"I hope," Teleen anz Rudenuaman ventured, "that the Baron concludes his hunt soon. We're running low on a number of synthetics and supplements for the food synthesizers, and we're nearly out of stock on several other unduplicatable items."
"There is no need to worry about the Baron," Meevo FFGW assured her from beneath his stiff human face..
There really wasn't any reason for concern, she insisted to herself, turning to look out the newly replaced pink window panels. On the mountain above, the miners worked steadily, efficiently as always.
The Baron had made several journeys through Commonwealth territory before. Nevertheless, she couldn't help experiencing a pang of concern every time one of her ships carried any of the disguised reptilians. She might survive, via a web of confusing explanations, if a Commonwealth patrol ship ever intercepted one of those missions and discovered the AAnn on board.
But she would lose an irreplaceable business associate. Not all of the AAnn aristocracy were as understanding of human motivations or as business-minded as Riidi WW.
The office communit buzzed for attention. Meevo rose and answered the call. Turning from the vista of forest and mountain, she saw his flexible humanoid mask twist repeatedly, a sign that incomprehensible reptilian contortions were occurring beneath.
"Said what ... what happened?" The AAnn's thick voice rose. Teleen leaned closer. "What is going on, Meevo?"
Slowly the AAnn engineer replaced the communit receiver. "That ... was Chargis at the mine. The escaped human and thranx have returned alive. He reports that there are many natives with them, and that the newcomers have joined with those working the mine in armed revolt."
"No, no ..." She felt faint as his words overpowered her. "The natives, in arms ... that's impossible." Her voice rose to a scream as she regained control of herself. "Impossible! They don't know the difference between a power drill and a beamer. Why would they want to revolt, anyway? What do they want ... more nuts and berries? This is insane!" Her face elongated suddenly, dangerously. "No, wait—you said the human and thranx had returned with them?"
"So Chargis insists."
"But that's impossible, too. They should have died weeks ago from exposure. Somehow," she concluded inescapably, "they must have succeeded in communicating with the natives."
"I would say that is understatement," the engineer declared. "I was told the natives possessed no language, no means of communicating abstract concepts among themselves—let alone with outsiders."
"We have overlooked something, Meevo."
"As a nye, I say that is so," the engineer concurred. "But it will not matter in the end. It is one thing to teach a savage how to fire a weapon and another to ex- plain the tactics of warfare to it."
"Where did they get weapons, anyway?" Teleen wondered, staring up the mountainside once more. The distant structures showed no sign of the conflict evidently taking place within.
"Chargis said that they overwhelmed the guard and broke into the mill armory," Meevo explained. "There was only one guard, as there are none here who would steal weapons. Chargis went on to say that the natives were clumsy and undisciplined in breaking in, and that the human and thranx tried hard to quiet them." He grinned viciously. "They may have unleashed something they cannot control. Chargis said ..." The engineer hesitated.
"Go on," Teleen prompted, determined to listen to it all, "what else did Chargis say?"
"He said that the natives gave him the impression that they regarded this all as ... a game."
"A game," she repeated slowly. "Let them continue to think that, even as they are dying. Contact all personnel on base," she ordered. "Have them abandon all buildings except those here, centered around Administration, We have hand beamers and laser cannon big enough to knock a military shuttle out of the sky. We'll just relax here, holding communications, food processing, this structure, and the power station until the Baron returns.
"After we've incinerated some of their number," she continued casually, as though she were speaking of pruning weeds, "the game may lose interest for them. If not, the shuttles will end it quickly enough." She glanced back at him. "Also have Chargis gather some good marksmen into two groups. They can use the two big groundcars and keep our friendly workers bottled up where they are. Mind the shooting, though; I don't want anything damaged within the mine buildings unless it's absolutely unavoidable. That equipment is expensive. Barring that, they can have target practice on any natives they find outside."
She added, in a half-mutter, "But under no circumstances are they to kill the human youth or the thranx female. I want both of them healthy and undamaged."
She shook her head, disgusted, as the engineer moved to relay her orders. "Damned inconvenient. We're going to have to import and train a whole new clutch of manual laborers. ..."
Everything, Flinx thought furiously, had gone smoothly and according to plan—at the start. Then he had watched helplessly as months of planning and instruction were cast aside, submerged in the uncontrollable pleasure the Ujurrians took in breaking into the armory to get at the toys which made things vanish. Not even Fluff could calm them.
"They're enjoying themselves, Flinx," Sylzenzuzex explained, trying to reassure him. "Can you blame them? This game is much more exciting than anything they've ever played before."
"I wonder if they'll still think so when some of their lights are put out," he muttered angrily. "Will they think my game is still fun after they've seen some of their friends lying on the ground with their insides burnt out by Rudenuaman's beamers?" He turned away, speechless with anger at himself and at the Ujurrians.
"I wanted to take over the mine silently, by surprise, without killing anyone," he finally grumbled. "With all the noise they made breaking into the armory, I'm sure the remainder of the building staff heard and reported below. If she's smart, and she is, Rudenuaman will place her remaining people on round-the-clock alert and wait for us to come to her."
He grew aware of Fluff standing nearby, looked deep into those expectant eyes. "I'm afraid your people are going to have to kill now, Fluff."
The ursinoid looked back at him unwaveringly. "Is understood, Flinx-friend. Is a serious game we play, this civilization."
"Yes," Flinx murmured, "it always has been. I'd hoped to avoid old mistakes, but ..."
His voice died away and he sat on the floor, staring morosely at the metal surface between his knees. A cool leathery face rubbed up against his—Pip. What he didn't expect was the gentle pressure below the back of his neck, where his b-thorax would have been had he been thranx.
