Hour of the Gremlins

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "Never mind that," said Jim. "We don't want food and drink. We want to know about this uprising—where is it, how many people are involved, and what kind of weapons have they?"

  The Governor sat down on one of the Hassocks and abruptly burst into tears.

  For a moment Jim was dumbfounded. Then knowledge that had its roots not in what he had learned on the Throne World as much as what he had learned back in his anthropological studies on Earth reassured him with the obvious deduction that the Governor belonged to a culture in which it was not unusual for the males to cry—even as publicly and noisily as the Governor was doing now.

  Jim waited, therefore, until the Governor had gotten rid of his first explosion of emotion, and then put his question again.

  Snuffling, the Governor wiped tears from his eyes and tried to answer. "I never thought they wouldn't send me a High-born in command of the Starkiens!" he said thickly to Jim. "I was going to throw myself on his mercy . . . but you're not a High-born—"

  His tears threatened to flood his explanations once again. Jim spoke sharply to him, to bring him out of it.

  "Stand up!" Jim snapped. Reflexively, the Governor obeyed. "As a matter of fact, I've been sponsored for adoption into the High-born. But that's beside the point. Whatever the Emperor sent you is what your situation deserves."

  "But it isn't!" choked the Governor. "I—I lied. It isn't just an uprising. It's a revolution! All the other families on the planet have joined together—even my cousin Cluth is with them. In fact, he's the head of it all. They've all banded together to kill me and put Cluth here in my place!"

  "What's this?" demanded Jim. He was aware that the Colony Worlds of the empire had their miniature courts, modeled on the Throne World's. These courts consisted of the noble families of the Colony World, headed up by the family and person of the Governor, who was a small Emperor locally, in his own right.

  "Why did you let it get this far?" put in Harn II. "Why didn't you use your colonial troops earlier to put it down?"

  "I—I—" The Governor wrung his hands, obviously incapable of speech.

  Watching him, Jim had no doubt what had happened. His studies of the past few weeks, both underground and at the learning-center screen in Ro's apartment, once he had trained himself to read at the rapid High-born rate, had given him a good insight not merely into Throne World society but into the society of these Colony Worlds. Undoubtedly the Governor had let things get this far out of hand because he had been confident of his own ability until recently to bargain with the dissident elements of his world. Evidently he had underrated his opposition.

  Then, having let things get out of hand, he had been afraid to admit the fact to the Throne World and had put in a request for much less in the way of Starkien troops than he needed to control the situation, possibly imagining he could use the Starkiens coming as a threat and still make a deal with the rebels.

  However, understanding this was no help now. The Throne World was committed to backing up the Governors, who were allowed to hold power on the Colony Worlds.

  "Sir," said Harn II, tapping Jim on the elbow. He beckoned to Jim, and they walked aside, where they could talk privately at the far end of the room. Adok followed them, leaving the Governor standing, a lonely little brown figure surrounded by hassocks and floating table surfaces.

  "Sir," said Harn II in a low voice, once they had stopped at the far end of the room, "I strongly suggest that we stay put here and send a message back to the Throne World for additional Starkiens. If half what that man there says is true, those who are against him will already have control of most of the colonial armed forces. A Ten-units of Starkiens can do a lot, but they can't be expected to defeat armies. There's no reason we should lose men just because of his blunder."

  "No," said Jim. "Of course not. On the other hand, I think I'd like to look into the situation a little further and see for ourselves what we're up against before shouting for help. So far the only account of things is what we've gotten from the Governor. Things may be a great deal different from what he thinks, even if everything he's afraid of is true."

  "Sir," said Harn II, "I have to protest. Every Starkien is an expensive and valuable man in terms of his training and equipment. They shouldn't be risked in a hopeless cause; and as their former commander, I have to tell you I think it isn't fair to them to risk them that way."

  "Sir," said Adok—since they had left the Throne World, Adok also had been addressing him with military respectfulness—"the Adjutant-Commander is right."

