“Good,” Yeager said sincerely. He’d been away from the American nuclear-bomb program for a while now, but he knew the infernal devices didn’t roll off the assembly line like so many De Sotos. “The other thing holding him back is your colonization fleet, isn’t it?”
“Truth,” Straha replied at once. “This consideration has inhibited our actions in the past, and continues to do so. Atvar may decide, however, that making peace with you will leave the Race less of the habitable surface of Tosev 3 than he could hope to obtain by damaging large portions of the planet on our behalf.”
“It wouldn’t keep us from fighting back, you know,” Sam said, and hoped he wasn’t whistling in the dark.
Evidently Straha didn’t think he was, because the shiplord said, “We are painfully aware of this. It is one of the factors that has to this point deterred us from that course. More important, though, is our desire not to damage the planet for our colonists, as you have noted.”
“Mm-hmm,” Sam said, tasting the irony of Earth’s safety riding more on the Lizards’ concern for their own kind than on any worries about human beings. “We’ve got what, something like eighteen years, before the rest of your people get here?”
“No, twice that,” Straha answered. Then he made a noise like a bubbling teakettle. “My apologies-if you are using Tosevite years, you are correct.”
“Yeah, I was-I’m a Tosevite, after all,” Yeager said with a wry grin. “What are your colonists going to think if they come to a world that isn’t completely in your hands, the way they thought it would be when they set out from Home?”
“The starship crews will be aware of changed conditions when they intercept our signals beamed back toward Home,” Straha said. “No doubt this will fill them with consternation and confusion. Remember, we of the conquest fleet have had some time now to try to accommodate ourselves to the unanticipated conditions on Tosev 3. These will be new for them, and the Race does not adapt well. In any case, there will be little they can do. The colonization fleet is not armed; the assumption was that we of the conquest fleet would have this world all nicely pacflied before the colonists arrived. And, of course, the colonists themselves are in cold sleep and will remain ignorant of the true situation until they are revived upon the fleet’s arrival.”
“They’ll get quite a surprise, won’t they?” Sam said, chuckling.
“How many of them are there, anyhow?”
“I do not know, not in precise figures,” Straha replied. “My responsibility, after all, was with the conquest fleet. But if our practice in colonizing the worlds of the Rabotevs and Hallessi was followed back on Home-as it almost certainly would have been, given our fondness for precedent-then we are sending here something between eighty and one hundred million males and females… Those coughs mean nothing in my language, Samyeager.” He pronounced Yeager’s name as if it were one word. “Have they some signflication in yours?”
“I’m sorry, Shiplord,” Sam said when he could speak coherently again. “Must have swallowed wrong, or something.”Eighty or a hundred millioncolonists? “The Race doesn’t do things by halves, does it?”
“Of course not,” Straha said.
“One mortflication after another,” Atvar said in deep discontent. From where he stood, the situation down on the surface of Tosev 3 looked gloomy. “Almost better we should have expended a nuclear device on those mutineers than let them go over to the SSSR.”
“Truth,” Kirel said. “The loss of the armaments is bad. Before long, the Big Uglies will copy whatever features they can figure out how to steal. That has happened before, and is happening again: we have recent reports that the Deutsche, for instance, are beginning to deploy armor-piercing discarding sabot ammunition against our landcruisers.”
“I have seen these reports,” the fleetlord agreed. “They do not inspire me with delight.”
“Nor me,” Kirel answered. “Moreover, the loss of the territory formerly controlled by the base whose garrison mutinied has given us new problems. Though weather conditions in the area remain appallingly bad, we have evidence that the SSSR is attempting to reestablish its east-west rail link.”
“How can they do that?” Atvar said. “Surely even Big Uglies would freeze if forced to work in such circumstances.”
“From what we have seen in the SSSR, Exalted Fleetlord, it would appear hardly more concerned about the well-being of its laborers than is Deutschland,” Kirel said mournfully. “Getting the task done counts for more than the number of lives expended in the process.”
“Truth,” Atvar said, and then added, “Madness,” and an emphatic cough. “The Deutsche sometimes appear to put expending lives above extracting labor. What was the name of that place where they devoted so much ingenuity to slaughter? Treblinka, that was it.” The Race had never imagined a center wholly devoted to exterminating intelligent beings. Atvar would have been as glad never to have been exposed to some of the things he’d learned on Tosev 3.
He waited for Kirel to mention the most important reason why the fall of the Siberian base was a disaster. Kirel didn’t mention it. All too likely, Kirel hadn’t thought of it. He was a good shiplord, none better, when someone told him what to do. Even for a male of the Race, though, he lacked imagination.
Atvar said, “We now have to deal with the problem of propaganda broadcasts from the mutineers. By all they say, they are cheerful, well fed, well treated, with plenty of that pernicious herb, ginger, for amusement. Transmissions such as these are liable to touch off not only further mutinies but also desertions by individual males who cannot find partners with whom to conspire.”
“What you say is likely to be correct,” Kirel agreed. “It is to be hoped that increased vigilance on the part of officers will help to allay the problem.”
“It is to be hoped, indeed,” Atvar said with heavy sarcasm. “It is also to be hoped that we shall be able to keep from losing too much ground in this northern-hemisphere winter, and that guerrilla raids against our positions will ease. In some places-much of Italia springs to mind-we are unable to administer or control territory allegedly under our jurisdiction.”
“We need more cooperation from the Tosevite authorities who yielded to us,” Kirel said. “This is true all over the planet, and especially so in Italia, where our forces might as well be at war again.”
“Most of the Italian authorities, such as they were, went up with the atomic bomb that destroyed Roma,” Atvar answered. “Too many of the ones who are left still favor their overthrown not-emperor, that Mussolini. How I wish the Deutsch raider, that Skorzeny, hadn’t succeeded in stealing him and spiriting him off into Deutschland. His radio broadcasts, along with those of our former ally Russie and the traitor Straha, have proved most damaging of all counterpropaganda efforts against us.”
“That Skorzeny has been a pin driven under our scales throughout the campaign of conquest,” Kirel said. “He is unpredictable even for a Tosevite, and deadly as well.”
“I wish I could dispute it, but it is truth,” the fleetlord said sadly. “In addition to all the other harm he has inflicted on our cause, he cost me Drefsab, the one Intelligence officer we had who was both devious and energetic enough to match the Big Uglies at their own primary traits.”
“Wherefore now, Exalted Fleetlord?” Kirel asked.
“We carry on as best we can,” Atvar answered, a response that did not satisfy him and plainly did not satisfy Kirel. Trying to amplify it, he went on, “One thing we must do is increase security around our starships. If the Big Uglies can smuggle nuclear weapons within range of them, rather than of cities, they potentially have the ability to hurt us even worse than they have already.”