Looking back and up he saw faceted eyes gazing into his. "Now you can only do the best you can do," Sylzenzuzex murmured softly. The delicate truhand moved gently, massaging his back. "You have begun this thing. If you don't help finish it, that female down there will."
He felt a little better at that, but only a little.
A sharp crack like tearing metal foil sounded clearly. Flinx was on his feet, running in the direction of the sound, which was followed soon by a second. From a transparent panel running the length of an access corridor they were able to peer out and down the gentle slope on the right side of the large building. It was devoid of growth, which had been cleared off for a distance of twenty meters from the side of the structure.
Across the clearing, near the edge of the forest, they could see the hovering shapes of two groundcars. The same cars, Flinx noted, which had met their shuttle upon its arrival here so many weeks ago.
Each car mounted, a small laser cannon near its front. Even as they watched, a thin red beam jumped from the end of one such weapon to the rocky slope ahead and above. There were several small shafts there, sunk into the cliffside.
Soon the clean rock was scarred by three black ellipsoids, modest splotches of destruction where brush had been crisped and the lighter silicate rocks fused to glass.
From somewhere at the upper end of the mine shaft a blue line from a hand beamer flashed down to strike the exterior of the groundcar. The car's screen was more than strong enough to absorb and dissipate such tiny bursts of energy.
Unexpectedly, the two cars turned and moved rapidly back downslope toward the main installation. Their muted hum penetrated into the corridor where Flinx and the others watched silently as the cars, floating smoothly a meter above the surface on thick cushions of air, turned and stopped just out of beamer range.
A moment later the familiar bulk of Bhiebright came churning around the corner toward them. Pulling up sharply, he let his words spill out in between steam-engine pants: "They have killed Ay, Bee, and Cee," he gasped, his enormous eyes wider than usual.
"How did it happen?" Flinx asked quietly. "I told everyone that they wouldn't fire into these buildings. They won't risk damaging their equipment because they're not yet convinced we pose a serious threat to them."
Fluff took over the explanation, having already communicated silently and rapidly with Bluebright. "Ay, Bee, and Cee went outside the metal caves."
"But why?" Flinx half asked, half cried.
"They thought they had created a new idea," Fluff explained slowly. Flinx showed no comprehension, so the ursinoid continued. "These past many days you have told us over and over that this game you call civilization should be played according to common sense, logic, reason. From what Bluebright tells me, Ay, Bee, and Cee decided among themselves that if this was so the cold minds and the others would see that it was reason and logic to cooperate with us, since we have taken their mine from them.
"They went out without weapons to talk logic and reason to those in the machines. But," and Fluff's voice grew hurt at the wonder of it, "those did not even listen to Ay, Bee, and Cee. They killed them without even listening. How can this thing be?" The shaggy head peered puzzledly down at Flinx. "Are not the cold minds and the ones like you down there also civilized? Yet they did this thing without talking. Is this the reason you speak of?"
Flinx and Sylzenzuzex had yet to see one of the jovial ursinoids angry. Fluff appeared close to it, though it really wasn't anger. It was frustration and lack of understanding.
Flinx tried to explain. "There are those who don't play the game fair, Fluff. Those who cheat."
"What is cheating?" wondered Fluff.
Flinx endeavored to explain.
"I see," Fluff announced solemnly when the youth had finished, "This is a remarkable concept. I would not have believed it possible. The others must be told. It explains much of the game." Turning, he and Bluebright left Flinx and Sylzenzuzex alone in the corridor,
"How long," she asked, staring out the window panel toward the distant complex, "do you think they will sit down there before growing impatient and coming up after ns?"
"Probably until the shuttles return. If we haven't resolved this before then—no, we must finish this before the Baron comes back. ... We have nothing but hand beamers here. They have at least two surface-to- space, gimbal-mounted laser cannons down by the landing strip, in addition to the smaller ones mounted on the groundcars. Possibly more. We can't fight that kind of weaponry. I hope Fluff and Bluebright can get that through their family's hairy skulls." He moved up alongside her to stare out the panel.
"I'm sure the two big guns are directed toward us right now. If we tried a mass retreat they'd incinerate the lot of us, Just like Ay, Bee, and Cee. We're going to have to—"
A high-pitched scream suddenly floated shockingly down the corridor. It rose from mid-tenor to the high, wavering shriek of the utterly terrified ... then stopped. It was undeniably human.
The second scream was not. It came from an AAnn. Then came more screams of both varieties.
Pip was fluttering nervously above Flinx's shoulder and cold perspiration had started flowing from beneath the crop of red hair.
"Now what?" he muttered uneasily, as they started off in the direction of the screams. Every so often another scream would be heard, followed at regular intervals by an answering sound from the opposite camp,
In one respect they were all alike—short and intense.
They must have heard two dozen before encountering Moam and Bluebright.. "What happened?" he demanded. "What were those screams?"
"Lights," began Moam.
"Going out," Binebright finished.
Flinx discovered he was trembling. There was blood on Moam's naturally grinning month. Both broad, flat muzzles were stained with it. There were small groups of workers and guards who had been unsuccessful in their attempt to flee the captured mine.
"You've killed the prisoners," was all he could stutter.
"Oh yes," Moam admitted with blood-curdling cheerfulness. "We not sure for a while, but Fluff explained to us and family. Cold minds and people down there," then gesturing in the direction of the main base, "cheat. We think we understand now what is to cheat. It means not playing the game by the rules, yes?"
"Yes, but these aren't my rules," he whispered dazedly, "not my rules."