  Jim looked at both of the Starkiens in turn. They were subtly reminding him of the fact that while Jim was in nominal command of the expedition, the only one with real experience as a commander of Starkien Ten-units in that room was Harn himself.

  "I appreciate your objections, Adjutant," said Jim slowly to Harn II now. "But I'd still like to look the situation over."

  "Yes, sir," said Harn II. There was not the slightest flicker of emotion visible in him at being overruled. How much of this was normal Starkien self-control, and how much of it was Harn's own resignation to the situation, was something Jim could not tell. But Jim turned now and led the way back across the room to the Governor, who looked up hopelessly as they came to him.

  "There are a good many things I want to know," said Jim. "But you can start out by telling me what it was your cousin—or whoever it was who's behind this insurrection—used in order to get the others to join him."

  The Governor started to wring his hands and cloud up toward tears again, but on meeting Jim's eye, evidently thought better of it.

  "I don't know . . . I don't know!" he said. "There was some talk about their having protection. Protection . . ." He trailed off timorously.

  "Go on," said Jim. "Finish what you were going to say."

  "Protection . . . from someone on the Throne World," said the Governor fearfully.

  "Protection by one of the High-born?" demanded Jim bluntly.

  "I—I never exactly heard them say so, now!" chattered the Governor, paling. "I didn't ever really hear that said in so many words!"

  "Don't worry about it," said Jim. "Now, listen to me. Your cousin and his allies undoubtedly have armed forces. Where are they, and how many of them are there?"

  With the topic off the High-born and back on his own people, the Governor revived like a wilted flower. His burly little shoulders twitched, and his voice deepened, as he turned and pointed off through the walls of his office.

  "North of here." He gave a distance in Imperial units that amounted to something under sixty miles. "They're camped on a plain with a ring of hills around it. They've got sentry posts up on the hill, and the posts are manned by the best men in our colonial armed forces."

  "How many of those are with them?"

  "Three—three—" the Governor stuttered with new apprehension, "—three-quarters, maybe."

  "More likely ninety-eight percent of them, sir," put in Harn II, gazing at the Governor, "if he estimates them as high as three-quarters."

  "Why haven't they moved into your capital city here before now?" asked Jim.

  "I . . . I told them you were coming," said the Governor miserably. "In fact I . . . offered to send you away if they'd make terms."

  "The only terms to be made," said Harn II to the little man, "will be by us. How many men does ninety-eight percent of your colonial armed forces amount to?"

  "Three divisions," stammered the Governor, "about forty thousand trained and armed men."

  "Sixty to seventy thousand," amended Harn II, looking at Jim.

  Jim nodded.

  "Very well," he said. He looked out a long, low window in one side of the office. "It's almost sunset locally. Do you have a moon?" he added, turning to the Governor.

  "Two of them—" the Governor was beginning, when Jim cut him short.

  "One would be enough, if it gives us enough moonlight," he said. He turned to Harn and Adok. "As soon as it's dark, we'll go up and have a look at that camp of theirs."
>
  He looked back at the Governor, who bobbed his head, smiling.

  "And we'll take you with us," said Jim.

  The Governor's smile vanished as suddenly as the smile of a cartoon figure wiped from the drawing by the cartoonist's eraser. Four hours later, with the earlier of the two moons just beginning to show a small orange rim over the low hills of the horizon surrounding the capital city, Jim, with Harn and Adok up front and the Governor in the rear of a small, completely enclosed combat reconnaissance craft, lifted out of the capital city, rose into the darkness of the night sky just below the black belly of some overhanging clouds, and slid silently northward in the direction the Governor indicated. Some fifteen minutes later they descended close to the ground and approached the hills ringing the plain they sought, with the underside of the reconnaissance vessel brushing the heads of the three-foot-tall grass as it dodged in and out of clumps of elmlike trees.

