“Shut up,” said Terl.
"In the regulations,” persisted Zzt, “it says these things only get used in 'most extreme emergency!' There is no emergency, Terl.”
“Shut up,” said Terl, going on with his wire matching.
“And you've ordered it permanently parked in front of the automatic firing bay. We need that for servicing ore freighters. This is a war drone, and they only use them for primary attack on a planet and never use them afterward except in a withdrawal. There is no war, and we're not withdrawing from this planet.”
Terl had had enough. He threw down his notes and loomed over Zzt. “lam the best judge of these things. Where there is no war department on a planet, the security chief has that post. My orders are final. This drone gets parked at the hangar firing door and don't you move it! As to control,” he shook the small one-foot-square box in front of Zzt's face, “all it needs is the date setting and fire buttons pushed in and there's nothing erratic after that! This drone will go and do what it's supposed to do! And it stays on standby!”
Zzt backed up. Dollies were moving the huge old relic over to the firing door where it would be in the way of everything and leave no other door to service freighters.
“Those were awfully funny locations you were punching in,” Zzt said faintly.
Terl was holding a big wrench. He walked closer to Zzt. “They're man-names for planet locations. They're the places where mar.-animals were left.”
“That little handful?” ventured Zzt.
Terl screamed something and threw the wrench at him. Zzt ducked and it went clanging across the hangar floor, making workers dodge.
“You're acting kind of insane, Terl,” said Zzt.
“Only alien races ever go insane!” screamed Terl.
Zzt stood aside as they dollied the ancient drone to the firing door.
“It’s going to stay right there,” yelled Terl at nobody in particular. “It’ll get fired anytime in the next four months.” And for sure on Day 93, he smiled to himself.
Zzt wondered for a moment whether he ought to shoot Terl when they were in some quiet place. Terl had restored weapons to the employees, refilled the weapon racks in compound halls, let them wear belt guns again. Then he remembered that Terl had an envelope parked somewhere “in case of death.”
Later, Zzt mentioned it privately to Numph. Zzt liked to hunt and the bomber drone would wipe out most of the game again. Numph had also liked to hunt once.
But Numph just sat there and looked woodenly at him.
The bomber drone, the one originally shipped in to gas and conquer the planet, remained standing at the firing door, in everybody's way, filled with lethal gas, preset, just requiring a few punches of the remote Terl kept in his own possession.
Zzt shuddered every time he passed it. Terl had obviously gone stark raving mad.
That night in his quarters Terl did feel spinny. Another day and he had gotten absolutely no clue as to what Jayed was up to, what the agent was looking for.
Terl followed the recon drone photos. The animals were burrowing underground now, which was smart. They might possibly make it, and if they didn't he had his answers.
He looked in on the females every evening, throwing wood and meat at them. Sometimes he found packages outside the cage door– he chose not to think about how they got there-and threw them in too. He'd fixed the water, but so it overflowed. The bigger one was sitting up again. He never saw them without being nagged by the puzzle of “psychic powers”; he wondered which one of them sent out the impulses and whether they could be read on a scope. Oh, well, as long as the animals up in the mountains worked, he'd keep these females alive. It was good leverage.
But on Day 93, ha! He could not count on the animals not talking. He could not count on the company or government not catching up with him. The animals had to go, and this time all of them.
Terl fell asleep floundering around in a half-conceived possibility. Jayed was denying him gold. It was Jayed's fault.
But how did one commit the perfect murder of a top agent of the I.B.I.? It made one's head spin to try to work it out. Meantime he would be the model of efficiency. He had to look like the greatest, most cautious and alert security chief the company had ever known.
Was he crazy, really? No. Just clever.
Chapter 4
Jonnie was going home.
In a canyon above the village meadow, they unloaded four horses and a pack from the freight plane. The breath of the horses hung about them in small, thin puffs. The horses, very recently wild, had not liked the ride and stamped about and snorted when their blindfolds were removed. The air was clear and frosty at this altitude.
Snow from the recent storm covered the world and silenced it.
Angus MacTavish and Parson MacGilvy were with Jonnie. A pilot had come along so that the plane could be moved in case the visit lasted longer than a day. The recon drone had already gone by when they took off from the base and the plane should not be there when it passed again.
A week ago Jonnie had awakened in the night with the sudden realization that he might know where some uranium was. His own village! He had no great hope for it, but the signs were there in the illness of his people. Possibly there was no great amount, but also possibly there was more than that single rock from Uravan. He felt a trifle guilty for having to have an ulterior motive to go home, for there were other reasons. His people should be moved, both because of their continuous exposure to radiation and also because they should not be exposed in any future bombing.
Jonnie and his men had scoured the mountains for another possible home, and only yesterday had they found one. It was an old mining town on the western slope, lower in altitude, open through a narrow pass to a western plain. A brook ran down the street in the town center. Many of the buildings and houses still retained glass. Wild cattle and game were plentiful. But even better there was a large, half-mile-long tunnel behind the town that could serve as refuge. A coal deposit was on the hill nearby. The place was beautiful. It had no trace of uranium in it.
Jonnie did not think the people of the village would move. He had tried before as a youth and even his father had thought he was just being restless. But he had to try again.
Angus and the parson had insisted on coming with him. He had explained the dangers of exposure to radiation to them and had not wanted to put them at risk. But Angus simply waved a breathe-gas bottle and promised to check it out ahead of them and not be foolish about it, and the parson, being a wise and experienced member of the clergy, knew Jonnie might need help.
They knew better than to simply fly a plane into the meadow. The people had seen recon drones all their lives, but a plane close up might terrify them.
Chapter 5
“Wake up, Jonnie! Wake up! It flashed!”
Jonnie pried himself awake. It was still dark, though dawn was late at this season of the year. It was disorienting to find himself in his own room with Angus shaking him and a miner's light burning on the table.
Suddenly he grasped the import of what Angus was saying and got up and began to get into his buckskins.
Angus had awakened very early and had been thirsty, and Aunt Ellen had heard him clattering around the buckets. There had been no water and Angus didn't like eating snow, so Aunt Ellen had said she would go get some water. But Angus said no, he'd get the water if she showed him where it was, and she pointed out the spring where everybody got their water on the edge of the village, and he took a hide bucket and went. Because he'd promised Jonnie not to go anywhere without testing, he'd taken a vial of breathe-gas and the remote, and he had been tossing the breathe-gas bottle thirty feet ahead of him and turning it on and off and WHAM, it flashed!