and is a law-abiding member of their lesser confederacy, content with the role of third-class citizenship.
“But in the past hundred years one troop transport in every twenty which lifted from this planet was no troop transport at all, but a pioneer carrier. Men and women selected for certain qualities of mind and body—survivor types—went out in deep sleep to settle on planets our mercenaries had explored. On some of those worlds the native races had dwindled and retrogressed until civilization had faded almost to extinction, others were bare of intelligent life, or had dominant races, young, vigorous and humanoid with whom we could interbreed. There is even reason to believe that the latter may be descendents of the passengers of those legendary starships which left this world during the nuclear wars—though the people have long since forgotten their origin.
“So Terrans have been planted secretly on almost a thousand worlds now. On thirty our colonies could not take root, native diseases, adverse climatic changes, malignant life forms blotted them out. On six more they are still fighting a war for survival. On the rest they flourish and spread.
“Central Control has noted the decline in our planet birth rate, the fact that our race, which might have challenged the rule of the older groups, seems to be on the wane. They believe that this is due to their wise plans of the past, that as mercenaries we are bleeding our species out of existence. Only very recently have they had any hints as to what is really occurring. They may or may not have discovered that Terran Combatants, almost always hired to serve on backward, frontier planets, know of hidden colonies of their own kind—that our casualty lists often cover men who remain on the earth there and not in it when their Horde or Legion returns to base.
“We are leaving Terra for the stars just as we planned from our first Galactic flight. And now that Central Control suspects that, she is going to move against us. But she will discover that she is perhaps ten generations too late. One cannot move against colonies on almost a thousand different worlds, not and keep up the fiction of justice to all which must be maintained to preserve their carefully guarded balance of power.”
“You are forgetting our allies,” Hansu pointed out.
“The man in the field does right to correct the desk merchant at home,” Matthias conceded. “Yes, several other young and vigorous races have fallen under the same ban against exploration and colonization which C.C. attempted to force upon us. And when these discriminated against X-Tees learned what we were doing—usually from our AL men sent to explain it in detail—they copied our methods all the way. There are about twenty of these worlds now following our pattern. This trouble on Fronn—the bald design of crediting a massacre of Patrolmen to an outlawed Horde, the betrayal of Yorke and his officers—is a blow back at us and may bring the whole scheme into the open. If so, we don’t really care too much, we’ve been preparing lately for such an eventuality and we have our case far better organized for a general hearing than they suspect—too much of their planning won’t bear the light of day. In the meantime—” He nodded to Hansu as if suggesting that it was now time for the Blademaster to take over.
“In the meantime operations shall continue as usual, both here and out in space. And as an AL man you’re going to labor all right—just as you were sentenced to do.”