Traffic on the road swiftly thinned out and finally ceased altogether. A thousand crimson serpents hissed up from darkened Radine and hungrily bored into the night sky. Came another great flash from the region of Khamasta. Something long, black and noisy bulleted low over the forest, momentarily blanking out the stars and sending down a blast of heat.
In the distance sounded faint, muffled rumblings, cracklings, thumps and thuds plus a vague, indefinable babble like the shoutings of a multitude. Mowry went into the empty road and stared up at the sky. The stars vanished wholesale as the thrice-wrecked and ten times decimated Terran fleets thundered overhead four thousand strong.
Below, Mowry danced like a maniac in the middle of the road. He shouted at the sky. He yelled and screamed and bawled tuneless songs with meaningless words. He waved his arms around, tossed twenty thousand guilders into the air so that it floated around like confetti.
As the black, snouty warships roared above a veritable torrent of stuff sailed down, seeking ground with the pale, lemon-coloured legs of antigrav beams. He stood fascinated while not far away a huge, cumbersome shape with enormous caterpillar tracks fell featherlike atop twenty columnar rays, landed with squeaks of protest from big springs.
Heart pounding, he tore southward along the road, on and on until he bolted full-tilt into a waiting group of forty figures. They were looking his way, ready for him, having been alerted by the frantic clomping of his feet. The entire bunch topped him by head and shoulders, wore dark green uniforms and were holding things that gleamed in the starlight.
“Take it easy, Blowfly,” advised a Terran voice.
Mowry panted for breath. He did not resent this rude counterthrust to the Spakum tag. Every Sirian was a blowfly by virtue of his purple backside.
He pawed at the speaker’s sleeve. “My name is James Mowry. I’m not what I seem—I’m a Terran.”
The other, a big, lean-faced and cynical sergeant, said, “My name’s Napoleon. I’m not what I seem—I’m an emperor.” He gestured with a hand holding a whop-gun,that looked like a cannon. “Take him to the cage, Rogan.”
“But I am a Terran,” yelped Mowry, flapping his hands.
“Yeah, you look it,” said the sergeant.
“I’m speaking Terran, aren’t I?”
“Sure are. A hundred thousand Blowflies can speak it. They think it gives them a certain something.” He waved the cannon again. “The cage, Rogan.”
Rogan took him.
For twelve days he mooched around the prisoner-of-war compound. The dump was very big, very full and swiftly became fuller. Prisoners were fed regularly, guarded constantly and that was all.
Of his fellows behind the wire at least fifty sly-eyed specimens boasted of their confidence in the future when the sheep would be sorted from the goats and justice would be done. The reason, they asserted, was that for a long time they’d been secret leaders of Dirac Angestun Gesept and undoubtedly would be raised to power when Terran conquerors got around to it. Then, they warned, friends would be rewarded as surely as foes would be punished. This bragging ceased only when three of them somehow got strangled in their sleep.
At least a dozen times Mowry seized the chance to attract the attention of a patrolling sentry when no Sirian happened to be nearby. “Psst! My name’s Mowry—I’m a Terran.”
Ten times he received confessions of faith such as, “You look it!” or “Is zat so?”
A lanky character said, “Don’t give me that!”
“It’s true—I swear it!”
“You really are a Terran—hi?”
“Yar,” said Mowry, forgetting himself.
“Yar to you, too.”
Once he spelled it so there’d be no possibility of misunderstanding. “See here, Buster, I’m a T-E-R-R-A-N.”
To which the sentry replied, “Says Y-O-U” and hefted his gun and continued his patrol.
Came the day when prisoners were paraded in serried ranks, a captain stood on a crate, held a loud-hailer before his mouth and roared all over the camp, “Anyone here named James Mowry?”
Mowry galloped eagerly forward, bow-legged from force of habit. “I am.” He scratched himself, a performance that the captain viewed with unconcealed disfavour. Glowering at him, the captain demanded, “Why the heck haven’t you said so before now? We’ve been searching all Jaimec for you. Let me tell you, Mister, we’ve got better things to do. You struck dumb or something?”
“I—”
“Shut up! Military Intelligence wants you. Follow me.”
So saying, he led the other through heavily guarded gates, along a path toward a prefab hut.
Mowry ventured, “Captain, again and again I tried to tell the sentries that.”
“Prisoners are forbidden to talk to sentries,” the captain snapped.
“But I wasn’t a prisoner.”
“Then what the blazes were you doing in there?” Without waiting for a reply he pushed open the door of the prefab hut and introduced him with, “This is the crummy bum.”
The Intelligence officer glanced up from a wad of papers. “So you’re Mowry, James Mowry?”
“Correct.”
“Well now,” said the officer, “we’ve been primed by beam-radio and we know all about you.”
“Do you really?” responded Mowry, pleased and gratified. He braced himself for the coming citation, the paean of praise, the ceremonial stroking of a hero’s hair.
“Another mug like you was on Artishain, their tenth planet,” the officer went on. “Feller named Kingsley. They say he hasn’t sent a signal for quite a piece. Looks like he’s got himself nabbed. Chances are he’s been stepped on and squashed flat.”
Mowry said suspiciously, “What’s this to me?”
“We’re dropping you in his place. You leave tomorrow.”
“Hi? Tomorrow?”
“Sure thing. We want you to become a wasp. Nothing wrong with you, is there?”
“No,” said Mowry, very feebly. “Only my head”
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-d66777-2828-1240-908b-bb13-14c6-561543
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 14.04.2011
Created using: Fiction Book Designer, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6 software
Document authors :
Verdi1
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