Some months after the small stickle's publication, soldiers carne from the palace of the High Priest and took Waakakaa the Philosopher away. The small stickle had come to the attention of the College of Priests. They intended to try him for heresy.
Chapter 17
"Oh, hell! We've got a problem!" the Marquis de Rien's radar tech shouted into the comm to the bridge.
Sly Henderson, the man in charge of the Avionian ground operations, hit the switch that gave him two-way communications with the comm shack. "What kind of problem?" he asked with no more than mild interest. All they'd seen near the ship's planetfall during the months they'd been planetside was an occasional wandering nomad. The nomads never stuck around for long, especially not when he sent out a few men with blasters to shoo them away.
"Someone's coming planetside, and I think they're looking for us."
Henderson shrugged, even though the tech couldn't see him. "So? Those eggheads up there come planetside sometimes."
"Not like this they don't," the tech said. Fear that edged on panic was audible in his voice.
"What do you mean?" Henderson stood as he asked the question.
"The eggheads loop down, take a couple orbits to get planetside. There are two shuttles coming almost straight down."
"Shit," Henderson swore under his breath. "I'm on my way."
A moment later Henderson strode into the comm shack, which was lit only by the displays linked to the surveillance units his crew had placed in a large circle around the ship when they first landed.
"What do you have?"
"Look at this," the tech said. He tapped a few keys on the control board under one of the displays and pointed a finger at the screen. The display replayed what it had recorded moments earlier. The streaks of two fast-moving shuttle craft angled downward across the screen.
Henderson felt his stomach knot up. "What's their location?"
"They'll touch down a hundred kilometers northwest of here."
"How soon?"
The tech peered at a scrolling column of numbers and swallowed. "Right about now."
"Damn!" Henderson had seen that kind of landing approach once before, when he was smuggling military hardware to some rebels on Fiesta de Santiago. Confederation Marines came in; that was the way they made planetfall. When the Marines had raided the smugglers' base, he was one of the few to escape. There was only one thing they could do now.
"Secure this place, we're getting out of here." As he raced back to the bridge he snapped orders into his pocket comm for the Marquis de Rien to launch.
Fifteen minutes later the Marquis de Rien launched.
Henderson knew that keeping the ship ready to go at a moment's notice was a good idea. Now, as he watched the local star swell through the polarized image in the forward viewscreen, he saw confirmation of his caution.
"This is where they were, all right, Skipper," Gunny Thatcher said when he caught up with Captain Conorado. "Looks like they left in a hurry." He nodded at Lieutenant Giordano, the company's executive officer.
Conorado grunted. He'd just finished checking the disposition of his men around the smugglers' base. The small vale in the side of the ridge was littered with the trash that always seemed to be left behind by civilized men. Without getting close enough to examine the detritus, he was sure some of it was still usable. Probably most of it was usable to less "civilized" people.
"How long?" he asked. From where he stood, the dents and scrapes on the ground where the ship had sat looked fresh, as did the scorching from its launch.
"Not long at all. The scorched ground is still hot to the touch." Thatcher considered for a moment. "Half hour or less." He made a face, which couldn't be seen behind his infra screen. "Someone must have told them we were coming."
Conorado shook his head. "If somebody told them, they would have left sooner—and in less of a hurry." He looked around as though he could see through the surrounding ridges and rock walls. The only thing his infra screen showed out of the ordinary that his unassisted eye couldn't see was the splotch of heat radiating from the scorched rock and dirt and the positions of the Marines. "They must have put out an array of sensors, or some remote radar units, and spotted us coming down."
Thatcher gave him a look from behind the infras. "That can be expensive."
Conorado nodded. "Whoever's behind this is well financed. They can afford it." He turned to Corporal Escarpo, his communications man. "Raise Papa Bear." Then to Sergeant Flett, the unmanned aerial vehicle chief, he said, "Get the birds up. See if they left anybody behind. Look for sensors and radars." The UAVs came in several sizes, all disguisable. For this mission, they used mid-sized UAVs that were outfitted to resemble local flying scavengers.
"Papa Bear, sir," Escarpo said, holding out the handset of the satellite comm unit.
"Papa Bear, Mama Bear Actual," Conorado said into the mouthpiece. "We didn't catch Goldilocks napping." He listened to General Cazombi's reply, then said, "Remote sensors of some kind—probably remote radars that picked us up on our way down. Has the Khe Sanh spotted their ship yet?" He listened to the reply, nodded, then glanced at Sergeant Flett and Corporal MacLeash, the assistant UAV operator. They were already launching the company's two spy-eyes. "They are in the air, sir." He listened again, raised an unseen eyebrow, said, "Aye aye, sir" when Cazombi signed off, and passed the handset back to Escarpo.
"Platoon commanders up," he said into the command circuit of his helmet radio.
Moments later his infra screen showed four man-size red columns approaching. He raised his left hand and let his sleeve slide down to bare his arm. The platoon commanders were almost certainly using their infras to locate him. The infra screens wouldn't show them that his arm was bare, but they'd see his arm raised and understand he meant for them to raise their infras. He removed his helmet. Thatcher did the same. By the time the four platoon commanders reached him, they were carrying their helmets. The five men looked at their commander expectantly.
