He could retire!
The Hawvin was thinking about all the silver and copper coins that must be in the ruins of old banks– the Psychlos valued neither metal but he knew a market for it.
The Bolbod had been thinking about all the Psychlo machinery down there up until the time his punchcraft was captured. Now he was thinking about punching terrestrials.
The Jambitchow commander was wondering how he could do the rest of these aliens out of slaves, metal and machinery.
Finally the probecraft made it and sat down on the ledge and their attention riveted on it.
The five Hockners got out, bulky in their fancy space suits and clumsy in swinging their blast rifle straps off their shoulders.
Suddenly the voice of the Hockner landing control officer in orbit crackled out of their radios down there and came back up the infrabeam.
“Alert to the battle plane!”
There was a battle plane up at about two hundred thousand feet. But it had been there for an hour, doing nothing. And it was doing nothing now. The five Hockners were looking at it way up there, a tiny speck to them, hard to find in the blue sky they saw.
“No, no!” barked the Hockner landing control officer. “Around the corner from you! Coming up the glacier!”
Only then did the watching faces see it. From their viewpoint it was just a line on the glacier, just the top of its body showing, the rest cut off by the jutting crag above the telescope. The battle plane had hugged the glacier all the way up! It was almost a hundred yards back of the telescope when it stopped. No one here could see whether anyone got out of it. It must be holding in that position on its motors. The glacier was steep.
The five Hockners, alert now but seeing no one yet, crouched, guns ready. Then they sprinted forward.
A hammering burst of blast guns flared just behind the telescope.
One Hockner, near the edge, was hit, thrown out into space, and went spinning down through the clouds.
The Hockner sled, struck by a burst, slithered backward, teetered, and dropped into empty space.
The four remaining Hockners charged through the snow and wind, guns going.
The relentless pounding of blast rifles racketed up the infrabeam. The whole area under the telescope seemed to be erupting continuous, green gouts of thundering energy.
One Hockner down. Two down. Three down! The fourth almost reached the telescope and then thudded into the snow.
The only sound now was the whistle of wind around the peak.
Several terrestrials sprang into view from beyond the radio telescope. They rushed forward, their red and white high-altitude suits looking like splashes of blood against the snow. They turned over the Hockners, took their weapons. One terrestrial looked over the edge where the fifth Hockner and the probecraft had fallen but the only cushion down there was the tops of the clouds far below.
The Hockners were picked up and lugged off by the terrestrials. Using safety lines and slipping and sliding down the glacier, they loaded the Hockners into the marine attack plane which was now more visible.
One terrestrial came back and checked over the radio telescope and then he went sliding down the glacier, grabbed the door of the plane, and swung aboard.
The plane took off and went down through the clouds. The infrabeam shifted to penetrate the overcast and followed it back to the minesite.
“That proves it,” said the Tolnep half-captain. “It was just as I thought all along.”
He ignored the comments to the effect that he had favored the probes.
“It was a lure,” he continued. “It is quite obvious that at the dam yesterday they went down and made
a harmless eruption of trees to intrigue us. Then they lay in wait and succeeded in capturing two Bolbod crewmen.
“The radio telescope,” he went on, “is just a dummy as I suspected. They have not been used for centuries. Everyone uses infrabeams to pick up faint signals and broadcasts. So they put it there in an elaborate charade to attract down a probe. None of the Hockner crew besides the one so clumsy as to fall off the cliff were killed. The guns were all on 'stun.' Thus they succeeded in luring four Hockners."
“Should you be talking so plainly?” said the Jambitchow commander, stroking his polished scales. “They may have us on monitor.”
“Nonsense,” said the Tolnep. “Our detectors show no infrabeams and we are just on local. I tell you no one has used radio telescopes since...since...the Hambon Sun War! They have far too much clutter; they are too bulky. That's just a dummy down there. And did you notice the cute way that officer came back and ‘adjusted' it. They're just hoping we'll try again.”
“I shouldn't think they need to,” said the Hawvin. “They now have two Bolbod crew and four Hockners to interrogate at leisure. Knowing Psychlo methods of interrogation, I shouldn't care to be those crewmen!”
“They're not Psychlos!" said the Hockner super-lieutenant, covering up the fact that he was aghast at the fate of his crewmen.
“Yes, they are,” said the Bolbod. “You saw that Psychlo with the terrestrials the other day down by the lake. The Psychlos are using aliens as a subject race. They've done it before. I vote we go down in an actual mass attack and pound out any installation they have, now! Before they are further prepared.”
But at that moment they were startled when a hazy image appeared on all their screens. It was a gray black-haired and bearded human visage. The eyes were blue. The being seemed to be wearing an old cloak.
"If you will turn up your transmission to planetary strength,” this newcomer said in Psychlo, “I would like to discuss returning your members to you. The two Bolbods are shaken up but not hurt. The four Hockners are just stunned, though one has a broken arm.”
They turned up to planetary strength, but their response was an emphatic uniform no!
The Tolnep half-captain managed to get his voice above the uproar. “So you can capture the rescue party? Emphatically, no!”
“We can put them all out on a slope-over by that black volcanic cone. All in the open and no ships of ours in the air.” The terrestrial was persuasive. “Call it a truce. Your pickup ship will not be fired upon or molested.”
“You haven't interrogated them that fast,” said the Jambitchow, “so they must be dead!”
“They are quite all right,” said the terrestrial. “Are you sure you won't pick them up?”
Emphatically, no!
“Very well,” said the terrestrial with a shrug of his shoulders. “At least tell us what they eat.”
The Tolnep gave a signal on his screen to the others. Let him speak. “Why, of course,” he said smoothly, smiling.
“We will make up a food package and send it down.”
They went off planetary. “I told you,” said the Tolnep, “that those incidents were a lure. Now two of you have bungled, so let me handle this.”
Presently a rocket-borne package went out of an airlock of the Tolnep ship. It was very well aimed and its parachute burst open below the overcast. It went drifting down and landed just short of the lake shore.
Presently a vehicle went speeding away from the compound toward it. The faces on the viewscreens smiled. If those were Psychlos down there, or whoever they were, they were in for a surprise!
Then suddenly the Hockner super-lieutenant, who had been leafing hurriedly through a recognition book, said, “Oh, I say! That's a Basher 'Bash
Our Way to Glory' tank! Totally armored!”