Whether Tchai accepted the command was hard to tell. It did not matter, either, because as soon as their vessel had been irrevocably grounded they were surrounded by troops and weaponry. What troops! Even Tchai and the assault team were too stupefied to resist. Resistance would have meant little against the overwhelming odds, ten men against an entire planet, and in any case nothing had prepared them for Amazons with rifles and queer little floppy beetles that chirped and chattered and, to show that they were to be taken seriously, every now and then discharged some sort of projectile weapon in great bursts of explosive power into the air.
No, they could not resist. And the final blow was when a great, ungainly hovercraft machine came sliding toward them across the broad, barren spaceport. It bore one person, looking incongruously majestic. When it stopped the person hopped off and strutted toward them.
It was Pettyman Castor.
"I welcome you to World," he said gravely—as though he had a right to welcome them anywhere, as though anything he might say could be important to anyone! "Although you do not come in peace, we welcome you here to see our resolute purpose and our overwhelming might. The liberation of America is ready to begin!"
It was fortunate that the assault team had long been disarmed. The Amazon guards behind them saw them stir and tense and lifted their weapons warningly. Even Many-face could hardly believe what he heard. "What have we done?" moaned many of his voices, whispering together inside his head. "Is this amusing game we were playing suddenly going to be serious?"
II
What Manyface saw in space, what he saw on landing, what he saw in the queer, crystalline city that became his jail—they were all scary. The game had indeed become serious. Astonishingly serious. The "spaceway"— that terrifying, immaterial purple veil through which they passed from one space to another in the twinkling of an eye—that was serious, all right! That meant a technology no Han Chinese had ever dreamed existed. And it was not the only thing. Their ship had been captured by a shuttle and dragged down to the planet's surface just as some misbehaving weather satellite might have been brought home for repair by human beings in the great days of the space age. But that was only because the Chinese technology was so inept, so primitive, that primitive means had to be used against it. As they landed Manyface saw off toward the skyline a huge skeletal structure like a mad roller coaster and learned it was called a "launch loop"—a better, faster, cheaper, more deadly way of launching ships than anything on Hainan-ko. And it was launching them! New ships every day! Already dozens, maybe scores of ships were in orbit, waiting for the time to attack. It was an armada! And if one single ship had been able to destroy an island, what hope was there that the Han Chinese could resist scores or hundreds of them?
The Yanks were serious enough, all right. No, "serious" was not the word—"fanatic" was a better one, for they seemed to think of nothing but warfare and revenge against the Han Chinese. How Tchai Howard and the assault team felt about this Manyface could not know, for the party was broken up at once. Even the erks, queer little beasts though they were, were obviously able to deploy great force for whatever campaign they planned. They were not funny to him, after the first moments. They were real. The Yanks and "erks"—what strange names these strange creatures had!—had had half a century to make their plans. Han China would have no defense at all.
The future was hopelessly black, Manyface's internal committee concluded somberly. And yet—
And yet, the experience was interesting in itself. Many-face had started out as a scientist, was still a scientist in several of his parts, retained the curiosity and interest of a scientist in strange phenomena.
There were plenty of strange phenomena on World!
The erks themselves were fascinating. If they did not speak Chinese—none of them did—at least many spoke English, and one in particular became a guide, almost a friend—at least, a being with as much curiosity and interest as Manyface himself. His name, he said, was Jutch— "Jutch Vashng'nun," he explained, "since I have taken the name of your great first President!"
"He was not my President," said Manyface frostily, but then relented. "Haven't you got any heroes of your own to name yourself after?"
"Many, many," Jutch assured him, "but it is a courtesy to our allies to take some of their names. We have always done this so. Now," he said, dropping off the stool he had been perched on and scuttling through a doorway, "if you will follow me, we will have a nice dinner together and talk."
The talk was delightful, Manyface found. The erk had so much to tell, all of it so new and wonderful! There were some minor embarrassments, as when a naked erk climbed up on the table and began to feed itself from the platter that held their dinner, but Jutch shooed the little creature away. "It's a dumb erk," he apologized. "Please don't let it disturb you. They mean no harm."
Manyface laid down the two-pronged fork he was eating with. "Dumb erk?" he asked. "You mean, ah, of inferior intelligence, perhaps?"
"Oh, very inferior," agreed Jutch. "Let me see. Where shall I begin? Do you know anything about us erks? No, of course not. Well, to begin with, we were domestic animals..."
And Manyface listened, his eyes popping, as he heard how the erks had once been only pets; that they had somehow—it was not clear how—been caused to mutate so that they became quite intelligent; how the creatures who had been their masters had, somehow, destroyed themselves; how, as the ages passed, the artificial mutations had begun to backslide, as the genetic material reverted to type. The dumb erks were what all erks once had been...
The astonishing revelations went on forever, and Manyface was enjoying himself. From time to time he remembered to think of doomed China. It did not seem very real. Since Manyface, or at least a good deal of Manyface, was very old, he had learned some hard lessons. One was that there are events that cannot be controlled, and this, it seemed, was one such... And, meanwhile, how fascinating and strange it all was! How many questions to ask! How many thousand new questions each answered question created! Once he had begun to understand the erks themselves, there were all these other things to ask about—these long-legged, fish-looking creatures who did not exist anywhere alive, apparently, but whose effigies were all over—"Living Gods"? What were "Living Gods," then? And once that was explained, so many others that needed explaining: why the erks made a religion of warfare, how diligently they had sought places to wage it and issues to wage it on—
The questions did not end.
There was also the great question of what had happened to Castor, and Tsoong Delilah, and Feng Miranda, for none of them were quite as Manyface remembered them from just a few short weeks ago.
Apart from Potter Alicia's deluded love for the boy, the parts of Manyface could not see much good in Castor. It was true that he seemed more mature now. He was still quite arrogant and self-centered... and entirely too sure of himself with women. (So thought the man who had rarely had a woman love him since the first tumor was taken from his brain.)
And Delilah! How easy it was to destroy a valuable public official with calflove! Anyone could diagnose her failing from the way she spat jealousy at the Feng girl. Anyone could see that in the long run Castor would certainly choose the younger woman over her—or a dozen younger women before he was through, because the other thing that was evident was that there was hardly a sister on World who would not enjoy making love with the boy. Anyone could see that but Delilah.