IX.
Don't Push Them Anywhere Put Them Back in the Bottle
He looked at his watch, and stood for a moment, pumping the stale airand tobacco-smoke of the telecast station out of his lungs, as thelight airjeep let down into the street. Oh-one-fifteen--two hours anda half since the mutiny at the native-troops barracks had broken out.The Company reservation was still ablaze with lights, and over theroof of the hospital and dispensary and test-lab he could see theglare of the burning barracks. There was more fire-glare to the south,in the direction of the mine-equipment park and the mine-labor camp,and from that direction the bulk of the firing was to be heard.
The driver, a young lieutenant who seemed to be of predominantlyMalayan and Polynesian blood, slid back the duraglass canopy for himto climb in, then snapped it into place when he had strapped himselfinto his seat.
"Can you handle the armament, sir?" he asked.
Von Schlichten nodded approvingly. Not a very flattering question, butthe boy was right to make sure, before they started out.
"I've done it, once or twice," he understated. "Let's go; I want alook at what's going on down at the equipment-park and the labor-camp,first."
They lifted up, the driver turning the nose of the airjeep in thedirection of the flames and explosions and magnesium-lights to thesouth and tapping his booster-button gently. The vehicle shot forwardand came floating in over the scene of the fighting. The situation-mapat the improvised headquarters had shown a mixture of pink and whitepills in the mine-equipment park; something was going to have to bedone about the lag in correcting it, for the area was entirely in thehands of loyal Company troops, and the mob of laborers and mutinoussoldiers had been pushed back into the temporary camp where theworkers had been gathered to await transportation to the Arctic. As hefeared, the rioting workers, many of whom were trained to handlecontragravity equipment, had managed to lift up a number ofdump-trucks and powershovels and bulldozers, intending to use them asimprovised airtanks, but Jarman's combat-cars had gotten on the jobpromptly and all of these had been shot down and were lying inwreckage, mostly among the rows of parked mining-equipment.
From the labor-camp, a surprising volume of fire was being directedagainst the attack which had already started from the retakenequipment-park. This was just another evidence of the failure ofIntelligence and the Constabulary--and consequently of himself--toanticipate the brewing storm. There was, of course, practically nochance of keeping Ullerans from having native weapons, swords, knives,even bows and air-rifles, and a certain number of Volund-madetrade-quality automatic pistols could be expected, but most of thefire was coming from military rifles, and now and then he could seethe furnace-like backflash of a recoilless rifle or a bazooka, or thesteady flicker of a machine-gun. Even if a few of these weapons hadbeen brought from the barracks by retreating Tenth Infantry or FifthCavalry mutineers, there were still too many.
Hovering above the fighting, aloof from it, he saw six longtroop-carriers land and disgorge Kragan Rifles who had been releasedby the liquidation of resistance at the native-troops barracks. Alittle later, two airtanks floated in, and then two more, going offcontragravity and lumbering on treads to fire their 90-mm rifles. Atthe same time, combat-cars swooped in, banging away with their lighterauto-cannon and launching rockets. The titanium prefab-huts, set up tohouse the laborers and intended to be taken north with them for theirstay on the polar desert, were simply wiped away. Among the wreckage,resistance was being blown out like the lights of a candelabrum. Pushthe white pills out, girls, he thought. Don't push them anywhere; putthem back in the bottle. This year, there wouldn't be any mining doneat the North Pole; next year, the stockholders'll be bitching abouttheir dividend-checks. And a lot of new machine operators are going tohave to be trained for next year's mining. If there is any mining,next year.
He took up the hand-phone and called HQ.
"Von Schlichten, what's the wavelength of the officer in command atthe equipment-park?"
A voice at the telecast station furnished it; he punched it out.
"Von Schlichten, right overhead. That you, Major Falkenberg? Nicegoing, major, how are your casualties?"
"Not too bad. Twenty or thirty Kragans and loyal Skilkans, and eightTerrans killed, about as many wounded."
