Snowleter was smiling. He touched his quarter-admiral's cap in a salute. “I am at your orders!”
Jonnie hit another button. The camera seemed to draw further away. It showed the whole combined force in the sky over the Purgatoire River. The sound was off.
“That is your admiral, that is the fleet.” Jonnie hit a pair of buttons. The picture was gone and the spotlight back on.
The emissaries were enthralled. They had never seen atmosphere projection before. It was like looking at a totally live scene. Yes, that was the Tolnep fleet all right. That was the admiral. Schleim's attitude said clearly it was.
Suddenly Lord Schleim exploded. “Doctored pictures. Anyone can doctor recordings. This so-called evidence-”
“Oh come now, Schleim," said Jonnie. “Bombast and hysteria won't cancel this. The pictures were too clear to be 'doctored' as you call it.”
He turned to the emissaries. “So you see, your lordships, the Tolnep admiral was not acting under the orders of his government but under those of a private individual. He was acting for personal profit and not for his planet. Be quiet, Schleim; you can't cover up evidence with shockingly bad temper. My apologies for his conduct, my lords. One can sympathize with his position. This Quarter-Admiral Snowleter, by the way, is the uncle of Half-Captain Rogodeter Snowl and was brought into the venture by his nephew according to discs and traces we have available. It was a family matter and the piratical venture is obviously being continued by the nephew.”
Jonnie didn't tell them there was a lot more in the views just shown which did not necessarily carry out his point. But very clearly Roof Arsebogger had been the one to egg the admiral on.
“So the point of piracy,” said Jonnie, “has been proven. Here we had a fleet operating by another authority from that of its government. If you will indulge me a moment longer, I will simply ask this Schleim for the surrender of those ships and then we can get about our more appropriate business of piracies and treaties. Schleim, will you please call whoever is in command now and tell him to gather his ships in a meadow I will name-'
“You must be mad!” screamed Schleim. “Our fleet is in full command of your skies and you ask us-'
“To help end a pirate venture,” Jonnie finished for him. “My lords, forgive me, but this Schleim is going to occupy a little more of your valuable time before you are rid of him. With your permission, we will complete this odious business.”
Yes, yes. By all means go ahead. We can take up the treaty later. They agreed. The combatant-planet emissaries were looking at one another, a bit frightened. What had they gotten themselves mixed up in?
The small gray men looked less hangdog.
But Sir Robert, studying Schleim, knew he was far from finished. He was using the moment to hiss into his radio. He was giving orders, something about making suicide crashes. He must be a bit rattled for he was speaking Psychlo.
Sir Robert excused himself and stepped quickly over to operations to tell their forces what was going on, to tell them to be alert, to double their efforts to fight back.
The first small gray man slipped out and passed an order to his ship to turn on two red lights and change the radio signal to “Alert! Alert! An interplanetary, intergalactic conference is taking place within this area. Any capital ship or vessel of any kind entering this zone will be branded an intergalactic outlaw and its government or owner subject to all penalties that can be imposed. Alert! Alert! An interplanetary, intergalactic conference is...”
Chapter 3
Lord Schleim was not the least bit rattled. He knew exactly what he was doing: he was now applying a maxim of diplomacy which stated that when diplomacy failed, one resorted to military means.
It had become obvious to him in these last few minutes that if he continued along the previous course, he would lose. So he had shifted his entire planning suddenly and irrevocably.
These were very troubled times. He felt the power of the small gray man had crumbled and that things were not what they used to be. Therefore, any threat of retaliation from the small gray man could be ignored. This was the first emissary meeting in over a year and he was completely certain that the power of the emissaries and collective governments had become a shadow that was no real danger to Tolnep-these empires and states were too far away.
He had just given Half-Captain-now Captain Snowl just today– very specific orders. He had used a word code known only to officers of flag rank and executives high in the Tolnep government. Using one set of words, one could convey quite another meaning. Additionally, the radio band used was hyper-nondirectional, known only to the Tolneps, and could not be picked up on any other radio except those used by flag officers and the diplomatic service, a band which was constantly running on the bridge of every Tolnep major war vessel. And if that weren't safe enough, the transmissions were also scrambled.
Schleim had just ordered Rogodeter Snowl to send the ships of other combatants to the terrestrial points being defended by the Earthlings, to gather up all Tolnep forces, and to proceed with all speed to the conference location. He had told Snowl to totally disregard any and all conference warnings of the small gray man.
Since the bulk of the Tolnep vessels were at Singapore, a little over forty-five hundred miles away– quite close, really– they would arrive over this spot in about two hours.
Schleim had, in the bottom of his scepter, on the opposite end from the radio, a paralysis beam. All he had to do was give the end of it a twist and every person or creature within hearing would become instantly paralyzed except himself: a tap on his own ears first would close his deaf-flaps. This entire conference was at his mercy. All he had to do was get them all outside in the bowl on some pretext so that any and all guards were also within hearing distance, listen for the first signs of the arrival of his fleet, tap his own ears, and twist the bottom of the scepter.
Tolnep diplomats were chosen for bravery as well as wits. He would pick up a gun and shoot his way to the switches of the armor cable if necessary, turn it off, and let his fleet marines in.
As to this teleportation console, he really couldn't care less. Tolnep would be better off if it were destroyed– a nation that based its economy on slavery was always under some kind of threat and this teleportation had interfered with Tolnep far more than it had helped.
He himself was within flying distance of home. The other combatants were also and would have to bow to his commands or be killed. As for the rest of these emissaries, how they got home if ever was no concern of his.
And dead emissaries and a dead litter of terrestrial personnel told no tales, especially when buried.
He would of course go through the motions of torturing this devil and try to get the teleportation design out of him. If the devil died in the process, it did not matter.
But the cream of the jest was that, if anything went wrong, he would use the devil's own arguments to defend himself. He would claim that Rogodeter Snowl had turned pirate, that he had acted contrary to orders and that his approach to this conference was an outlaw act. He knew he could depose and execute Snowl and still command the Tolnep crews. Snowl would simply be sacrificed for the greater good of the state– a common expedient in such diplomatic circles.