into the casino business. He hoped Victor Phule wasn't being too tough on the staff...
Abruptly, Bascomb' s voice came through the speaker of the wrist communicator. "Captain, everything's hit the fan," he growled.
"Hit the fan?" Phule was nonplussed. "What's going on there, 'tullie?"
"I'll tell you what's going on," said Bascomb. "Between your know-it-all father and some third-rate con artist we never should have let into the joint..." Phule could hear shouting in the background, and Bascomb said, "Excuse me a second, Captain," and the line went quiet; evidently Tullie had pressed the mute button. Then, after a pause, Bascomb returned and began speaking again. "All right, Captain, this whole screw up was my idea, and I've got to take the heat for it. You've got my resignation as of right now, if you want it..."
"Wait a minute," said Phule. "Con artist? Screwup? Resignation? 'tullie, I don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about. Will you go back to the start and tell me the whole story?"
"All right," said Bascomb. "It all started with your father..."
"I'm not surprised," said Phule. "Go ahead, Tullie."
"You remember we set up the thousand-dollar slots to get him to play, and you authorized a really big prize to lead him on? We all figured the odds were so long there wouldn't be a bug's chance on a hot griddle of our actually having to give the prize..."
"Yes, 1 remember," said Phule. He suddenly sat bolt upright. "Don't tell me..."
"I am telling you, Captain," said Bascomb. "But that's not the worst of it. Your damn-fool father wasn't satisfied with playing the slots himself, he had to go and give his chips to other people to play for him. Now I've got some smirking greaseball sitting in my office..."
"Hey, buddy, show a li'l respect," Phule could hear a muffled voice say in the background.
"All right, all right," said Bascomb, resignedly. "Captain, the long and short of it is this: this guy sitting in my office is named Ernie Erkeep, and I'm sorry to tell you that, thanks to your old man, the bum now owns a controlling share-what used to be your share, in fact-in the Fat Chance Casino. Here, I'm tired of looking at the sleazy bastard. Why don't you talk to him while I go get myself a couple of stiff drinks?" And the speaker again went silent while Phule sat looking stupidly at his wrist, waiting for someone on the other end to say something.
Thumper and the group of legionnaires he'd eaten breakfast with arrived in the center of the parade ground just before Sergeant Brandy emerged from the modular structure that was the main building on Zenobia Base. The Top Sergeant of Omega Company was one of the largest humans Thumper had ever seen, although she was a good bit shorter than the Volton legionnaire named Tusk-anini.
"All right, people, this is the Legion. Let's see something I could mistake for a formation," said Brandy, resignedly. She flipped through papers on a clipboard as the squad lined up, with only a minimum of grumbling.
Thumper took a -place in the middle of three rows, toward one end, waiting to see what would happen. He'd been in formations before, and had learned not to be either too eager to catch the leader's attention or too obviously trying to escape it.
When everyone was more or less in place, Brandy looked up, and said, "We don't usually do roll call-I know all of you by now. But we've got a new guy today, and I think it'd be a good idea to call roll until he gets an idea who everybody else is, and you get to know who he is. So sound off when I call your names-you've all done this before, so don't make things any -harder than they've gotta be."
"Sergeant, I have a question," said Mahatma, raising his !mid in the front row.
Brandy rolled her eyes. "Gimme a break, Mahatma! Can't it wait until after roll call? I'd like to get through at least that much before the philosophical seminar for the day."
"But I just want to know how hard things have got to x," said Mahatma. "Do Legion regulations specify the degree of difficulty of roll call?"
"As a matter of fact, they do," growled Brandy. "They Say you're supposed to answer when I call your name, unless you aren't here, in which case I mark you absent. Is ;hat hard enough for you?"
"Maybe not for him, but it's a real challenge for some of these grunts," came a voice from the back of the formation.
Brandy glared. "Shut up; Roadkill," she barked. Then, after a pause, she added, "Haven't you feebs figured out I know your voices by now? OK, come on, let's hear a nice clear answer when I call your names. Brick?"
"Here, Sergeant," said a thin human female just in front of Thumper. Brandy put a mark on her pad and continued. "Cheap-sho?"
"Yo!" said another voice from the ranks.
Brandy dropped the hand with the clipboard to her side and glowered. "Look here, Cheapshot, we're trying to show Thumper how we do things in Omega Company.
How many times have I told you not to answer 'Yo' when I call the roll?"
"Bunch of times, Sarge," said Cheapshot. "Never convinced me, though. You wanna show the new guy how we do things in Omega, you gotta include the bad with the good, right?"
"Cheapshot makin' sense," said another voice, and Thumper could hear still others murmuring their agreement.
Then Brandy said, "Shut up!" and the murmurs stopped.
"OK," she said, "maybe you've got a point, Cheap shot. I'll agree that there's a lot of good things about the Omega way, but this is one of those times when I just want the good old Legion way. Believe me, there'll come a time when you'll thank me for this."
"If we thank you now, will you stop?" said another voice from the ranks.
"SHUT UP!" said Brandy, before the murmurs could get started. "If you just want to screw things up, I can make you stand here all day and never get to the fun stuff. I was gonna take you out to the obstacle course today, so Thumper can get a look at how Omega runs it." Suddenly the entire formation fell silent, and Thumper could see the spines of his fellow legionnaires straighten as they came to attention in a way they'd only hinted at before. Even Cheapshot stood up straighter, and said, "I meant, Here, Sergeant!"
"That's a lot better," said Brandy, bringing up the clipboard and checking off the legionnaire's name. "Dukes?" The rest of the roll call went so smoothly that even Thumper was impressed. What was it about the obstacle course that had such influence over Omega Company?
Whatever it was, he was about to find out...
Qual and his squad of Zenobians were out in the central compound of Zenobia Base again, busy at work as Sushi walked up to them. "Hey, what's new, Qual?" he said, waving to the Zenobian Flight Leftenant.
Qual looked up from the piece of equipment he and his crew were working on. It was apparently called the Sklern. At least, that was what Qual had told Sushi it was. But after hearing Qual explain how no two Zenobians spoke their language in exactly the same way, Sushi wasn't sure he could assume that the words Qual told him for local objects had any universal validity for other Zenobians. The explanation still didn't quite make sense to him. But today, he had other things to think about, in particular Rev's quest for the mysterious 'L'VlZ.
"Oh ho, welcome, Rawfish!" said Qual. "All goes rippingly with us today, our alignments are exemplary!"
"Uh... triff," said Sushi. Then, recognizing an apparent opening, he went on, "Really interesting machine you guys have here. What does it do?"
Qual's face assumed what Sushi took to be a serious expression. "Much of what it does is organized," the Zenobian officer said.
It took Sushi a moment to make the mental connection between the translator's wording and Qual's probable meaning. "Oh, I didn't mean to pry into military secrets," he said. "Just curious about the apparatus, y'know."