“What? The what?”
“The native troops, sir. The Narakan Rifles.” Terrence grated.
“The Rifles? Good God, man! We haven’t time for nonsense. The Rifles are only Greenbacks, aren’t they? You get Norton started burning those stores.”
Terrence put down the microphone very carefully to keep from slamming it down and stalked back into his quarters. Angrily he began to take his radiation clothing from its hooks on the wall.
“What the devil is eating you?” demanded Bill Fielding.
“We’re pulling out, lock, stock and barrel,” Terrence told him.
“Pulling out? Whoweee! I knew Mrs. Fielding didn’t raise her boy to be a fried egg. Goodbye, Dust Bin! Hello, New Chi!” Bill was up on his hands and knees pounding on his cot. “But what’s the matter with you? You like this place?”
“They’re leaving the Rifles,” Terrence said, zipping up his protective coveralls as he left the room.
II
Stepping outside on Naraka with the full power of Alpha and Beta Centauri beating down was like stepping into a river of fire. Even with the cooling unit in his suit, Terrence was aware of the searing heat that filled the parade ground. Looking off across the makeshift native huts, he could see the bright sides of a huge space ship-like object. The big dirigible Sun Maid was lying in an open field. It’s a funny world, he thought to himself, where you have to use dirigibles for planetary travel. But a dirigible was the only practical aircraft when you had to use steam turbine engines because of the lack of gasoline and the economic impracticability of transporting it in the limited cargo holds of the occasional spacers that came out from Sol.
The Narakan Rifles were marching toward him now, the band doing absolutely nothing for The Wearing of the Green. Three hundred big, green bodied, beady eyed, frog-like creatures were marching in the boiling heat with their non-coms croaking out orders in English which might have come out of Alice in Wonderland.
As they marched by him, he snapped a salute. Watching them closely he tried to find two men who were in step with each other or one man who had his rifle at the right angle. Unable to find either, he stood there conscious of failure; failure which went beyond mere military precision however. Sloppiness at review could have been overlooked if he had been able to find that the Narakans had any ability as fighting men but after a year of training they seemed almost as hopeless as they had at first. It wasn’t that they were completely unintelligent. In fact, other than the Galactic traveling Rumi, they were the only extra-solar race of intelligent beings encountered by man so far. It was just, he thought, that the hundreds of years during which the Rumi had dominated their planet had reduced the Narakans to a state of almost complete ineptitude.
He stood there as they passed in review three times because he knew that his presence pleased and encouraged them. Then he turned, and with dragging feet made his way down Dust Bin’s single street toward Government House.
In a few minutes he was standing in the cool, air conditioned living room of the Wilsons. Wilson was seated at his desk rummaging through some papers while Norris and Mrs. Wilson were lounging in contour chairs admiring each other over tall, frosty drinks.
They took the news just as he expected them to. Wilson ran his hand through his sparse, gray hair and murmured something about it being a shame to have to leave the natives on their own after having more or less dragged them out of their comfortable swamps. A glance from his wife silenced him.
“What the hell,” Norris said, “they’re only blasted thick witted Greenbacks.”
Mrs. Wilson yawned, “It’ll be something of a bother packing but it’ll certainly be a pleasure to get back to New Chicago. Some women’s husbands get good posts in half-way civilized parts of the Universe. I don’t know why I should always have to be stuck in every backwater, hick town there is.”
Wilson smiled apologetically, “Now, dear….” he began but was interrupted by the sudden ringing of the telephone on the table near Norris’ chair.
“Get that, will you, O’Mara?” the captain said, making no attempt to reach for it, “It’s probably the Command Post.”
Terrence put the phone to his ear angrily and growled into it. An excited Bill Fielding was on the line. “Terry? Is that you? Fielding here. Hell’s breaking loose. There’s a bunch of blasted Rumi trying to force their way into town. They attacked the sentries down this way and may be heading for your end of town too.”
Terrence dropped the phone and headed for the door. “Rumi!” he shouted and there were shouts and cries from outside in answer. Then he heard the clack, clack, clack of Rumi spring guns. Windows of the room crashed in and Wilson collapsed across his desk. Norton grabbed Mrs. Wilson and pulled her down onto the floor. Terrence dropped to his hands and knees and continued toward the door as he drew his forty-five.
Somewhere, someone had cut loose with a Banning and its high whine drowned out the clack of the spring guns. With a quick look around, Terrence started at a run for the next building which was the native schoolhouse. He didn’t make it. There was a clack, clack from off to his left and he threw himself forward, skidding and sliding in the dust and gravel of the street. A warehouse across the square was on fire and three Rumi had darted from behind it. In one brief glance he saw those long barreled spring guns of theirs and the tall, graceful bodies and the feline faces under the plastic protective clothing.
He snapped four shots at them and saw one fall. Then he began to slither along the ground raising enough dust to mask his movements. There were half a dozen of them in the square when he reached the rear door of the schoolhouse. Several gleaming plastic bolts smashed into the wooden outer door a second after he had raised up to open it and then had dropped back down.
Norton fired from the residency and momentarily scattered the Rumi and Terrence was inside the school room and racing for the side window from which he could get a clear line of fire at the raiders. He had a brief glimpse of Joan Allen, the school teacher, standing in a corner of the room with the tiny green figures of native children huddled around her. Then he was at a window and had beaten out the heavy protective glass and was firing into a mass of the catmen, firing and cursing as his gun emptied. He cursed in a stream of Martian, English and Greenback profanity as he forced another clip into the gun.
“Lieutenant O’Mara, if you’ll be so kind as to restrain your language in front of these children,” a voice said from over his shoulder.
Terrence reached back and felt something soft and forced it over against the wall out of the line of the window. Then he risked a quick look which was almost his last. A spring gun bolt burned a groove in the windowsill next to his head and smashed into the blackboard across the room.
“Lieutenant O’Mara, would you mind telling me what this is all about?” came the same calm determined woman’s voice from beside him. He fired again at a darting figure across the square and saw it stumble before he had to drop to his haunches as the window above him was smashed and scattered by bolts and glass rained down about his head.
He put another clip into his gun and cursed because he had only two left. He turned his head briefly and had a quick glimpse of a white face framed in straight dark hair and a small, neat figure in a yellow dress.
“Rumi attack. One of their patrols must have gotten around the battalion.”
A husky, whimpering little sound made him look down. A native child or pollywog as the Terrans called them was clinging desperately to the teacher’s skirt. His tiny webbed feet clutched at the cloth as he buried his face against her leg. From behind her peered still another child, its baby frog face working spasmodically in the beginnings of a sob. Six or seven others were lying flat on the floor their bodies trembling in terror.
Terrence took another look outside and what he saw sent him into another stream of cursing. The Narakan Rifles were hurrying to the scene of action. Down the middle of the street they came in a column of fours with their drums and bugles blaring out a poor imitation of The Wearing of the Green. Their standard bearer was running at the head of the column beside Sergeant Major O’Shaughnessy.
“Oh, my God! He wouldn’t…!”
“Lieutenant, please!”
“Teacher, will you shut up!” he roared as he leaped across the room toward the front door. At the harsh tone of his voice, the whimpering sounds in the room suddenly burst forth in full volume as the ten pollywogs raised their hoarse voices into full throated croaks.
Terrence braced his body against the wall and held his gun ready as he pulled open the door. In parade formation his men were moving up the street and in a moment they would be away from the buildings’ protection