"But is okay with us," Bluebright offered. "We understand these rules not yours, Flinx-friend. Not good rules. But cold minds make up new rules, we play that way okay too."
The Ujurrians waddled off down the corridor.
Flinx sank to his knees, leaned up against the wall, "Game, it's still all a game to them." Suddenly he looked at Sylzenzuzex and shuddered. "Goddamn it, I didn't want it to happen like this."
"You are she who rides the grizel," Sylzenzuzex said without anger. "You have wakened it. Now you must ride it."
"You don't see," he muttered disconsolately. "I wanted Fluff and Moam and Bluebright and all the rest of them to be spared all our mistakes. I want them to become the great thing they can—and not," he finished bitterly, "just a smarter version of us."
Sylzenzuzex moved nearer, "You still hold the grizel by its tails, Flinx. You haven't been thrown yet. It is not you who taught them to kill—remember, they do hunt meat."
"Only when they have to," he reminded her. "Still," and be showed signs of relaxing some, "this may be a time when they have to. Yes, a snowtime hunt, to live. The rules have been altered, but we still have rules. They just need to be defined further."
"That's right, Flinx, you tell them when it's all right to kill and when it's not,"
He looked at her oddly, but if there was anything hidden beneath the surface of her words he couldn't sense it. "That's the one thing I never wanted to do, even by proxy."
"What made you think you'd ever have the opportunity?"
"Something ... that happened not so long ago," he said cryptically. "Now it's been forced on me anyway, I've been shoved into the one position I vowed I'd never hold,"
"I don't know what you're rambling on about, Flinx," she finally declared, "but either you ride the grizel or it tramples you."
Flinx looked up the corridor to where Moam and Bluebright had turned the corner. "I wonder who's going to ride whom?"
The answer came several days later. There had been no assault from below, as he'd guessed, although the two groundcars pranced daily right next to the walls of the mine structures, daring anyone to show a fuzzy head.
Fluff woke them in the small office Flinx and Sylzenzuzex had chosen for Sleeping quarters. "We have made a backtrap," he told them brightly, "and we are going to catch the groundcars now."
"Backtrap ... wait, what ...?" Flinx fought for awareness, rubbing frantically at his eyes still rich with sleep. Vaguely he seemed to recall Fluff or Softsmooth or someone telling him about a backtrap, but he couldn't form a picture of it.
"You can't stop a groundcar with a ..." he started to protest, but Fluff was already urging him to follow.
"Hurry now, Flinx-friend," he insisted, listening to something beyond the range of normal hearing, "is started."
He led them to the mill supervisor’s office, a curving transparent dome set in the southernmost end of the building.
"There," Fluff said, pointing.
Flinx saw several of the ursinoids running on all fours over exposed, bare ground. They were racing for the upper slopes, near the place where the main shaft entered the mountain. Still well behind, Flinx could make out the two groundcars following.
"What are they doing out there!" Flinx yelled, leaning against the transparent polyplexalloy. He looked helplessly at Fluff. "I told you no one was to go outside the buildings."
Fluff was unperturbed. "Is part of new game. Watch."
Unable to do anything else, Flinx turned his attention back to the incipient slaughter.
Moving at tremendous speed, the three ursinoids passed the near end of the building, below Flinx's present position. Fast as they were, though, they couldn't outrun the groundcars. First one burst, then another jumped from the muzzles of the laser cannon. One hit just back of the trailing runner, impelling him to even greater speed. The other struck between the front-runners, leaving molten rock behind,
The three runners, Flinx saw, would never make the open doorway at the upper end of the mill. The grolindcars suddenly seemed to double their speed, When they fired again, they would be almost on top of the retreating Ujurrians.
He visualized three more of the innocents he had interfered with tamed to ash against the gray stone of the mountainside.
At that point the ground vanished beneath the groundcars.
There was a violent crash, the whine of protesting machinery, as the two vehicles were unable to compensate fast enough for the unexpected change in the surface. Still moving forward, both abruptly dipped downward and smashed at high speed into the far wall of the huge pit.
Flinx and Sylzenzuzex gaped silently at the enormous rift which had unexpectedly appeared in the ground.
"Backtrap," Fhiffi noted with satisfaction. "I remembered what you tell us about how the little machines work, Flinx-friend." Battered humans and AAnn—the latter's surgical disguises now knocked all askew—were fighting to get control of themselves within the wreck- age of the two cars.
A mob of furry behemoths was pouring from the mine buildings toward the pits. Flinx could make out the narrow ledges of solid earth and rock that ran like a spiderweb across the rift. They formed safe path- ways across which the three decoy runners had retreated. By the same token, they were far too narrow to provide adequate support for the groundcars. The surface against which their air jets pushed had been suddenly pulled away.
Hundreds of thin saplings now lined the edges of the pit. These had been used to support the heavy cover of twigs, leaves, and earth, all carefully prepared to give the appearance of solid ground.
New screams and the flash of blue hand beamers lit the pit as the ursinoids poured in. Flinx saw a three-hundred-kilo adolescent male pick up a squirming AAnn and treat its head like the stopper of a bottle. He turned away from the carnage, sick.
"Why is Flinx-friend troubled?" Fluff wanted to know. "We play game with their rules now. Is fair, is not?"
"Ride the grizel," Sylzenzuzex warned him in High Thranx.
By the head, not the tail, something echoed inside him. He forced himself to turn back and watch the end of the brief fight.
As soon as it became clear to the observers down below what had happened, a red beam the thickness of a man's body reached upward from a small tower at the base's far end. It passed unbroken through several sections of forest, cutting down trees like a lineal scythe and leaving the stamps smoking, until it impinged on the mountainside to the left of the pit. A flare of intense light was followed by a dull explosion.
