Not that she had done badly. But for Marge Menninger there was no such thing as second best, and the Greasies at that moment controlled the entire planet. Barring the dozen hectares her colony sat on, it was all theirs. Their aircraft roamed it at will, so the spy satellites said. They had three separate colonies now, counting the one that had once belonged to the probably no longer surviving Peeps. And apart from the rare occasions when she dared send Kappelyushnikov on a quick survey flight (what would she do if there were some unexplained “accident” to her one and only aircraft?), she was blind except for what the satellites and the few living balloonists could tell. She had even grounded Danny Dalehouse. Not only because of the risk to him — but that was a reason in itself, she admitted privately; she did not want him killed — but because the electricity that made his hydrogen was better used for floodlights to protect the camp and make the crops grow. Also she had apprenticed him to the agronomist, along with Morrissey and the Bulgarian girl — wait a minute, she thought to herself; Dalehouse and Dimitrova? Maybe so. Probably not. They had been friendly, but not that friendly. But then who?
For that matter, she thought, looking at Guy Tree as he chattered away about contingency plans in the event of a major Krinpit attack, who was the father of her own sort-of child? Dalehouse? Tree? That son of a bitch Sweggert, with his cute little tricks? They were the most likely candidates, but which?
In other times, one part of Marge Menninger would have contemplated with sardonic amusement that other part of Marge Menninger which really, dammit!, wanted to know. At present she had no room for that sort of amusement in her mind. The thought of mentioning to Nguyen Tree that the two of them might be in the process of becoming somewhat delayed parents crossed her mind just long enough for her to dismiss it. It promised some good comedy, but it also promised complications she did not want to handle. First things first.
“Are there any archers in the camp?” she asked.
Tree stopped in the middle of explaining his proposal for arming a couple of canoes. “What?”
“People who know how to shoot a bow and arrow, dammit. We must have some. I’d like to organize a contest, part of the sports program.”
“Very likely so, Marjorie. I don’t believe there are any bows and arrows, however.”
“If they know how to shoot them, they know how to make them, don’t they? Or anyway, it’ll be in the microfiches. Get started on that, please, Guy. We’ll give prizes. Coffee, cigarettes. I’ll donate a bottle of Scotch.” The thought that had crossed her mind as he spoke of how he planned to mount a light machine gun in a canoe was that the supplies of ammunition for the guns would not last forever, either, but she wasn’t ready to say that even to her second in command.
Tree looked puzzled, but paused to make a note in his book. “It would be a useful skill for hunting, I suppose.”
Margie nodded without replying. Hunting what? Every animal they had seen on the surface of the planet was well enough armored to laugh off any homemade bow — a conspicuous blunder on the part of evolution in this place, she was convinced. But she let it go.
As they were inspecting the power plant a messenger from the communications shack trotted up. “Ship’s on its way in, colonel,” she reported, panting. “They’ve already retrofired. We ought to see them in a couple of minutes.”
“Thank God,” said Margie. “Put it on the PA. Guy, get twenty grunts for unloading. Tell Major Arkashvili to stand by in case they land rough.”
They didn’t land rough. But they didn’t land right, either. The drogue chute deployed handsomely, the craft came swinging down on its cluster of three big chutes they jettisoned on schedule, and it came in on its rockets. But it never made it to the beach where the others had landed. It came in almost a kilometer short and dropped into the jungle and out of sight.
The good part was that no one was hurt. The fifteen persons on board all came into the camp on their own power; and twelve of them were both young and female. God had answered Margie’s prayer that far, at least. The bad part was that everything on the ship had to be manhandled over eight hundred meters of bad terrain, through jungle and over half a dozen ravines. No matter. They were there. And as Margie scanned the bill of lading she began to relax. It was all there, every last thing she had asked for, and more besides. Seeds and hand tools, weapons and training manuals. It was not enough — there was no such thing as enough — but it was all she had hoped.
First priority was to get everything movable inside the perimeter of the camp. That meant organizing working parties and armed guards to go with them. No Krinpit had been spotted near the landing site, but the woods were full of them. It wasn’t until the first detachments began straggling back with cases of food and boxes of microfiches, folded bicycles and crates of electronic parts, that Margie relaxed long enough to greet the new arrivals. She shook each hand, spoke each name, and turned them over to Santangelo for assignment to quarters. A short black major hung behind. “I’ve got something for you, colonel,” he said, patting a dispatch case. “In private, if you please, ma’am.”
“Come ahead. Vandemeer, is it?” He nodded politely and followed her into her office, where he placed his dispatch case on her desk.
“This is it, ma’am,” he said, unsnapping the case.
It was not a dispatch case. When he had undone the snaps the side peeled back and revealed a microprocessor with a liquid-crystal panel. He touched one of the buttons and it sprang into light, displaying a row of close-typed symbols.
“There’s your guidance, ma’am. There are twelve satellite busters in orbit, and these are the controls.”
Margie touched it. A warm feeling grew in the pit of her stomach and spread, an almost sexual excitement. “You’re checked out on this, Vandemeer? Can you locate the Greasies’ satellites?”
“Yes, ma’am. We’ve got acquisition and lock on four of theirs, including their main tactran receiver. Also the Peeps; they have two, but they don’t seem to be active.” He expertly punched a combination into the processor, and the colors of the symbols changed. “Green lights are ours. Red are Peeps. Yellow are Oilies. The lines that are still white are standby. If anything else comes within two million klicks the guidance system will track and identify it, and one of the spare birds will lock on.”