"… Blood," Pel Sinjin had said to me on our drive out here to the field encampment of the Expedition. "You know what they say, Tom. Blood and ice water, half-and-half in his veins, is what makes a Dorsai. But something must have gone wrong with those two when their mother was carrying them. Kensie got all the blood. Ian…"
He had let the sentence finish itself. Like Kensie's own soldiers, Pel had come to idolize the man, and downgrade Ian in proportion. I had let the matter slide.
Now, Kensie was smiling at us, as if there was some joke we were not yet in on.
"A welcoming committee?" he said. "Is that what you are?"
"Not exactly," I said. "We came out to talk about letting your men into Blauvain city for rest and relaxation; now that you've got those invading soldiers from the Friendly Worlds all rounded up, disarmed, and ready for shipment home - what's the joke?"
"Just," said Charley ap Morgan, "that we were on our way into Blauvain to see you. We just got a repeater message that you and other planetary officials here on St. Marie are giving Ian and Kensie, with their staffs, a surprise victory dinner in Blauvain this evening."
"Hells Bells!" I said..
"You hadn't been told?" Kensie asked.
"Not a damn word," I said.
It was typical of the fumbling of the so-called government-of-mayors we had here on our little world of St. Marie. Here was I, Superintendent of Police in Blauvain - our capital city - and here was Pel, commanding general of our planetary militia which had been in the field with the Exotic Expedition sent to rescue us from the invading puritan fanatics from the Friendly Worlds; and no one had bothered to tell either one of us about a dinner for the two Commanders of that Expedition.
"You're going in, then?" Pel asked Kensie. Kensie nodded. "I've got to call my HQ."
Pel went out. Kensie laughed.
"Well," he said, "this gives us a chance to kill two birds at once. We'll ride back with you and talk on the way. Is there some difficulty about Blauvain absorbing our men on leave?"
"Not that way," I said. "But even though the Friendlies have all been rounded up, the Blue Front is still with us in the shape of a good number of political outlaws and terrorists that want to pull down our present government. They lost the gamble they took when they invited in the Friendly troops; but now they may take advantage of any trouble that can be stirred up around your soldiers while they're on their awn in the city."
"There shouldn't be any," Kensie reached for a dress gunbelt of black leather and began to put it on over the white dress uniform he was already wearing. "But we can talk about it, if you like. - You'd better be doing some dressing yourself, Charley."
"On my way," said Charley ap Morgan; and went out.
So, fifteen minutes later, Pel and I found ourselves headed back the way we had come, this time with three passengers. I was still at the controls of the police car as we slid on its air cushion across the rich grass of our St. Marie summer toward Blauvain; but Kensie rode with me in front, making me feel small beside him - and I am considered a large man among our own people on St. Marie. Beside Kensie, I must have looked like a fifteen year old boy in relative comparison. Pel was equally small in back between Charley and a Dorsai Senior Commandant named Chu Van Moy - a heavy-bodied, black Mongol, if you can imagine such a man, from the Dorsai South Continent.
"… No real problem," Kensie was saying as we left the grass at last for the vitreous road surface leading us in among the streets and roads of the city - in particular the road curving in between the high office buildings; of Blauvain's West Industrial Park, now just half a kilometer ahead, "we'll turn the men loose in small groups if you say. But there shouldn't be any need to worry. They're mercenaries, and a mercenary knows that civilians pay his wages. He's not going to make any trouble which would give his profession a bad name."
"I don't worry about your men," I said. "It's the Blue Front fabricating some trouble in the vicinity of some of your men and then trying to pin the blame on them, that worries me. The only way to guard against that is to have your troops in small enough numbers so that my policemen can keep an eye on the civilians around them."
"Fair enough," said Kiensie. He smiled down at me. "I hope, though, you don't plan on having your men holding our men's hands all through their evenings in town - "
Just then we passed between the first of the tall office buildings. A shadow from the late morning sun fell across the car, and the high walls around us gave Kensie's last words a flat echo. Right on the heels of those words - in fact, mixed with them - came a faint sound as of multiple whistlings about us; and Kensie fell forward, no longer speaking, until his forehead against the front windscreen stopped him from movement.
The next thing I knew I was flying through the air, literally. Charley ap Morgan had left the police car on the right side, dragging me along with a hand like a steel clamp on my arm, until we ended up against the front of the building on our right. We crouched there, Charley with his dress handgun in his fist and looking up at the windows of the building opposite. Across the narrow way, I could see Chu Van Moy with Pel beside him, a dress gun also in Chu's fist. I reached for my own police beltgun, and remembered I was not wearing it.
About us there was utter silence. The narrow little projectiles from one or more sliver rifles, that had fluted about us, did not come again. For the first time I realized there was no one on the streets and no movement to be seen behind the windows about us.
"We've got to get him to a hospital," said Pel, on the other side of the street. His voice was strained and tight. He was staring fixedly at the still figure of Kensie, still slumped against the windscreen.
"A hospital," he said again. His face was as pale as a sick man's.
Neither Charley or Chu paid any attention. Silently they were continuing to scan the windows of the building opposite them.
"A hospital!" shouted Pel, suddenly.
Abruptly, Charley got to his feet and slid his weapon back into its holster. Across the street, Chu also was rising. Charley looked at the other Dorsai.
"Yes," said Charley, "where is the nearest hospital?"
But Pel was already behind the controls of the police car. The rest of us had to move or be left behind. He swung the car toward Blauvain's Medical Receiving, West, only three minutes away.
He drove the streets like a madman, switching on the warning lights and siren as he went. Screaming, the vehicle careened through traffic and signals alike, to jerk to a stop behind the ambulance entrance at Medical West. Pel jumped from the car.
"I'll get a life support system - a medician - " he said, and ran inside.
I got out; and then Charley and Chu got out, more slowly. The two Dorsais were on opposite sides of the car.
"Find a room," Charley said. Chu nodded and went after Pel through the ambulance entrance.
Charley turned to the car. Gently, he picked up Kensie in his arms, the way you pick up a sleeping child, gently, holding Kensie to his chest so that Kensie's head fell in to rest on Charley's left shoulder. Carrying his Reid Commander, Charley turned and went into the medical establishment. I followed.
Inside, there was a long corridor with hospital personnel milling about. Chu stood by a doorway a few meters down the hall to the left, half a head taller than the people between us. With Kensie in his arms, Charley went toward the other Commandant.
Chu stood aside as Charley came up. The door swung back automatically, and Charley led the way into a room with surgical equipment in sterile cases along both its sides, and an operating table in its center. Charley laid Kensie softly on the table, which was almost too short for his tall body. He put the long legs together, picked up the arms and laid their hands on the upper thighs. There was a line of small, red stains across the front of his jacket, high up, but no other marks. Kensie's face, with its eyes closed, looked blindly to the white ceiling overhead.