Dupleine grunted, whirled around and went out the door Cletus had just entered. Cletus looked back at the fat captain behind the desk.
"Sir," said the captain. His voice held the hint of a note of sympathy. His face was not unkind, and even intelligent, in spite of the heavy dewlap of the double chin supporting it from beneath. "If you'll just sit down a moment, I'll tell General Traynor you're here."
Cletus sat down and the captain leaned forward to speak into the intercom grille of his desk. The reply he received was inaudible to Cletus, but the captain looked up and nodded.
"You can go right in, Colonel," he said, nodding to another door behind his desk.
Cletus rose and obeyed... As he stepped through the door into the further office, he found himself directly facing a much larger desk, behind which sat a bull-like man in his mid-forties with a heavy-boned face decorated by a startling pair of thick, black eyebrows. "Bat" Traynor, the general had been nicknamed, Cletus recalled, because of those brows. Bat Traynor stared now, the brows pulled ominously together as Cletus walked forward toward his desk.
"Colonel Cletus Grahame reporting, sir," Cletus said, laying his travel orders on the desk. Bat shoved them aside with one big-knuckled hand.
"All right, Colonel," he said. His voice was a rough-edged bass. He pointed to a chair facing him at the left side of his desk. "Sit down."
Cletus limped gratefully around to the chair and dropped into it. He was beginning to feel the fact that he had strained one or more of the few remaining ligaments in his bad knee during the episode in the ditch outside of town. He looked up to see Bat still staring point-blank at him.
"I've got your dossier here, Colonel," Bat said after a moment. He flipped open the gray plastic folder that lay on the desk before him and looked down at it. "You come from an Academy family, it says here. Your uncle was General Chief of Staff at Geneva Alliance HQ just before he retired eight years ago. That right?"
"Yes, sir," said Cletus.
"And you" - Bat flipped papers with a thick forefinger, scowling a little down at them - "got that bad knee in the Three-Month War on Java seven years ago?... Medal of Honor, too?"
"Yes," said Cletus.
"Since then" - Bat flipped the folder shut and raised his eyes to stare unwaveringly once more across it at Cletus' face - "you've been on the Academy staff. Except for three months of active duty, in short, you've done nothing in the Army but pound tactics into the heads of cadets."
"I've also," said Cletus, carefully, "been writing a comprehensive 'Theory of Tactics and Strategical Considerations.' "
"Yes," said Bat, grimly. "That's in there, too. Three months in the field and you're going to write twenty volumes."
"Sir?" said Cletus.
Bat threw himself back heavily in his chair. "All right," he said. "You're supposed to be here on special assignment to act as my tactical adviser." The black eyebrows drew together in a scowl and rippled like battle flags in the wind. "I don't suppose I've got you because you heard some rumor they were going to clean out all the dead wood at the Academy and you pulled strings to be sent to some nice soft job where there's nothing for you to do?"
"No, sir," said Cletus, quietly. "I may have pulled a string or two to get sent here. But, with the General's permission, it wasn't because I thought this a soft job. I've got to do a great deal out here."
"I hope not, Colonel. I hope not," said Bat. "It just happens I put in a request for a dozen jungle-breaker tanks three months ago... You're what I got instead. Now, I don't give a damn what the Academy wants to do with its Tactics Department. The kids just have to come out here into the field and relearn it all over again under practical conditions, anyway. But I needed those tanks. I still need them."
"Possibly," said Cletus, "I can come up with some means to help the General get along without them."
"I don't think so," said Bat, grimly. "What I think is that you're going to hang around here for a couple of months or so and turn out not to be particularly useful. Then I'm going to mention that fact to Alliance HQ back on Earth and ask for my jungle-breakers again. I'll get them, and you'll be transferred back to Earth - if with no commendations, at least without any black marks on your record... That's if everything goes smoothly, Colonel. And" - Bat reached across to a corner of his desk and pulled a single sheet of paper toward him - "speaking of the way things go, I've got a report here that you got drunk your first night out, on the ship headed here, and made a fool of yourself in front of the Outworld's Secretary for the Coalition, who was aboard."
"That's fast reporting," said Cletus, "considering that, when our party for Bakhalla left the ship, the phones aboard were all still tied up by Coalition people. I take it this report to the General comes from one of them?"
"It's none of your business who made the report!" rumbled Bat. "As a matter of fact, it comes from the captain of the spaceship."
Cletus laughed.
"What's the joke, Colonel?" Bat's voice rose.
"The idea, sir," said Cletus, "of a civilian ship commander reporting on the fitness of an Alliance officer."
"You won't find it all that funny if I have the information entered in your record, Colonel," said Bat. He stared at Cletus, at first grimly, and then a trifle disconcertedly, when Cletus did not seem greatly sobered by this threat. "But, never mind the Coalition or any civilian shipmaster. I'm your commanding officer, and I'm asking for an explanation of your drunkenness."
"There isn't any explanation... " began Cletus.
"Oh?" said Bat.
"No explanation, I was going to say," continued Cletus, "because no explanation's necessary. I've never been drunk in my life. I'm afraid the ship's captain was wrongly advised - or drew the wrong conclusion."
"Just made a mistake, eh?" said Bat, ironically.
"As it happens," said Cletus, "I think I've got a witness who'll testify I wasn't drunk. He was at the table. Mondar, the former Outbond from here to St. Louis Enclave."
Bat's mouth, opened to retort before Cletus was half done, closed instead. The general sat silent for several seconds. Then his eyebrows quivered and the frown line between his eyes smoothed somewhat.
"Then why this report?" he asked in a more neutral voice.
"The ship's people, from what I saw," said Cletus, "seemed partial to the Coalition people aboard."
"Well, then, damn it!" exploded Bat, "if you saw them jumping to the wrong conclusion, why didn't you set them straight?"
"As a matter of elementary strategy," said Cletus, "I thought it wouldn't do any harm to let the Coalition people pick up as low an opinion of me as possible - of me, and my usefulness to you, as a tactical expert."
Bat looked balefully at him. "Their opinion couldn't be any lower than mine, anyway," he said. "You're no use to me, Colonel. This is a dirty, little, hole-in-the-wall war, with no room for strategical mysteries. This Exotic colony's got brains, money, technical developments and a seacoast. The Neulanders've got no seacoast, no industry and too much population for their back-country farms to support - because of this multiple-wife religious cult of theirs. But that same excess population's just fine for supplying guerrillas. So, the Neulanders want what the Exotics've got and the Coalition's trying to help them get it. We're here to see they don't. That's the whole situation. What the Neuland guerrillas try to do, and what we do to stop them from doing it, is just plain obvious. I need a book-strategy and tactics expert like I need a hundred-piece symphony orchestra. And I'm sure deCastries and the other Coalition people on that ship knew it as well as I do."
"Maybe I won't be quite as useless as the General thinks," said Cletus, unperturbed. "Of course, I'll have to survey and study the situation, starting by setting up a plan for trapping those guerrillas they'll be infiltrating through Etter's Pass, up country, in the next few days."