"I just got off the horn with General Cazombi," Conorado said sourly. "It seems we accomplished our first objective. Even though we didn't arrest them, we got the smugglers off Avionia."
They were an eerie sight, six disembodied heads standing a man's height above the ground. Anyone looking at them the right way would spot an odd shimmer in the air, a peculiar offsetting of colors and shapes. And seen against the sky, or against a background of a distinctly different color and pattern from where they stood, they would appear to be man-sized pillars of dry dirt. But the Marines were used to the form of invisibility their chameleons gave them. Living, disembodied heads standing a man's height above the ground only bothered them if the heads weren't those of other Marines. Confederation Marines were the only people in Human Space who wore chameleons.
"We still have our second objective to accomplish," Conorado continued "Remove all trace of the smugglers' presence—including artifacts."
Lieutenant Giordano looked at the debris left behind by the smugglers. "It'll take one platoon maybe fifteen minutes to police that area."
Gunny Thatcher cocked an eye at him, but addressed his comment to Conorado. "Not much we can do about the gouges and scorching, though."
"You're both right," Conorado said. "However, that's not all of the artifacts."
The others looked at him. How were they supposed to get the projectile weapons away from the locals without making contact, which was forbidden by the Rules of Engagement?
"Sir." Bass had an idea. He didn't think it would be accepted, but it was the only idea any of them had. "The locals probably don't have a lot of ammunition. If we leave them alone until they use it up, they'll be left with nothing but a bunch of awkward clubs that they'll discard. Then we police up behind them and leave."
Conorado looked at him. "I hope you're making a joke, Charlie. We can't do it that way and you know it. And the joke's in bad taste."
Bass shrugged.
"Sir, Papa Bear," Corporal Escarpo interrupted.
/> Conorado accepted the offered handset. "Mama Bear," he said. "Go, Papa Bear." He listened for a minute, nodding occasionally, then said, "Thank you, sir. It isn't much help now, but it's good to know." He managed to keep any expression from his face as he listened again. "Aye aye, sir," he finally said, and handed the comm unit back to Escarpo. "Assemble the company," he told Thatcher. "Have each platoon leave a fire team out for security. Classroom formation." Then to the others, "I'll tell everybody at the same time." He found a shady spot to sit while he waited for Company L to assemble before him.
Conorado stood and told his men to sit. They did, in a semicircle before him, removing their helmets so the company commander could see them all.
"As I'm sure you have surmised, the smugglers took off right before we got here. They went sun-side and the Khe Sanh wasn't in a position to intercept them. That's right," he said to some murmured questions, "they took off and dove for the sun. I know, I know, that almost sounds suicidal. But think about it for a moment. The star's gravitational pull gets them away from Avionia faster, and think of the slingshot boost they'll get when they swing around it. They'll be far enough from a gravity well to turn on their Beam drive sooner than if they went perpendicular to the orbital plane like a normal launch.
"All right, we don't have to worry about them for now," he went on. "There are two things we have to do before we can leave. One is retrieve the weapons the smugglers provided the locals with." He held up a hand to forestall questions. "No, I don't know how we're going to do that. Rest assured, though, the best minds on Avionia Station are working on that problem. The other reason we have to stay is, just because we scared the smugglers off doesn't mean they're going to stay away. We're going to be here watching for them to return. If they do, we'll nab them.
"Yes, I know, that means we might be here for some time. If they go to the nearest human world and turn around right away, they could be back in a couple of weeks. It could take a standard year or longer if they go to the far side of Human Space. But it's more likely that their base is nearby than that it's remote from here. So I anticipate we'll be here for a couple of months. Don't anybody hold me to that. You know how Mother Corps is. We could launch tomorrow; we could be here until we've all retired.
"Now, I want each platoon to assign one squad to policing up this area. When you're through, I don't want to find even a strand of DNA to give evidence to whatever caused those gouges and the scorch mark. Everyone else is to return to defensive positions until further word. Platoon commanders, take your platoons."
Conorado turned away from his men and considered the middle distance. He wondered how his 120 Marines were supposed to get projectile rifles away from a few thousand war-happy Avionians without alerting those Avionians to their presence. Well, they were Marines. They'd do the merely difficult immediately; the impossible might take a little longer.
"Do you have any idea how improbable this is?" Lance Corporal Claypoole asked a short while later. He, Corporal Kerr, and PFC MacIlargie were watching out over the steppe, near the end of the ridge the smugglers' ship had been tucked against.
"What?" MacIlargie asked.
"Humanity's been out among the stars for how long now, three centuries? In all that time we've never run into another sentient species. Now, twice in a year's time, we've run into two different alien sentiences—and one of them's a spacefaring species."
"So?" MacIlargie asked. He was bored by watching the barren plain and having trouble staying awake. Listening was too much bother.
Kerr tilted his head and listened without saying anything. Claypoole was always worth listening to; you never knew if he was going to come up with an absurdity to top his last absurdity or say something very astute.
"You ever hear of the Drake equation?"
"The who-what?"