"Get everyone back inside, Fluff," Flinx yelled. But an order wasn't necessary. Their work concluded, the ursinoids who had assaulted the pit were already running, dodging, scampering playfully back into the mine.
Flinx thought he saw movement far below as the top of the tower started to swivel toward him, but apparently calmer heads prevailed. The mills itself was still out of bounds for destructive weaponry, Rudenuaman had no reason yet to raze the mountainside, to turn the complex mine and mill into a larger duplicate of the small slag-lined crater which now bubbled and smoked where the heavy laser had struck. Much as she might regret the loss of the two groundcars and their crews, she was not yet desperate.
So no avenging light came to destroy the building. The simple natives were to be permitted their one use- less victory. Undoubtedly, Flinx thought with irony, Rudenuaman would attribute the brilliant lactic to him, never imagining that the huge dull beasts of burden had conceived and executed the rout entirely by themselves.
"I wonder," he said to Sylzenzuzex over a meal of nuts and berries and captured packaged food, "if there's any point to continuing this. I've never really felt as if I were in control of things. Maybe ... maybe it would be better to run back to the caves. I can still teach from there—we both can—and we have a lot of life left in us."
"You're still in control, Flinx," Sylzenzuzex told him. She tapped one truhand against the table in a pat- tern few human ears would have recognized. "The Ujurrians want you to be. But yon go ahead, Flinx. You tell them all," and she waved a hand to take in the whole mine, "that they should go back to their caves and resume their original game. You tell them that. But they won't forget what they've learned. They never forget."
"O'Morion knows how much knowledge they've acquired from this mine already," Flinx mumbled, picking at his food.
"They'll go back to digging their cave pattern, but they'll retain that knowledge," she went on. "You'll leave them with the game rules Rudenuaman's butchers have set. If they ever do show any initiative of their own, after we've gone ..." She made a thranx shrug. "Don't blame yourself for what's happened. The Ujurrians are no angels." Whistling thranx laughter forced her to pause a moment. "You can't play both God and the Devil to them, Flinx. You didn't introduce these beings to killing, but we'd better make certain we don't teach them to enjoy it."
"Moping and moaning about your own mistakes isn't going to help us or them. You've put your truleg in your masticatory orifice. You can pull it out or suffocate on it, but you can't ignore it." She downed a handful of sweet red-orange berries the size of walnuts.
"We not enjoy killing," a voice boomed. They both jumped. The Ujurrians moved with a. stealth and quietness that was startling in creatures so massive. Fluff stood in the doorway on four legs, filling it completely.
"Why not?" Sylzenznzex asked. "Why shouldn't we worry about it?"
"No fun," explained Fluff concisely, dismissing the entire idea as something too absurd to be worthy of discussion. "Kill meat when necessary. Kill cold minds when necessary. Unless," and beacon-eyes shone on the room's other occupant, "Flinx say otherwise."
Flinx shook his head slowly. "Never, Fluff."
"I think you say that. Is time to finish this part of game." He gestured with a paw. "You come too?"
"I don't know what you have planned this time, Fluff, but yes," Flinx concurred, "we come too."
"Fun," the giant Ujurrian thundered, in a fashion indicating something less than general amusement was about to ensue.
"I don't want any of the buildings down there damaged, if it can be avoided," Flinx instructed the ursinoid as he led him and Sylzenzuzex down corridors and stairways. "They're filled with knowledge—game rules. Mechanical training manuals, records, certainly a complete geology library. If we're going to be marooned on this world for the rest of our lives. Fluff, I'm going to need every scrap of that material in order to teach you properly."
"Is understood," Fluff grunted. "Part of game not to damage buildings' insides. Will tell family. Not to worry."
"Not to worry," Flinx mimicked, thinking of the alert and armed personnel awaiting them at the base of the mountain. Thinking also of the two atmosphere- piercing laser cannon set to swivel freely in the small tower.
Fluff led them downward, down through the several floors of mill and mine, down to the single storage level below ground. Down past rooms and chambers and corridors walled with patiently waiting, snoozing, playful Ujurrians. Down to where the lowest floor itself had been ripped up. There they halted.
Moam was waiting for them, and Bluebright and Softsmooth and a dimly glimpsed flickering something that might have been Maybeso, or might have been an illusion caused by a trick of the faint overhead lighting.
Instead of stopping before a solid ferrocrete barrier, they found three enormous tunnels leading off into total darkness. Light from the room penetrated those down-sloping shafts only slightly, but Flinx thought he could detect additional branch tunnels breaking off from the three principal ones further on.
"Surprise, yes?" Fluff asked expectantly.
"Yes," was all a bewildered Flinx could reply.
"Each tunnel," the ursinoid continued, "come up under one part of several metal caves below, in quiet place where cold minds are not,"
"You can tell where the floors aren't guarded?" Sylzenzuzex murmured in amazement.
"Can sense." Moam explained. "Is easy."
"Is good idea, Flinx-friend?" a worried Fluff wondered. "Is okay part of game, or try something else?"
"No, is okay part of game. Fluff," Flinx admitted finally. He turned to face the endless sea of great-eyed animals. "Pay attention, now."
A massive stirring and roiling shivered through the massed bodies.
"Those who break into the power station must shut everything off. Push every little knob and switch to the—"
"Know what means off," Bluebright told him confidently.
"I probably should leave you alone, you've managed fine without my help," Flinx muttered. "Still, it's important. This will darken everything except for the tower housing the two big cannon. They'll be independently powered, as will the shuttlecraft hangar beneath the landing strip. Those of you who get into the cannon tower will have to—"
"Am sorry, Flinx-friend," a doleful Fluff interrupted. "Cannot do."
