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"Nothing in it, Sloonge. Jolly interesting
place, the catacombs. I was just on the point of
deciphering a number of fascinating inscriptions
when the earthquake occurred."
"You wouldn't have been snooping just a
tiny bit?" Sloonge inquired archly, wagging a
limp, cucumber-sized finger at the Terran
envoy.
"Scholary research, my boy, nothing more,"
Wrothwax reassured his host, signaling for a
refill. "Pity to abandon my finds, but I felt I
should rush back and see to the safety of my
staff."
"In this case," Magnan murmured, "I'm sure
excretion was the better part of valor."
"Eh?" Wrothwax said. "For a moment I
thought you said but never mind. Slip of the
tongue, eh?"
"No doubt."
"Quite. Pity I never got to meet His
Supremacy, Sloonge but I'm sure you and I can
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r r
come to an agreement regarding the
extensive deposits of pure corundum rubies
and emeralds to you, gentlemen among which
I found myself after the avalanche. Now, I had
in mind a barter arrangement under which
Corps bottoms haul in Groaci sand, for which
you say you have a need, and take away these
troublesome gems waste products, I believe
you called them...?" The Ambassador and the
Minister strolled off, deep in negotiation.
"Hmmmph," Magnan commented. "Never a
word of gratitude to me for arranging his
evacuation from the danger zone."
"Still, for once a Terry Ambassador got
inside the problem," Retief said.
"And as a result of my efforts with your
assistance, of course. Retief emerged covered
with, if not glory, rubies and emeralds."
"And smelling like a rose," Retief agreed.
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r r
The Piecemakers
1
"Gentlemen," Undersecretary for
Extraterrestrial Affairs Thunderstroke
announced in tones of doom, "it looks like war."
"Eh, what's that?" a stout man in plainly
tailored civvies spoke up blurrily, as one just
awakened from a pleasant nap. "War, you say?"
He slapped the conference table with a well-
manicured hand. "Well, it's about time we
taught the beggars a lesson!"
"You've leaped to a faulty conclusion.
Colonel," the Undersecretary said sourly. "We
are not on the point of embarking on
hostilities "
"Naturally not," the Military Adviser said,
rising. "Not your job. Civilians all very well, but
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time now for military to take over. You'll
excuse me, Mr. Secretary, I must rejoin my
regiment at once "
"Sit down, Henry," the Chief of the Groaci
Desk said tiredly. "You haven't got the big
picture. No Terran Forces are involved on
Yudore at all. Strictly an Eetee affair."
"Sound thinking." The Colonel nodded
approvingly. "Why throw away the lives of
Terran lads when there are plenty of native lives
available for the purpose? To be given selflessly
in defense of sacred Terran principles, that is to
say. By the way, which is our side?"
"Try to grasp the point, Colonel," the
Undersecretary said acidly. "We're neutral in the
affair."
"Of course, but whom are we neutral in
favor of? Or in favor of whom, I should say, are
we "
"No one! And we intend to keep it that
way!"
"Umm." The Colonel resumed his seat and
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his nap.
"It appears," the Undersecretary resumed,
"that our old friends the Groaci are locked in an
eyestalk-to-eyestalk confrontation with the
Slox."
"What are these shlocks called, sir?" the
Acting Assistant Deputy Undersecretary
inquired in a tone of deep synthetic interest.
"Slox, Magnan, S-L-O-X. Inveterate
troublemakers from the Slox System, half a
dozen lights in-Arm. It appears both they and
the Groaci are claiming mandateship of Yudore,
an unexceptional planet of a small Class G sun
well off the trade routes."
"Well, why doesn't one of them just go
mandate somewhere else?" a Commerce man
demanded. "There are scads of available planets
out that way."
"The Groaci state that Yudore falls within
their natural sphere of influence,"
Thunderstroke said. "As for the Slox, their
position is that they found the place first."
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"They could flip a coin for it," the
Commerce man snapped. "Then we could all get
back to matters of importance, such as the
abnormal rate of increase in the rate of decrease
of the expansion of the trend toward reduction
of increasing berp-nut consumption among
unwed fathers ages nine through ninety on
backward worlds of the Nicodeman group, a
development which I just detected this morning
through the use of refined psychostatistical
techniques."
"Good lord, Chester" a political forecast
specialist picked up the cue "what will be the
projected impact of this downturn in the
upturn?"
"Upturn of the downturn, if you must use
layman's language," Chester corrected. "Why, at
the present rate it appears that by fiscal ninety-
seven, there'll be a record high in unwed
fathers."
"To return to the subject at hand,
gentlemen," Thunderstroke cut in ominously,
"both parties to the dispute have dispatched
battle fleets to stand by off Yudore, primed for
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A [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]