The more I watched the invaders, and the more I saw of their own technology, the more obvious it became that the Ksylian had been right in telling us how primitive they were. Because they were so nearly human in appearance, it was easy to look at them as if they were people out of our own past, and everything told me that they weren’t even as sophisticated as contemporary humans. They might have marched out of our twentieth century—the twenty-first at the very latest. A battalion of Star Force troopers with standard equipment could have made mincemeat of a force of neo-Neanderthalers three or four times their number.
This calculation disturbed me. It was easy enough to understand how a barbarian army with the advantage of surprise could overrun Skychain City, which had no defences to speak of and only a small corps of peace officers. But I couldn’t see how an army such as this could possibly hold on to the city if the Tetrax were to organise a properly planned rebellion. I began to wonder whether our commission to open up lines of communication was simply a way to set up a route by which weapons—maybe chemical or biological weapons—could be shipped into the city to support an armed insurrection.
If that were the case, there was no particular cause for surprise in the fact that the Tetrax hadn’t mentioned it to us. I couldn’t help being suspicious, though, about the way they had let us believe that the invaders were much more sophisticated than they had turned out to be. They must have known the true situation, given that they had continued to receive intelligence from the city for some time after the invasion. There was something about the way this whole operation had been set up which just wasn’t right. There was a distinct ratlike odour about it all.
I found a hiding place behind a stack of empty crates in a gigantic “warehouse” beneath the carpet. It seemed a useful place to be because food was being stored here, and I was getting pretty hungry. Unfortunately, it looked as if it would be difficult for me to get my hands on any, because the place was so busy. At one end of the open space was the terminus where the trains came to load up, and there was a big computer console nearby from which the routing of the trains could be controlled. It was only a tiny substation— the main control centre for the entire field-system was thirty kilometres away—but a system that large needs a good many entry-points for information and minor control-points for exactly the same reason that a nervous system needs bundles of sensory cells and ganglia. I wasn’t at all surprised to see a party of uniformed invaders in front of the screens, deep in conversation with a couple of galactics.
The galactics were both Kythnans. Ninety percent of the galactic races claim not to be able to tell humans and Kythnans apart, though neither humans nor Kythnans have much difficulty. Almost the first thing I was told by a fellow human when I first arrived on Asgard was that the fact that Kythnans looked like us was no reason to start trusting them. Maybe Kythnans told each other the same thing about humans.
Anyhow, my own experience with Kythnans hadn’t prejudiced me in their favour—the last one I’d come into contact with was Jacinthe Siani, who had worked for Amara Guur. Given this, I was quite ready to jump to the conclusion that the Kythnans were probably being a lot more obliging in their dealings with the invaders than the Tetrax.
After a little while of watching the group by the control panels in deep discussion, I guessed that the co-operation the neo-Neanderthalers were getting from the Kythnans wasn’t doing them much good. The Kythnans probably didn’t understand Tetron technology much better than the invaders. They would have learned how to operate those systems up on the surface that were useful in everyday life, but this would be a new world to them.
I was trying to get closer, in order to overhear what was being said, when another group joined the party. There were two more invaders, in the fancier uniforms which I took to be those of officers, and what I first assumed to be an invader in civilian clothes. It wasn’t until I caught a snatch of conversation in parole that I realised he was human. I didn’t recognise him, but I wasn’t acquainted with more than half of the two hundred and fifty of the humans on Asgard, so that wasn’t too surprising.
The sight of the human gave my spirits the first uplift they’d had in some time. I hoped, paradoxically, that he would turn out to be a full-blown collaborator and a dyed-in-the-wool traitor to the galactic cause—because if he were, he might have the freedom to walk around on his own, and that meant that I might be able to walk where I wanted to without being seized or shot on sight.
As I strained my ears to catch some of the conversation, though, my enthusiasm dwindled somewhat. The human didn’t seem to be in a helpful mood, and what he was trying to tell his interlocutors, not very politely, was that he was a starship pilot, not a biotech engineer, and that he didn’t know the first thing about manufacturing manna.
There was an exchange of words between the newcomers and the group that was already there. Then they moved away from me, to the beginning of the underground tracks. There was a passenger-car already attached to the train that was waiting there, and the invaders put the Kythnans and the human aboard, along with half a dozen guards. The two officers who’d come in with the human stayed behind.
I watched them walk back to the console. They seemed to be arguing. I inferred that they couldn’t find anyone who could or would tell them how to do what they wanted, and that they were getting very impatient about it. In the meantime, they were afraid to tamper with the computers for fear of accidentally shutting down the entire operation, or otherwise messing things up. So far, it seemed, they’d mastered the manual controls on the trains, and that was about it.
It isn’t easy to take over a highly-automated city when you don’t understand the language or the machines. On the other hand, these guys seemed to have made virtually no progress at all in months of occupation. Stupid, the Ksylian had said. It was easy to see why he thought so. I wondered, though, whether I could have done much to help them myself, if I were actually trying to. You get used to taking technology very much for granted, especially when there’s always a Tetron repairman at the other end of the phone. The horrible thought struck me that, given his interest in certain kinds of electronic systems, a man like John Finn might have been much more use to the invaders than me.
I looked at my wristwatch, and was dismayed to discover that time had been passing more quickly than I thought. It was 22.50, and my hastily arranged rendezvous with Serne was not much more than half a human hour away. Was there a chance, I wondered, that I could still make it, and get out of the city without being taken prisoner?
I was seized by a terrible temptation to try something desperately reckless. I had just enough charge left in Scarion’s mud gun to drop both the officers.
In an invader uniform, I thought, I just might be able to walk straight through the crowds and into the corridors.
There was every chance that the section of tunnel leading to the plug was still dark and unused—or so, at least, I persuaded myself. And I had a golden opportunity here to create something of a diversion. Like the luckless human they’d been questioning, I was no biotech engineer, but it’s a lot easier to sabotage an automated system than it is to make it work as you want it to. Like John Finn on Goodfellow, I thought I could create a little emergency.
I suppose my commission had finally soaked into my personality; I was thinking like a Star Force commando. Anyhow, I was getting rather tired of discretion. I’d always had a submerged reckless streak. If I hadn’t, I never would have come to Asgard in the first place.