Brown Limper was still admiring one of the bank notes he held in his hand. The thought of showing it off to the village people warmed him. He did not even mind the harrowing way that Lars Thorenson flew.
Narrowly missing snow-covered peaks that were not even on their route, Lars set them down near the old mining town.
But it all seemed deserted.
Not a single plume of smoke rose from a fire. Not even the smell of it remained.
Carrying a Thompson, Snith scouted the place. Empty! Not even a trace of belongings. Nothing.
Brown Limper searched, looking for a clue, dragging his clubfoot through the smooth snow from building to building. Finally he found where they must have had a meeting. There were some torn scraps of paper lying about. And then, under a table where it might have fallen off a pile of papers unnoticed, he found a letter.
It was from Tom Smiley Townsen.
Brown Limper looked at it and went into an immediate rage. Not at what it said, but at Tom Smiley's having the effrontery to know how to write. What arrogance! But then he saw it was not really written, it was printed, and rather crudely at that. Even the signature was printed. So he decided to be tolerant and read it.
The letter went on and on about how nice some area known as “Tashkent” was. Big mountains, endless plains of wild wheat, lots of sheep. And a mild winter climate. And how he had gotten married to some...? Some Latin! Disgraceful. No blood purity there.
Brown Limper threw the letter down.
Well, maybe the village people had gone back to their old home. They had not wanted to move. But he was surprised that the Indians and the people from the Sierra Nevadas and the other British Columbian fellow had not remained here for they hadn't cared for the old village– too cold and too heavy a prospect of starving every winter.
They flew to the old village. Lars had trouble setting down and almost landed in the middle of one of those uranium circles. When he could let go his grip on the seat, Brown Limper looked around.
No smoke here, either.
Brown Limper poked into some of the houses. When they had moved at such short notice people had had to leave most of their personal possessions behind and Brown Limper thought they must still be there. But no. Every house was empty. Not ransacked the way Brigantes left places. Just neatly empty.
With a bit of fear– because it had been booby-trapped– he approached the old Tyler house. It was still standing. Maybe the booby traps hadn't gone off.
Then he saw that some of the roof was bulged and he went around to the other side to where the front door had been. The door had been blown off. Lars and Snith were poking at something in the snow.
It was the remains of two Brigantes. What hadn't been burned had been torn apart by wolves. It was obvious they had tripped the booby traps and quite a while ago.
General Snith poked at the scraps of money, skin, and bones with the muzzle of the submachine gun. "Mus hab come oop here browling fer loot!” said Snith. “Waste of good meat!”
Brown Limper wanted to be alone. He dragged his foot up the slope to the place they once had buried people. He turned at the top and gazed down at the empty village, falling apart and now abandoned forever.
Something had been nagging at him and now it hit him.
He was a tribal leader without a tribe.
From five tribes he had descended to one– the Brigantes! And they were not native to America.
Numbly he realized he had better keep this awfully quiet. It undermined his whole position.
Something caught his eye. A monument? A small stone shaft sticking up out of the ground. He moved around it. It had an inscription:
TIMOTHY BRAVE TYLER
A good father Erected in Respectful
Memory By his loving son
J.G.T.
Brown Limper screamed! He tried to kick the monument down. It was too firmly planted and he only bruised his foot. He stood and screamed and screamed, tearing the echoes of the valley apart.
Then he stopped. It was all Jonnie Goodboy Tyler's fault. Everything that had befallen Brown Limper all his life was totally and wholly Tyler's fault!
So Tyler would come again, would he? Terl might have his plans and they might be all right. But Brown Limper was going to make very, very sure.
If Tyler ever hit that firing platform again he was a dead man.
Brown Limper went down to the waiting plane. He said to Lars and Snith-they mustn't know what he really intended-'For our mutual protection, I think you should teach me how to use a Thompson submachine gun.”
They agreed it would be wise.
Terl had said time and again you didn't dare shoot off a gun during a transshipment. But who cared about that? Two guns. He would use two guns.... Brown Limper planned how he would do it all the way back to Denver.
Chapter 3
The small gray man sat watching the strange antics of a terrestrial craft several miles above his orbit.
The combined force had learned over a month ago to leave such a craft alone. Half-Captain Rogodeter Snowl, already in disgrace over trying to sneak a kidnap and cut them out of the potential loot, had charged his Vulcor-class cruiser, guns blazing, at a ship doing exactly what this one was doing. The strange craft had sidestepped neatly; there reportedly had been a series of clangs against the cruiser's hull.
Snowl had pulled up, mystified as to what the “clangs” betokened. He had sent crewmen out on lines to inspect his hull and they had been horrified to discover they had about twenty limpet mines on it, held solidly by magnetism to the hull.
The terrestrial craft had apparently mined the orbit they used.
Snowl had been further embarrassed to discover that the mines did not explode. They had atmosphere pressure fuses, which meant that if he brought the Vulcor-class cruiser within a hundred thousand feet of the planet's surface, the air pressure would explode them there.
Every commander had hastily examined his whole ship to see if he had picked any up. They hadn't, but it meant to them that if you chased that terrestrial ship it threw a cloud of mines in your path. Very unnerving! So they left it alone.
The ship had a huge door in the side and a lot of cranes. The small gray man was no miner or military expert, but the ship was obviously collecting space debris. It wasn't using its cranes so it must have a big magnet inside that door.
Apparently it would spot something on its screen– there were a lot of odd bits in orbit just now as a large, strange comet had entered the system lately, evidently from some other system, and bits of it were floating around and occasionally hitting the meteor shielding of most of these ships. Then the terrestrial would go out and pace the object-many of them were moving as fast as nineteen miles a second– and suddenly dart sideways. The apparent magnets inside that door would collect it.
Rather interesting, the small gray man thought. Somewhat like a hummingbird he had once seen, darting about after insects, stopping around a flower, and then zooming off. He needed something to occupy his mind.
There was no word yet. Probably wouldn't be for another couple of months. No new courier had come to him, which seemed to mean that the one had not been found elsewhere. These were very troubled times.
His indigestion had begun to act up again. About three weeks ago he had gone down to see the old woman– he had run out of peppermint leaves. She had been glad to see him and so had the dog. She had used the vocoder to start up some trade with the Swedes and she had sold them some oats and some butter and she was rolling in money– look, six credits! Enough to buy an acre of ground or another cow! And she had been busy evenings. Cold weather had been coming on and it must be an awful lot colder up there in the sky, and she had knitted him a nice gray sweater.