"Why not?"
"Floors not like this," the ursinoid explained, eyes glowing in the indirect lighting. He indicated the broken ferrocrete lying around. "Are thick metal. Cannot dig through."
Flinx's spirits sank. "Then this whole attack will have to be called off until we can think of something that will eliminate that tower. They can destroy all of us, even if they have to melt the entire remaining installation to do so. If Rudenuaman were to slip away and reach the tower, I don't think she'd hesitate to give the order. At that point she'd have nothing further to lose."
"Not mean to make yon worry, Flinx-friend," comforted Bluebright.
"Nothing to worry about," Moam added.
"Have something else to take care of tower," explained Fluff.
220
"But you ..." Flmx stopped himself, went on quietly, "no, if you say you do, then yon must."
"What about the three who got themselves killed?" Sylzenzuzex whispered. "They thought they had something too. This time there are many more lives at stake."
Flinx shook his head slowly. "Ay, Bee, and Cee were playing by different rules, Syl, It's time for us to trust our lives to these. They've risked theirs often enough on our say-so. But just in case ..."
He turned to Fluff. "There is one thing I must do even if this fails and we all end up dead. I want to come up through the floor of the big living house, Fluff. There is something in there that I need the use of."
"In this tunnel," Fluff told him, indicating the shaft at far left. "Are ready, then?"
Flinx nodded. The huge Ujurrian turned and shouted mental instructions. They were accompanied by a nonverbal emotional command.
A soft, threatening rumble responded ... a hair-curling sound as dozens, hundreds of massive shapes bestirred themselves in long lines reaching back into the far places of the mine.
Then they were moving down the tunnels. Flinx and Sylzenzuzex bugged close to Fluff, each with a hand tight in his fur. Sylzenzuzex's night vision was far better than Flinx's, but the tunnel was too black even for her acute senses.
If the Ujurrians' activities had been detected, Flinx reflected, they might never re-emerge into the light. They could be trapped and killed here with little effort.
"One question," Sylzenzuzex asked.
Flinx's mind was elsewhere when he responded: "What?"
"How did they excavate these tunnels? The ground here is rock-laden and the tunnels seem quite extensive."
"They've been digging tunnels for fourteen thousand years, Syl." Flinx found he was moving with more and more confidence as nothing appeared to deal death from above them. "I imagine they've become pretty good at it. ..."
Teleen auz Rudenuaman panted desperately, nearly out of breath, as she limped along the floor. The sounds of heavy fighting sounded outside and below her.
A massive brown shape appeared at the top of the stairwell which she had just exited. Turning, she fired her beamer in its direction. It disappeared, though she was unable to tell whether she'd hit it or not.
She had been relaxing in her living quarters when the attack had come—not from the distant mine, but from under her feet. Simultaneously, hundreds of enormous, angry monsters had exploded out of the sub- levels of every building. Every building, that is, except for the cannon tower. She'd barely had time to give the order for those powerful weapons to swing around and beam every structure except the one she was in when they had been destroyed.
A peculiar violet beam no thicker than her thumb had jumped the gap between the uppermost floor of the far-off mine and the tower's base. Where it had touched there was now only a deep horizontal scar in the earth. It had been so quick that she'd neither seen nor heard any explosion.
One moment the tower had been there—three stories of armor housing the big guns—and the next she'd heard a loud hissing sound like a hot ember being dropped in water. When she turned to look, the tower was gone.
Now there was no place to run to, nothing left to bargain with. Her badly outmatched personnel—human, thranx and AAnn alike—had been submerged by a brown avalanche.
She'd tried to make for the underground shuttle hangar in hopes of hiding there until the Baron's return, but the lower floors of this building were also blocked by swarms of lemur-lensed behemoths. The ground outside was alive with them.
It made no sense! There had been perhaps half a hundred of the slow-moving natives living in the immediate vicinity of the mine. Surveys had revealed a few hundred more inhabiting caves outside the vicinity.
Now there were thousands of them, of all sizes, overrunning the installation—overrunning her thoughts. The crash of overturned furniture and shattered glass- alloy sounded below. There was no way out. She could only retreat upward.
Limping to another stairwell, she started up to her apartment-office on the top floor. The battle was all but over when the cannon tower had been eliminated. Meevo confirmed that when he reported the power station taken. Those were the last words she heard from the reptilian engineer.
With the station, the power to communications and the lifts had gone. It was hard for her to mount the stairwell, with her bad leg. Her jumpsuit was torn, the carefully applied makeup covering her facial scars badly smudged. She would meet death in her own quarters, unpanicked to the end, showing the true selfconfidence of a Rudenuaman.
She slowed at the top of the stairs. Her quarters were at the far end of the hall but there was a light shining from inside the chamber nearest the stairwell. Moving cautiously, she slid the broken door a little further back, peered inside.
The light was the kind that might come from a small appliance. There were many such self-powered devices on the base—but what would anyone be doing with one here and now, when he should have a beamer in his fist?
Holding her own tightly, she tiptoed into the chamber.
These quarters had' not been lived in since the demise of their former occupant. The light was coming from a far corner. It was generated by a portable viewer. A small, slight figure was hunched intently before it, oblivious to all else.
She waited, and in a short while the figure leaned back with a sigh, reaching out to switch the machine off. Fury and despondency alternated in her thoughts, to be replaced at last by a cold, calm sense of resignation.
"I ought to have guessed," she muttered.
The figure jerked in surprise, spun about.
"Why aren't you decently dead, like you're supposed to be?"