  When the terrain began to tilt upward toward the encircling hills themselves, they hid the reconnaissance vessel in a clump of brush and young trees and continued the rest of the way on foot. The two Starkiens, together, went first, spread out about fifteen yards apart. They moved with an amazing silence, which Jim was able to match only because of his hunting experience back on Earth. But most surprising of them all was the little Governor, who turned out to be quite at home stealing quietly through the patches of alternate moonlight and shadow. Once he was sure the small man could keep up and would make no noise, Jim spread out from him to approximately the same distance existing between Adok and Harn.

  They were nearly to the top of the slope that would at last allow them to overlook the plain beyond when the two Starkiens dropped suddenly out of sight on their stomachs in the grass. Jim and the Governor immediately did the same.

  Some minutes went by. Then Adok suddenly rose from the grass immediately before Jim.

  "It's all right, sir. Come on. You can walk the rest of the way," he said. "The sentry was asleep."

  Jim and the Governor got to their feet and followed the Starkien up the slope and into a little enclosure perhaps a dozen feet across, fenced in with what looked like a silver-wire mesh perhaps a yard high. In the center of the enclosure was an instrument resembling a beach umbrella with the fabric removed from the ribs supporting it. The sentry Adok had mentioned was nowhere in sight.

  "There's the camp," said Harn, pointing over the far rim of the wire mesh and down a further slope. "It's all right. You can speak up inside the fence, sir. We can't be seen or heard now."

  Jim walked over to stand beside Harn and look down. What he saw looked not so much like an armed camp as a circular small town or city of dome-shaped buildings divided by streets into pie-shaped sections.

  "Come here," he said, looking back at the Governor. The Governor came obediently up to the wire mesh. "Look down there. Tell me. Do you see anything unusual about that camp down there?"

  The Governor gazed and finally shook his head.

  "Sir," said Harn, "the camp is laid out according to one of the customary military patterns, with different groups or units in each section, and a guard of men from each section to complete the perimeter circuit."

  "Except they've set up a council building!" said the Governor self-pityingly. "Look at that! Just as if I was there with them!"

  "Where?" asked Jim.

  The Governor pointed out a larger dome-shaped building just to the right of the geometric center of the camp.

  "Only a Governor is supposed to call a council among the troops!" he said. "But they've been going ahead, anyway. As if I were deposed already—or even dead!" He snuffled.

  "What are you suspicious of, sir?" asked Harn. Adok had moved up close behind them. Jim could now see him out of the corner of his eye.

  "I'm not exactly sure," said Jim. "Adjutant, what kind of weapons do our Starkiens have that these colonial soldiers wouldn't have?"

  "We have vastly better individual defensive screens," answered Harn. "Also, each of our men represents fire power equal to that of one of their heavy companies."

  "Then it's just a case of having the same sort of weapons, only better ones?" said Jim. "Is that it?"

  "Sir," answered Harn, "the greatest weapon of the Starkiens is the trained individual Starkien himself. He—"

  "Yes, I know that," interrupted Jim a little sharply. "What about"—he fumbled in his mind for means of translating the Earth terms there into the Empire language—"what about large fixed weapons? Unusually powerful explosives—nuclear fusion or fission weapons?"

  "These colonials aren't allowed the technological machinery to make large fixed weapons," said Harn. "It's possible that they might secretly have built some sort of fission device—but unlikely. As for any antimatter weapon, that's completely impossible—"

  "Just a minute," Jim interrupted him. "Do the Starkiens have all these things available back on the Throne World? The—what was it you called it? Antimatter devices?"

  "Of course. But they haven't been required for use off the Throne World for some thousands of years," said Harn. "Are you aware of what an antimatter device is, sir?"

  "Only," said Jim grimly, "to the extent of knowing that a little bit of antimatter coming in contact with a little bit of matter can cause a good deal of destruction."

  He stood for a second without saying anything. Then he spoke abruptly.

  "Well, Adjutant," he said to Harn, "now that you've seen how things look down there, do you still want to send back to the Throne World for help?"

  "No, sir," answered Harn promptly. "If the sentry we surprised in his post is at all representative, their armed forces are incredibly poor. Also, their camp seems set up more for the convenience of those dwelling in it than with any eye to overall defense. The pattern is there, but there are no street patrols, no perimeter patrols that I can see, and—most amazing—no overhead warning system whatsoever. Those people down there are just going through the motions of being an army."

