“The last of us for this section are coming in now,” Andy Taylor answered. He made his check of all the subleaders, then looked up to the roof to ask, “All set, Jimmy?”
Jimmy Stevens’ grinning face appeared over the edge. “Ten crossbows are cocked and waiting up here. Bring us our targets.”
They waited, while the evening deepened into near-dusk. Then the airlock of the cruiser slid open and thirteen Gerns emerged, the one leading them wearing the resplendent uniform of a subcommander.
“There they come,” he said to Lake and Craig. “It looks like we’ll be able to trap them in here and force the commander to send out a full-sized force. We’ll all attack at the sound of the horn and if you can hit their rear flanks hard enough with the unicorns to give us a chance to split them from this end some of us should make it to the ship before they realize up in the control room that they should close the airlocks.
“Now”—he looked at the Gerns who were coming straight toward the stockade wall, ignoring the gate to their right—“you’d better be on your way. We’ll meet again before long in the ship.”
Fenrir and Sigyn looked from the advancing Gerns to him with question in their eyes after Lake and Craig were gone, Fenrir growling restlessly.
“Pretty soon,” he said to them. “Right now it would be better if they didn’t see you. Wait inside, both of you.”
They went reluctantly inside, to merge with the darkness of the interior. Only an occasional yellow gleam of their eyes showed that they were crouched to spring just inside the doorway. He called to the nearest unarmed man, not loud enough to be heard by the Gerns:
“Cliff—you and Sam Anders come here. Tell the rest to fade out of sight and get armed.”
Cliff Schroeder passed the command along and he and Sam Anders approached. He looked back at the Gerns and saw they were within a hundred feet of the—for them—unscalable wall of the stockade. They were coming without hesitation—
A pale blue beam lashed down from one of the cruiser’s turrets and a fifty-foot section of the wall erupted into dust with a sound like thunder. The wind swept the dust aside in a gigantic cloud and the Gerns came through the gap, looking neither to right nor left.
“That, I suppose,” Sam Anders said from beside him, “was Lesson Number One for degenerate savages like us: Gerns, like gods, are not to be hindered by man-made barriers.”
The Gerns walked with a peculiar gait that puzzled him until he saw what it was. They were trying to come with the arrogant military stride affected by the Gerns and in the 1.5 gravity they were succeeding in achieving only a heavy clumping.
They advanced steadily and as they drew closer he saw that in the right hand of each Gern soldier was a blaster while in the left hand of each could be seen the metallic glitter of chains. Schroeder smiled thinly. “It looks like they want to subject about a dozen of us to some painful questioning.”
No one else was any longer in sight and the Gerns came straight toward the three on the steps. They stopped forty feet away at a word of command from the officer and Gerns and Ragnarok men exchanged silent stares; the faces of the Ragnarok men bearded and expressionless, the faces of the Gerns hairless and reflecting a contemptuous curiosity.
“Narth!” The communicator on the Gern officer’s belt spoke with metallic authority. “What do they look like? Did we come two hundred light-years to view some animated vegetables?”
“No, Commander,” Narth answered. “I think the discard of the Rejects two hundred years ago has produced for us an unexpected reward. There are three natives under the canopy before me and their physical perfection and complete adaptation to this hellish gravity is astonishing.”
“They could be used to replace expensive machines on some of the outer world mines,” the commander said, “providing their intelligence isn’t too abysmally low. What about that?”
“They can surely be taught to perform simple manual labor,” Narth answered.
“Get on with your job,” the commander said. “Try to pick some of the most intelligent looking ones for questioning—I can’t believe these cattle sent that message and they’re going to tell us who did. And pick some young, strong ones for the medical staff to examine—ones that won’t curl up and die after the first few cuts of the knife.”
“We’ll chain these three first,” Narth said. He lifted his hand in an imperious gesture to Humbolt and the other two and ordered in accented Terran: “Come here!”
No one moved and he said again, sharply, “
Again no one moved and the minor officer beside Narth said, “Apparently they can’t even understand Terran now.”