Flinx hesitated, replied without the hint of a smile, "It wasn't destined to be part of the game."
"You're joking with me ... even now. I should have killed you the same time I finished Challis. But no," she said bitterly, "I had to keep you around as an amusement."
"Are you sure that's the only reason?" he inquired, so gently that she was momentarily taken aback.
"You play word games with me, too." She raised the muzzle of the beamer. "I only regret I haven't got time to kill you slowly. You haven't even left me that." She shrugged tiredly. "The price one pays for undersight, as my aunt would say, corruption be on her spirit. I am curious, though—how did you manage to tame and train these creatures?"
Flinx looked at her pityingly. "You still don't understand anything, do you?"
"Only," she replied, her finger tightening on the beamer's trigger, "that this comes several months too late."
"Wait!" he shouted pleadingly, "if you'll give me one min—"
The finger convulsed. At the same time someone doused her eyes with liquid fire. She screamed, and the beam passed just to the right of Flinx to obliterate the viewer nearby.
"Don't rob!" he started to yell, rushing around the chair he'd been sitting in—already too late. At the moment of contact she'd dropped the beamer and begun rubbing instinctively at the awful pain in her face. She was on the floor now, rolling over and over.
The distance between them was no longer great, but by the time he reached her she was unconscious and stiff. Thirty seconds later she was dead.
"You never did take the time to listen, Teleen," he murmured, kneeling numbly by the doubled-over corpse. Nervously flicking his long tongue in and out, Pip settled softly on Flinx's shoulder, The minidrag was taut with anger.
"Your life was too rushed. Mine's been too rushed, also."
Something moved in the doorway. Looking up, Flinx saw a wheezing Sylzenzuzex standing there, favoring her splinted leghand. One truhand had a firm grip on a thranx-sized beamer.
"I see you found her," she observed, her breath coming through the spicules of her b-thorax in long whistles. "Softsmooth tells me that the last bits of resistance are almost cleaned out." Her compound eyes regarded him questioningly as he looked back down at the body.
"I didn't find her. She found me. But before I could make her listen, Pip intervened. I suppose he had to; she would have killed me." Unexpectedly, he glanced at her and smiled.
"You should see yourself, Syl. You look like a throwback from Hivehom's pre-tranquility days. Like a warrior who has just concluded a successful brood'raid on a neighboring hive. A wonderful advertisement for the compassionate understanding of the Church."
She didn't respond to the jibe. There was something in his voice…. "That's not like you, Flinx." She studied him as he turned back to stare at the corpse, trying to remember everything she knew of human emotion. It seemed to her that his interest in this woman, who for a few tarns of vackel had worked willingly with the sworn enemies of hurnanx kind, was abnormal.
Sylzenzuzex was not her uncle's equal when it came to intuitive deduction, but neither was she stupid. "You know something more about this human female than you have said."
"I must have known her before," he whispered, "though I don't remember her at all. According to the time intervals given on the tape that's not too surprising." He gestured limply at the chamber behind him. "This was Challis' apartment." His hand returned to indicate the corpse. For a moment his eyes seemed nearly as deep as Moam's. "This was my sister."
Not until the following afternoon, after the bodies had been efficiently buried by the Ujurrians, did Sylzenzuzex insist on hearing about everything that had been recorded on the stolen tape.
"I was an orphan, Syl, raised on Moth by a human woman named Mother Mastiff. The information I found said that I'd been born to a professional Lynx named Rud, in Allahabad on Terra. The records also said I was a second child, though they didn’t give details. Those facts were to be found on the tape Challis stole, the tape I didn't read until last night.
"My mother also had an elder sister. My mother's husband, who according to the tape was not my father, gave that elder sister a position in his commercial firm. After he died, under still unexplained circumstances, the sister took control of the company and built it into a considerable business empire,
"It seems my mother and her sister were never the best of friends. Some of the details of what amounted to my mother's captivity, and that's what it reads like, are ..." He had to stop for a moment.
"It's easy to see how a mind like Challis' would be attracted to details like that. My mother died soon after her husband. A number of unexplained incidents followed. No one could be certain, but it was theorized they might be attributable in some way to her male nephew. So ... I was disposed of. A small sale in so large a commercial concern," he added viciously. "It amused the elder sister, Rashalleila, to keep the girl niece around. The sister's name was Nuaman. The niece—my sister—was called Teleen, She became a mirror image of her aunt, took the company from her, and merged her mother's name with her aunt's. Symbospeeched it. Teleen of Rud and Nuaman ... Teleen auz Rudenuaman.
"As for me—1 was long forgotten by everyone. Challis' researchers were interested in the part about my causing some 'unexplained incidents,' as they were called. He never troubled to make any other connections from the information."
They walked on in silence, past the long gouge in the earth where the cannon tower had stood. Fluff, Moam, Bluebright, and Softsmooth trailed behind. They came upon a small building set alongside the landing field. Earlier, one of the Ujurrians had discovered that it led down to the extensive shuttlecraft hangar. The hangar held complete repair and constrution facilities for shuttlecraft, as would be necessary on an isolated world like this. There was also an extensive machine shop and an enormous technical library on all aspects of Commonwealth KK ship maintenance. It would make a very useful branch of the Ujurrian school Flinx was planning to set up.
"I didn't have time to ask last night. Fluff," Flinx: began, as they passed the end of the scar, "how did you manage that?"
"Was fun," the big ursinoid responded brightly. "Was Moam's idea mostly. Also a young She named Mask. While others dug tunnels, they two read much that was in books at the mine."
"Made some changes in cold minds' cave digger," Moam supplied.
