The scene winked out. In the new glare of the lights, the fifty-one proud heads of families stared at Kator Secondcousin, who stared back. Then, as if at some unconscious signal, they rose as one man and swarmed upon him.
“You fools!” cackled Kator with a Ruml’s mad laugh-ter, as he saw them coming at him. “Didn’t he say you wouldn’t have any use of what I know?” He went down under their claws. “Force won’t work against these people—that’s what he was trying to tell you! Why do you have to take the bait just the way I did—”
But it was no use. He felt himself dying.
“All right!” he choked at them, as a red haze began to blot out the world about him. “Learn the hard way for yourselves. Killing me won’t do any good…”
And of course he was quite right. It didn’t.
JACKAL’S MEAL
You may have noticed by now that you can be reading a Dickson story, thinking you know what’s going on, and then suddenly—whoops, you should have watched that last step because it was a lulu! In this one, you’re really going to have trouble figuring out just what a human is up to. Fortunately, the aliens have the same problem.
I
In the third hour after the docking of the great, personal spaceship of the Morah Jhan—on the planetoid outpost of the 469th Corps which was then stationed just outside the Jhan’s spatial frontier—a naked figure in a ragged gray cloak burst from a crate of supplies being unloaded off the huge alien ship. The figure ran around uttering strange cries for a little while, eluding the Morah who had been doing the unloading, until it was captured at last by the human Military Police guarding the smaller, courier vessel, alongside, which had brought Ambassador Alan Dormu here from Earth to talk with the Jhan.
The Jhan himself, and Dormu—along with Marshal Sayers Whin and most of the other ranking officers, Morah and human alike—had already gone inside, to the Headquarters area of the outpost, where an athletic show was being put on for the Jhan’s entertainment. But the young captain in charge of the Military Police, on his own initiative, refused the strong demands of the Morah that the fugitive be returned to them. For it, or he, showed signs of being—or of once having been—a man, under his rags and dirt and some surgicallike changes that had been made in him.
One thing was certain. He was deathly afraid of his Morah pursuers; and it was not until he was shut in a room out of sight of them that he quieted down. However, nothing could bring him to say anything humanly understandable. He merely stared at the faces of all those who came close to him, and felt their clothing as someone might fondle the most precious fabric made—and whimpered a little when the questions became too insistent, trying to hide his face in his arms but not succeeding because of the surgery that had been done to him.
The Morah went back to their own ship to contact their chain of command, leading ultimately up to the Jhan; and the young Military Police captain lost no time in getting the fugitive to his Headquarters’ Section and the problem, into the hands of his own commanders. From whom, by way of natural military process, it rose through the ranks until it came to the attention of Marshal Sayers Whin.
“Hell’s Bells—” exploded Whin, on hearing it. But then he checked himself and lowered his voice. He had been drawn aside by Harold Belman, the one-star general of the Corps who was his aide; and only a thin door separated him from the box where Dormu and the Jhan sat, still watching the athletic show. “Where is the… Where is he?”
“Down in my office, sir.”
“This has got to be quite a mess!” said Whin. He thought rapidly. He was a tall, lean man from the Alaskan back country and his temper was usually short-lived. “Look, the show in there’ll be over in a minute. Go in. My apologies to the Jhan. I’ve gone ahead to see everything’s properly fixed for the meeting at lunch. Got that?”
“Yes, Marshal.”
“Stick with the Jhan. Fill in for me.”
“What if Dormu—”
“Tell him nothing. Even if he asks, play dumb. I’ve got to have time to sort this thing out, Harry! You understand?”
“Yes, sir,” said his aide.
Whin went out a side door of the small anteroom, catching himself just in time from slamming it behind him. But once out in the corridor, he strode along at a pace that was almost a run.
He had to take a lift tube down eighteen levels to his aide’s office. When he stepped in there, he found the fugitive surrounded by the officer of the day and some officers of the Military Police, including General Mack Stigh, Military Police Unit Commandant. Stigh was the ranking officer in the room; and it was to him Whin turned.
“What about it, Mack?”
“Sir, apparently he escaped from the Jhan’s ship—”
“Not that. I know that. Did you find out who he is? What he is?” Whin glanced at the fugitive who was chewing hungrily on something grayish-brown that Whin recognized as a Morah product. One of the eatables supplied for the lunch meeting with the Jhan that would be starting any moment now. Whin grimaced.
“We tried him on our own food,” said Stigh. “He wouldn’t eat it. They may have played games with his digestive system, too. No, sir, we haven’t found out anything. There’ve been a few undercover people sent into Morah territory in the past twenty years. He could be one of them. We’ve got a records search going on. Of course, chances are his record wouldn’t be in our files, anyway.”
“Stinking Morah,” muttered a voice from among the officers standing around. Whin looked up quickly, and a new silence fell.
“Records search. All right,” Whin said, turning back to Stigh, “that’s good. What did the Morah say when what’s-his-name—that officer on duty down at the docks—wouldn’t give him up?”
“Captain—?” Stigh turned and picked out a young officer with his eyes. The young officer stepped forward.
“Captain Gene McKussic, Marshal,” he introduced himself.
“You were the one on the docks?” Whin asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“What did the Morah say?”
“Just—that he wasn’t human, sir,” said McKussic. “That he was one of their own experimental pets, made out of one of their own people—just to look human.”
“What else?”
“That’s all, Marshal.”
“And you didn’t believe them?”
“Look at him, sir—” McKussic pointed at the fugitive, who by this time had finished his food and was watching them with bright but timid eyes. “He hasn’t got a hair on him, except where a man’d have it. Look at his face. And the shape of his head’s human. Look at his fingernails, even—”
“Yes—” said Whin slowly, gazing at the fugitive. Then he raised his eyes and looked around at the other officers. “But none of you thought to get a doctor in here to check?”
“Sir,” said Stigh, “we thought we should contact you, first—”
“All right. But get a doctor now! Get two of them!” said Whin. One of the other officers turned to a desk nearby and spoke into an intercom. “You know what we’re up against, don’t you—all of you?” Whin’s eyes stabbed around the room. “This is just the thing to blow Ambassador Dormu’s talk with the Morah Jhan sky high. Now, all of you, except General Stigh, get out of here. Go back to your quarters and stay on tap until you’re given other orders. And keep your mouths shut.”