The pig snuffled in what sounded like annoyance. “we should take no notice of it,” he said finally. “It’s a natural phenomenon, like an earthquake or a star blowing. What can we do about that?”
Gruwert wasn’t able to grasp the significance of it, Archier realised. Like all animals, he lacked the imagination. Only the humans present seemed really frightened.
“Perhaps, but we’re going to have to forget about our task here in Escoria for the time being,” he said. “The Imperial Council takes the space rent even more seriously, and therefore so shall we.”
“Wait a minute!” Gruwert objected furiously. “What about apprehending rebels? There’s one on Earth just waiting to be nabbed! We can’t just move off and let him go free! It isn’t competent!”
Archier reflected. “You’re probably right. In any case, not all the fleet has reported in yet. We shan’t be ready to move for several hours.” He turned to Brigadier Carson of the Drop Commando. “You may make a drop. But be back in ten hours or less.”
The last he heard, as he switched off the conference room, was Gruwert lustily pleading with Carson to let him accompany the mission.
7
To Pout, the moving city had been a disappointment. Mo, the city mind, had insisted on bombarding him with boring lectures on subjects he had no interest in. He had found the Mohists themselves irritatingly difficult to have fun with (and, mindful of the ever-watchful Mo, he had refrained from enslaving any of them with his zen gun). Also, he could feel his grip on his own little group weakening. So, calling them together (this had entailed a few electric prods-at-a-distance) he had decided to leave. Sadly he had been unable to find the girl Hesper, and if he had it would not have been much use—she was not yet under his spell.
The best thing, he told himself, was to get off this planet altogether. He toiled along now on the hills above the plain wondering how to find a spaceport. The brothers said there was one to the south somewhere. The kosho would probably know—but Pout had learned already that he couldn’t look to him for information. The warrior ignored all his attempts to converse.
The sun was hot, and Pout, when he glanced up and saw the glint in the sky, took it for a bird or passing aircraft. Then, as it grew like a stone falling with terrible swiftness, he stopped while the others bunched up behind him.
The big metal shape didn’t seem to slow down at all as it fell. It hit the landscape with an audible thump less than half a mile away, sending up a cloud of dust, then squatted undamaged, banging open wedge-like doors our of which poured a yelping pack of about twenty variegated figures—dogs, hyenas and cheetahs in dazzling harness and all shouting in human voices, one or two humans in bulging armour that made them look like shining robots; and, waddling to one side, encased in some sort of cloth of gold, a fat pig that sniffed and looked about him.
The carnivers all raced to and fro in intense excitement, waiting for orders. “Oh no,” quavered the eldest brother behind Pout. “Empire Commando!”
“What?” Pout knew of these much-feared shock troops, and terror struck him. But he pulled himself together. “Don’t worry! You’re safe with me!”
He drew the zen gun. Kill, kill, he thought. Kill, kill, kill.
He was sure the gun could deal with all of them. He pressed the stud that he had learned intensified the electric stitch beam, whether to hurt, maim or kill. He pointed the muzzle and pressed the firing stud.
The wavery stitching was much weaker than he had expected. It probed towards the noisy pack, raked across the body of a dog which howled and squirmed on the ground, firing its weapons at random.
Then it went out!
Pout gaped. He pressed the intensifier stud again, squeezed the firing stud, thought of killing as hard as he could.
Nothing happened. The zen gun was not working!
Had its power pack run out? He had never even considered that it might have an exhaustible power pack. It had seemed so marvellous, so personally his, that he had presumed it would keep functioning as long as he kept functioning.
But now one of the armoured humans, seeing one of the dogs fall, and seeing from where the attack had come, raised an arm and pointed, bellowing a command. The whole commando unit swept forward, fanning out to form a crescent that began to sweep round Pout and his group.
He began to tremble, and his voice rose to a warbling, panicky contralto. “Kosho! Defend me, kosho! I need you!”
Ikematsu had been walking well to the rear, several paces even behind the laggard Sinbiane. When the party came to a halt he had seated himself upon the ground and entered into his customary suspended consciousness, apparently disinterested in the nearby commando landing.
At Pout’s summons he rose, turning slowly to survey the scene. A few strides took him in advance of Pout’s frightened following and there he stood, still in seeming trance, his eyes half closed, his face expressionless.
An astonishing transformation came over his accoutrements. He did not move his hands or raise his arms from his sides. But the rifles he carried in his rack rose of their own volition, hovering around his head and shoulders. Partly they were under his mental control, partly extensions of his nervous system and knowing themselves what they should do.
Selectively, they let loose a barrage of fire. At his waist, his mortar tube began to lob grenades, picking out patches of ground in flashes of green fire.
The commandos opened fire too. The hovering rifles darted this way and that. Every beam and missile, despatched from a variety of weapons, aimed at Pout’s party was intercepted by the defensive umbrella the kosho projected.
Suddenly there was silence. Ikematsu had killed cheetahs; he had killed dogs; he had killed hyenas. He had not killed either of the two humans or the pig; these were high-ranking personages, and they gave the order now for the surviving commandos to withdraw. They were amazed; they had never before seen a rifle that could cancel out the energy beam from another rifle.
Gruwert had scuttled back into the drop pod. He peered round the edge of the door. “Who’s that?” he demanded angrily. “We’re fighting a single man?”
“It looks like a kosho,” Brigadier Carson told him. He still stood on the ground, but had retreated to where it was only a step to safety. “An ancient mystical warrior order. They’re only found on Earth. I’d heard they were pretty remarkable, but this…”
“What? Why didn’t anyone tell me? They might be the weapon!”
“I don’t think so. They are forbidden to take sides in power politics.”
Ruefully Carson surveyed the scene before the pod. He had lost about half his animals. The survivors, having withdrawn to the shadow of the pod, stood tense, noses pointed to the kosho. A word from him or Major Kastrillo, the only other human in the party, and they would bound into action again totally disregardful of their own lives.
He had no intention, however, of expending them needlessly. He was about to order them back into the pod with a view to bombing the Earthites from the air when the kosho came striding towards him. The commando animals growled; he could see them focusing their skullguns. Unperturbed, the kosho stopped a few yards away.
“My principal would request a cessation of hostilities,” he said calmly. “We have no interest in each other.”
“You killed my animals,” Carson retorted hotly.
“You attacked us.”
“You attacked first.”
“True.” the kosho replied equably. “My principal was perturbed at your behaviour, which he believed presaged an assault upon us. That, too, is my impression.”