"The press drill," murmured Svizenzuzex, "they must have modified the press drill. But how?"
"Change here, add this," explained Moam. "Was fun."
"I wonder if modified is quite the word for turning a harmless tool into a completely new kind of weapon," Moam and Mask and their friends play with the library and machine shop below. But first we have some other modifications that have to be carried out in a hurry...."
The big freighter came out of KK drive just inside the orbit of Ulru-Ujurr's second satellite, moving nearer on short bursts from its immensely powerful space- spanning engine. The freighter entered a low orbit around the vast blue-brown world, remaining directly above the only installation on its surface.
"Honored One, there is no response," the disguised AAnn operating the ship's communicator reported.
"Try again," a deep voice commanded.
The operator did so, finally looked up helplessly. "There is no response on any of the closed-signal frequencies. But there is something else—something very peculiar."
"Explain," the Baron directed curtly. His mind was spinning.
"There is evidence of all kinds of subatmospheric broadcasting, but none on any frequencies I can tap into. And none of it is directed at ns, despite my repeated calls."
A man named Josephson, who was a very important executive in Rudenuaman Enterprises, moved next to the Baron. "What's going on down there? This isn't like Madam Rndenuaman."
"It is not like many things," observed the Baron cautiously. He turned his attention to another of the control pod operatives. "What is the cloud cover like above the base?"
"Clear and with little wind, sir," the atmospheric meteorologist reported quickly. "A typical Ujurrian autumn day."
The Baron hissed softly. "Josephson-sir, come with me, please."
"Where are we going?" the' confused executive wanted to know, even as he followed the Baron down the corridor leading to the far end of the command blister.
"Here." The Baron hit a switch and the door slid back, "I require maximum resolution," he instructed the on-duty technician.
"At once, Honored One," the disguised reptilian acknowledged as he hurried to make the necessary adjustments to the surface scope. Sitting down alongside the tech, the Baron punched the requisite coordinates into the scope computer himself.
Then he remained motionless for several minutes, staring through the viewer. Eventually he moved aside, gestured that Josephson should take his place. The human did so, adjusting the focus slightly for his eyes. He gave a verbal and physical start.
"What do you see?" the Baron inquired.
"The base is gone, and there's something in its place."
"Then I may not be mad," the Baron observed. "What do you see?"
'"Well, the landing strip is still there, but something like a small city is climbing from the lakeshore up into the mountains. Knowing the terrain, I'd say several of the unfinished structures are a couple of hundred meters high." His voice faded with astonishment.
"What does this suggest to you?" the Baron asked.
Josephson looked up from the scope, shaking his head slowly.
"It suggests," the Baron hissed tightly, that the structures may be built deeply into the mountains. By whom or how deeply we will fact know, unless we go down to see for ourselves."
"Wouldn't advise that," a new voice boomed.
Josephson gave a cry and stumbled out of the chair, pressing himself back against the console. The technician and the Baron whirled, both reaching simultaneously for their sidearms.
An apparition stood solidly in the center of the room. It was a good three meters tall, standing on its hind legs, and its bulk nearly dented the deck. Huge yellow eyes glared balefully down at them.
"Wouldn't advise it," the apparition repeated. "Get lost."
The Baron's hand beamer was aimed—but now there was nothing to shoot at.
"Hallucinations," Josephson suggested shakily, after his voice returned.
The Baron said nothing, walked to the place where the creature had stood. He knelt in a way no human could, hunting for something on the floor. "A very hirsute hallucination," he commented, examining several thick, coarse hairs. His mind was churning furiously.
"You know I've never been outside the main installation," Josephson declared. "What was it?"
"An Ujurrian primitive," the Baron explained thoughtfully, rubbing the hairs between false-skinned fingers.
"What... what was it talking about?"
Disgust was evident in the Baron's voice. "There are times when I wonder how you humans ever achieved half of what you have."
"Now, look," the executive began angrily, "there's no need to get abusive."
"No," the Baron admitted. After all, they were still within Commonwealth territory. "There is no reason to get abusive. I apologize, Josephson-sir." Turning, they left the room and the wide-eyed technician.
"Where are we going now?"
"To do what the creature said."
"Just a minute." Josephson eyed the unblinking AAnn aristocrat firmly. "If the Madam is in trouble down there ..."
"Sssisssttt ... use your brain, warm-blood," the Baron snorted. "Where there was a small base there is now a rapidly growing city. Where there used to be a single welcoming signal there is now a multitude of peculiar local communications. From a few clusters of rave-dwelline native there comes a teleport who advises us curtly not to land. Who advises us curtly— in your vernacular I might add, Josephson-sir—to make haste elsewhere.
"I think it reasonable, considering the evidence, for us to comply quickly. I act according to realities and not emotions, Josephson-sir. That is why I will always be one who gives orders and yon will always be one who takes them." He hurried his pace, pushing past the man and leaving him standing, to gape down the corridor after him.
As directed by the Baron, the freighter left Ulru-Ujurr's vicinity at maximum velocity. Resting in his sumptuous cabin, the Baron pondered what had taken place during his absence. Something of considerable importance, with unknowable implications for the future.
Of one thing he was certain: Madam Rudenuaman and the enterprise they had collaborated on no longer existed. But there could be a host of reasons why.
That the natives were more than ignorant savages now seemed certain ... but how much more certain he could not say. A single genius among them could have been mnemonically instructed to deliver what had been, after all, an extremely brief message. A new experimental device could have projected him aboard the freighter.
The burgeoning city below could be the product of the Church, the Commonwealth, a business competitor, or an alien interloper. This section of the Arm was still mostly unexplored; anything could be setting itself up on an isolated, unvisited world like Ulru-Ujurr.