  Harn stopped, as if giving Jim a chance to comment.

  "Go on, Adjutant," said Jim.

  "Sir," acknowledged Harn, "what with what I've mentioned, the fact that we've just now discovered that their leaders are all concentrated in that one building, makes the military solution to this situation extremely simple. I'd suggest we send Adok back for the rest of the men right now, and as soon as they get here we mount a raid on that one building, coming down on it from directly overhead so as to avoid triggering their perimeter defenses, and either kill or capture the ringleaders. Then they can be returned to the capital city for trial."

  "And what," asked Jim, "if the rumor the Governor heard was correct—that these rebels have a friend among the High-born on the Throne World?"

  "Sir?" said Harn. Insofar as a Starkien could, he sounded puzzled. "It's impossible, of course, for a High-born to have any dealings with colonial revolutionists like those down there. But even assuming that they down there had such a friend, there's nothing he could do to stop us. And, moreover, we Starkiens are responsible only to the Emperor."

  "Yes," said Jim. "All the same, Adjutant, I'm not going to follow your advice here, any more than I followed it when you suggested earlier that we send back to the Throne World for reinforcements."

  He turned away from Harn to confront the little Governor.

  "Your noble families are always fighting with each other, aren't they?" he asked.

  "Why—they're nearly always intriguing against me, all of them!" said the little Governor. Then he giggled unexpectedly. "Oh, I see what you mean, Commander. Yes, they do fight among one another a lot. In fact, if they didn't, I might have some trouble handling them. Oh, yes, their main sport is intriguing and accusing one another of everything you can think of."

  "Naturally," said Jim, half to himself. "They're noyaux."

  "Sir?" said Harn beside him. The little Governor was also looking puzzled. The scientific term in the language of Earth meant nothing to them.

  "Never mind," said Jim. He went o
n to the Governor, "Would there be anyone among these other leaders down there that your cousin generally doesn't get along with?"

  "Someone who Cluth doesn't—" The little Governor stopped thoughtfully. He stood a second, gazing at the moonlit grass at his feet. "Notral! Yes, if there's anyone he isn't likely to get along with, it would be Notral."

  He turned and pointed down at the encampment.

  "See?" he said. "Cluth's people will be in that slice there of the encampment. And Notral's will be way over there, almost directly opposite. The farther they are away from each other usually, the better they like it!"

  "Adjutant. Adok," said Jim, turning to the two Starkiens. "I've got a special job for you. Do you suppose that you could go down there quietly and bring back to me, alive and in good shape, a perimeter guard from the section just outside Notral's area of the encampment?"

  "Of course, sir," answered Harn.

  "Fine," said Jim. "Be sure to blindfold him when you take him from the perimeter. And you'll have to blindfold him again when you take him back. Now"—he turned to the Governor—"point them out Notral's area of the encampment again."

  The Governor did so. The two Starkiens let themselves out of the sentry post and effectually disappeared—as effectually as if they had translated themselves from there to some other spot, in the fashion of the Throne World. It was a little over half an hour, by earthly standards, before they returned, and Jim saw the section of the mesh fence of the sentry post swing open. He had been sitting on the ground, crosslegged, with the little Governor sitting to one side of him. But now Jim got to his feet, and the Governor scrambled up, as ordered, to stand alongside him, his extreme shortness emphasizing Jim's six-foot-four.

  Adok crawled into the sentry post and stood up, to be followed a second later by a small brown youngster in a straplike harness somewhat like that of the Starkiens. The young colonial soldier was so frightened that he shook visibly. Harn followed closely behind him and shut the mesh gate once he was inside.

  "Bring him here," said Jim, imitating the breathy, hissing accents of the Throne World High-born. He was standing so that his back was to the rising moon, which had finally been joined by its smaller partner of the skies. Their combined light flooded over his shoulder and showed him clearly the face of the small long-haired soldier but left his own face in the darkness of deep shadow.