"The Drake equation." Claypoole swatted at where he thought the back of MacIlargie's helmet was. He connected.
"Hey, what're you hitting me for?" MacIlargie spun toward his antagonist.
"Pay attention, Wolfman, I'm talking to you." Claypoole mock-glared at MacIlargie. MacIlargie glared back. Satisfied that the junior man was listening, he continued. "There was this astronomer back in, I think, the twentieth century, by the name of Drake. He was looking for evidence of other intelligences. He had this idea that he could work out the probability of their existence with a mathematical equation."
"You're shitting me."
"No! This is straight. Tell him Corporal Kerr."
Kerr nodded. "Frank Drake. Twentieth century American. I'm surprised you didn't learn about him in a History of Science course, Wolfman."
MacIlargie shrugged. There had been a lot of lectures he sat through without hearing anything—or at least nothing that he remembered.
"Keep talking, Rock," Kerr said.
Claypoole gave Kerr a suspicious glance, then resumed. "The equation had, oh, a dozen factors, or something. The problem was, they all had unknown values."
"All unknowns?" MacIlargie laughed. "How are you going to solve an equation with no known values?"
"Well, that was the problem. We know quite a few of the values now, though. One was, how many appropriate stars have planetary systems? Turns out just about all single-star systems do. How many have a rocky planet within the liquid water range? Again, most of them. On how many of them does life evolve? If it's got liquid water and a sizable moon, it's got life as we understand it. The tricky things, values that are still unknown, were questions about the likelihood of sentience evolving, the likelihood of that sentience becoming technological, and how long would a technological sentience survive."
"Say what? Survive?" MacIlargie looked like he was being asked to believe the incredible.
Kerr nodded again. "That's right. You should have paid more attention in class. If you had you'd know that during the twentieth century worldwide nuclear warfare was a real possibility. A lot of people were afraid humanity would destroy itself and all life on Earth."
MacIlargie's face worked as he considered the implications of that. "But... but that was before man went to the stars," he blurted. "If life on Earth got wiped out, that would have been it. That would have been the end of us!"
Kerr nodded again. "That's right. That's why the likelihood of survival was one of the factors in the equation."
Kerr nodded at Claypoole to continue.
Looking superior, Claypoole said, "So far, it's seemed like the values of those last factors was close to nil. We've colonized more than two hundred worlds and explored what, a thousand or more others? In three hundred years we've never found anything that resembled another sentient species. This bears out with historical thinking. I once saw a demonstration from the twentieth century of the Drake equation that gave the result that there was a point-five percent probability of there being one technologic sentience in the galaxy at any given time. In other words, it was fifty-fifty there were none at any given time. More realistically, plugging in the factors that we have values for now, it seems likely that there are thousands, maybe even a million or two, technologic sentiences in the galaxy."
"Then where are they?" MacIlargie demanded.
"Think about it." Claypoole waved a hand at the sky. "There are so many stars in the galaxy, a couple hundred billion or so, that even if there are a million technologic sentiences riding the spaceways, the odds against any one of them running into another might approach infinity. And now, in a year's time, we've run into two of them. Not humanity, us, third platoon, Company L, 34th FIST. Do you have any idea how improbable that is?"
"Very improbable," Kerr said. "But we have. So maybe sentience is far more likely an evolutionary likelihood than anyone has ever thought. Either of you want to place a bet on us running into another one in the next couple of years?"
Claypoole shook his head. MacIlargie peered out over the steppe.
"Wolfman, you want to make a bet?"
MacIlargie slid his infra and chameleon shields into place. "I don't know. B
ut the way I understand it, you're telling me the odds are we shouldn't be seeing that birdman over there."
Kkaacgh, Captain of Scouts to the mighty High Chief Graakaak, struggled to quell his cloacal quaking and give no sign that he saw the demons. Not even with every fiber of his being shrilling runaway-runaway did he give sign. No one who ran from a demon survived, everybody knew that. When one saw a demon, one's only chance to survive the encounter was to pretend the demon was unseen. Demons hated to be seen, and killed anyone who saw them. Kkaacgh didn't know anyone who'd ever seen a demon—at least not anyone who lived to tell of it—but that was what the lore said and what the priests taught. He did his best to avert his eyes without being obvious about not looking at the demons. Even deliberately not looking at them could signal to them that he saw them, and they could kill him for that transgression. If he merely moved his head casually, they might think he was a lone hunter, even if his eyes did stray in their direction. If he gave no sign he saw them even when his gaze brushed across them, they might not think he saw them and might spare his life. He kept his eeookk moving at a lope and did his best to appear to casually look about for game.
Kkaacgh thought furiously. Where were his scouts? Exactly where were they? Were any of them in positions where they might stumble across these demons? He didn't think so. Not unless they came looking for him. He desperately needed to reach his scouts and warn them to stay away from this area. Ahead, less than half a foraging hop away, the next ridge tumbled its long way down from the Bower Curtain. If he could reach its shelter alive, he knew where there was a dry arroyo he could follow to reach the scouts who were even now climbing the other side of the ridge the demons were claiming as their own.
He wondered if the demons had killed the Clumsy Ones.
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