He had done well by the venture. There were a number of small stones still in his possession, which he could ration out slowly to the Commonwealth over the years. His status at the Hmperor's court had risen considerably, though the Imperial psychotechnicians' scheme of implanting suicidal impulse-plays into the Janus jewels and then selling them to important humans and thranx would now have to be abandoned.
That was too bad, for the program had been very successful. Yet this could have been worse. Whatever had wiped out the installation and Madam Rudenuaman could also have taken him, had he not gone in pursuit of the human child.
A pity the way she happened to encounter that human patrol vessel, forcing him to abandon any hope of eliminating her. Almost as if she'd known what she was doing. But it did not matter much, he knew. Let her rave about Ulru-Ujurr to any who might be credulous enough to listen—for now that world was no concern of his.
In the future, given the inevitable triumph of the Empire, he could return with an Imperial fleet, instead of skulking about in disguise like this and in the forced company of despised mammals and insects. Then he might reestablish control, nay, sovereignty over that enigmatic world, holding all the glory and profits to be gained therefrom for himself and the house of WW.
Maybe so, he mused pleasurably, maybe so.
He did not hear the voice that echoed in response from the depths of Someplace else. A voice that echoed ... maybe not!
The day dawned bright and warm. Sylzenzuzex found she could walk about freely with only the flimsiest covering.
She had developed a special rapport with the shy adolescent female called Mask, who had turned out to be a wonderful guide to the history and unexpectedly complex interrelationships of the Ujurrians. So Sylzenzuzex was reveling in her study of a subject dear to her heart.
Perhaps someday it would form the basis for a monograph, or even a full dissertation, one important enough to win reinstatement in the Church for her. Although the discovery that the Church had indeed been responsible for quarantining these people continued to cause her to question that organization's standards, and her own future participation in it.
She left her quarters in the building, intending to mention yesterday's revelations to Flinx, But he did not seem to be anywhere around, nor was he at the landing strip school, nor at any of the factory centers ringing the old mine. One of the ursinoids finally directed her to a place at the far end of the valley, where she had once fled Rudenuaman's grasp. After a fair climb up a steep bluff, she found him sitting cross-legged on a ledge consorting with a local insect no larger than his finger. It was enameled green and ochre, with yellow- spotted wings.
Pip was darting through the nearby bushes, worrying an exasperated, sinuous mammal half his size.
From here one could look back down the full length of the valley, see the azure lake cradled between snow- capped peaks, and watch the steady progress of construction along the south shore.
When Flinx finally turned to her, he wore an expression so sorrowful it shocked her.
"What's the matter... why so sad?" she inquired.
"So who's sad?"
She shook her valentine-shaped head slowly. When he didn't respond, she gestured toward the lake valley.
"I don't know what you have to be disappointed about. Your charges seem to have taken to your game of civilization with plenty .of enthusiasm. Is it the ship Maybeso boarded? Whatever he told them must have been effective. They haven't come back, and there's been no sign of another ship in the months since."
By way of reply he pointed toward the north shore of the lake. A vast metal superstructure was rising there. It was nearly as long as the lake itself.
"Something about the ship?"
He shook his head. "No ... about the reason behind it. Syl, I've only accomplished half of what I set out to do. I know that my mother's dead, but I still don't know who my father was or what happened to him." He stared hard at her. "And I want to know, Syl. Maybe he's long dead, too, or alive and even a worse human animal than my sister turned out to be; but I want to know. I will know!" he finished with sudden vehemence.
"How does that connect with the ship?"
Now he cracked a wan smile. "Why do you think the Ujurrians are building a ship?"
"I don't know... for fun, to explore... why?"
"It's my present from them—Moam's little surprise. He knows I want to go looking for my father, so they're doing their best to help me look. I told them they couldn't construct a KK-drive ship here ... that it had to be done clear of a planet's gravity. You know what he said? 'We fix ... too much trouble other way.'
"He located an Ujurrian—skinniest one I ever saw—who thinks only in mathematical terms. She's so weird—her name-translation came out as 'Integrator'— she can almost understand Maybeso. Moam set her the problem. Two weeks ago she cracked the problem of landing in a gravity well on KK-drive. Commonwealth scientists have been trying to solve that puzzle for a couple of hundred years."
He sighed. "All to help me find my father. Syl ... what happens if the Ujurrians don't find the rest of the cosmos, our civilization, to their liking? What if they decide to 'play' with it? What have we unleashed?"
She sat back on trulegs and foothands and pondered. Long minutes passed. The gem-encrusted bug flew away.
"If nothing else," she told him finally, staring down at the ship, "a way to go home. You worry overmuch, Flinx. I don't think our civilization will hold much of interest for these creatures. It's you they're interested in. Remember what Maybeso said ... if this new game bores them, they'll go back to their old one."
Flinx considered this, appeared to brighten. Then abruptly he rose, brushed the dust from his legs. "I suppose you're right, Syl. I can't do any good worrying about it. When they finish the ship, it will be time to go home. I need Mother Mastiff's acerbity, and I need to lose myself again, for a while." He glanced up at her oddly. "Will you help?"
Sylzenznzex turned great, glowing multifaceted eyes on Pip, watched as the minidrag folded pleated wings to dive down a burrow after the retreating mammal. Sounds of scuffling came from below.
"It promises to be intriguing ... from a purely scientific point of view, of course," she murmured.
"Of course," Flinx acknowledged, properly straight- faced.
A narrow reptilian head popped out of the burrow and a pointed tongue flicked rapidly in their direction. Pip stared smugly back at them, a Cheshire cat with scales....