“I think you’ll make a pretty good I-A operative,” Stetson said.
Orne snapped out of his reverie. “I’ll make a… Huh?”
“I’m drafting you,” Stetson said.
Orne stared at him. “Can you do that?”
“There are still a few wise heads in our government,” Stetson said. “You may take it for granted that we have this power in the I-A.” He scowled. “And we find too damned many of our operatives this way—one step short of disaster.”
Orne swallowed. “This is…” He fell silent as the farmer pushed his creaking cart past the I-A vehicle.
The men in the go-buggy stared at the peculiar swaying motion of the farmer’s back, the solid way his feet came down on the dusty roadbed, the smooth way the high-piled vegetable cart rolled along.
“I’m a left-handed froolap!” Orne muttered. He pointed at the retreating back. “There’s your cavalry animal. That damn wagon’s nothing but a chariot!”
Stetson slapped his right fist into his open left palm. “Damn! Right in front of our eyes all the time!” He smiled grimly. “There are going to be some surprised and angry people hereabouts when our O-force arrives tomorrow.”
Orne nodded silently, wishing there were some other way to prevent disastrous military excursions into space. And he thought: What Hamal needs is a new kind of religion, one that shows them how to balance their own lives happily on their world and to balance their world in the universe.
But with Amel controlling the course of every religion, that was out of the question. There was no such religious balancing system—not on Chargon… not even on Marak.
And certainly not on Hamal.
Chapter Five
Every sapient creature needs a religion of some kind.
Umbo Stetson paced the landing control bridge of his scout cruiser. His footsteps grated on a floor that was the rear wall of the bridge during flight. Now, the ship rested on its tail fins—all four hundred glistening red and black meters of it. The open ports of the bridge looked out on the jungle roof of the planet Gienah III some one hundred and fifty meters below. A butter-yellow sun hung above the horizon perhaps an hour from setting.
Gienah was a nasty situation and he didn’t like using an untested operative in such a place. It concerned him that this particular operative had been drafted into the I-A by a sector chief named Umbo Stetson.
I draft him and I send him out to get killed, Stetson thought. He glanced across the bridge at Lewis Orne, now a junior I-A field operative with a maiden diploma. Trained… and intelligent, but inexperienced.
“We ought to scrape this planet clean of every living thing on it,” Stetson muttered. “Clean as an egg!” He paused in his round of the bridge, glared out the open starboard port into the fire-blackened circle the cruiser had burned from a jungle clearing.
The I-A sector chief pulled his head back in the port, stood in his customary slouch. It was a stance not improved by the sacklike patched blue fatigues he wore. Although on this operation he rated the flag of a division admiral, his fatigues carried no insignia. There was a generally unkempt, straggling look about him.
Orne stood at an opposite port, studying the jungle horizon. Something glittered out there too far away to identify, probably the city. Now and then he glanced at the bridge control console, at the chronometer above it, at the big translite map of their position which had been tilted from the upper bulkhead. He felt vaguely uneasy, intensely aware of his heavy-planet muscles overreacting on Gienah III with its gravity only seven-eighths Terran Standard. The surgical scars on his neck where the microcommunications equipment had been inserted into his flesh itched maddeningly. He scratched.
“Ha!” Stetson barked. “Politicians!”
A thin black insect with shell-like wings flew in Orne’s port, settled in his closely cropped red hair. Orne pulled the insect gently from his hair, released it. Again, it tried to land in his hair. He dodged. The insect flew across the bridge and out the port beside Stetson.
The starchy newness of Orne’s blue I-A fatigues failed to conceal his no-fat appearance. It gave Orne a look of military spit and polish, but something about his blocky, off-center features suggested the clown.
“I’m getting tired of waiting,” Orne said.
“You’re tired! Ha!”
“You hear anything new from Hamal?” Orne asked.
“Forget Hamal! Concentrate on Gienah!”
“I was just curious, trying to pass the time.”
A breeze rippled the tops of the green ocean below them. Here and there, red and purple flowers jutted from the verdure, bending and nodding like an attentive audience. The rich odor of rotting and growing vegetation came in the open ports.
“Just look at that blasted jungle!” Stetson said. “Them and their stupid orders!”
Orne listened quietly to the sounds of anger from his chief. Gienah obviously was a very special, very dangerous problem. Orne’s thoughts, though, kept going back to Hamal. The O-force had taken over on that planet and things were in their expected mess. No way had ever been found to keep occupying troops from betraying an overbearing attitude and engaging in certain oppressive activities—such as picking off all the prettiest and most willing women. When the O-force finally lifted from Hamal, the people of that planet might be peaceful, but they’d bear scars which five hundred generations might not erase.
A call bell tinkled on the bridge console above Orne. The red light at the speaker grid began blinking. Stetson shot an angry glance at the offending equipment. “Yeah, Hal?”
“Okay, Stet. Orders just came through. We use Plan C. ComGo says you may now brief the fieldman on the classified information, then jet the aitch out of here.”
“Did you ask them about using another fieldman?”
Orne looked up attentively. Secrecy piled upon secrecy and now this? “Negative. It’s crash priority. ComGo expects to blast the planet anyway.”
Stetson glared at the speaker grid. “Those fat-headed, lard-bottomed, pig-brained, schlemmel-hearted POLITICIANS!” He took two deep breaths. “Okay. Tell them we’ll comply.”
“Confirmation’s on the way. You want me to come up and help in the briefing?”
“No. I… Dammit! Ask them again if I can take this one!”
“Stet, they said we have to use Orne because of the records on the Delphinus.”
Stetson sighed, then: “Will they give us more time to brief him?”
“Crash priority, Stet. We’re wasting time.”
“If it isn’t one…”
“Stet!”
“What now?”
“I just got a confirmed contact.”
Stetson brought himself upright, poised on the balls of his feet. “Where?”
Orne glanced out the port, returned his attention to Stetson. The electric feeling of urgency and reluctance in the bridge made his stomach churn.
“Contact… about ten klicks out,” the speaker rasped.
“How many?”
“A mob. You want I should count them?”
“No. What’re they doing?”
“Making a beeline for us. You’d better move it.”
“Right. Keep us posted.”
“Wilco.”
Stetson looked across at his untried junior fieldman. “Orne, if you decide you want out of this assignment, you just say the word. I’ll back you to the limit.”