"Pretty good, considering what you're running into. Get many of yourKragans mounted on those hipposaurs?"
"About a hundred, a lot of 'saurs got shot, while we were leadingthem out from the stables."
"Well, I can see geeks streaming away from the labor-camp, out thesouth end, going in the direction of the river. Use what cavalry youhave on them, and what contragravity you can spare. I'll drop a fewflares to show their position and direction."
Anticipating him, the driver turned the airjeep and started toward thedry Hoork River. Von Schlichten nodded approval and told him torelease flares when over the fugitives.
"Right," Falkenberg replied. "I'll get on it at once, general."
"And start moving that mine-equipment up into the Company area. Someof it we can put into the air; the rest we can use to buildbarricades. None of it do we want the geeks getting hold of, and theequipment-park's outside our practical perimeter. I'll send people tohelp you move it."
"No need to do that, sir; I have about a hundred and fifty loyal NorthUllerans--foremen, technicians, overseers--who can handle it."
"All right. Use your own judgment. Put the stuff back of thenative-troops barracks, and between the power-plant and the Companyoffice-buildings, and anywhere else you can." The lieutenant nudgedhim and pushed a couple of buttons on the dashboard.
"Here go the flares, now."
Immediately, a couple of airjeeps pounced in, to strafe the fleeingenemy. Somebody must have already been issuing orders on anotherwavelength; a number of Kragans, riding hipposaurs, were gallopinginto the light of the flares.
"Now, let's have a look at the native barracks and themaintenance-yards," he said. "And then, we'll make a circuit aroundthe Reservation, about two or three miles out. I'm not happy aboutwhere Firkked's army is."
The driver looked at him. "I've been worrying about that, too, sir,"he said. "I can't understand why he hasn't jumped us, already. I knowit takes time to get one of these geek armies on the road, but...."
"He's hoping our native troops and the mine laborers will be able towipe us out, themselves," von Schlichten said. "For the timidity andstupidity of our enemies, Allah make us truly thankful, amen. It'ssomething no commander should depend on, but be glad when it happens.If Firkked had had a couple of regiments on hand outside thereservation to jump us as soon as the Tenth and the Zirks mutinied, hecould have swamped us in twenty minutes and we'll all have had ourthroats cut by now."
There was nothing going on in the area between the native barracks andthe mountains except some sporadic firing as small patrols of Kragansclashed with clumps of fleeing mutineers. All the barracks, even thoseof the Rifles, were burning; the red-and-yellow danger-lights aroundthe power-plant and the water-works and the explosives magazines werestill on. Most of the floodlights were still on, and there was stillsome fighting around the maintenance-yard. It looked as though thesurvivors of the Tenth N.U.N.I. were in a few small pockets which werebeing squeezed out.
There was nothing at all going on north of the Reservation; thecountryside, by day a checkerboard of walled fields and smallvillages, was dark, except for a dim light, here and there, where theoccupants of some farmhouse had been awakened by the noise of battle.The airjeep dropped lower, and the driver slid open the window besidehim; von Schlichten could hear the grunts and snorts and squawks offarm-animals, similarly aroused.
Then, two miles east of the Reservation, he caught a new sound--theflowing, riverlike, murmur of something vast on the move.
"Hear that, lieutenant?" he asked. "Head for it, at about a thousandfeet. When we're directly above it, let go some flares."
"Yes, sir." The younger man had lowered his voice to a whisper."That's geek, headed for the Re
servation."
"Maybe Firkked's army," von Schlichten thought aloud. "Or maybe a citymob."
"Not quite noisy enough for a mob, is it, sir?"
"A tired mob," von Schlichten told him. "They'd start out on a run,yelling '_Znidd Suddabit_!' By the time they got across the bridges tothis side of the river, they'd be winded. They'd stop for a blow, andthen they'd settle down to steady slogging to save their wind.Sometimes a mob like that's worse than a fresh mob. They get stubborn;they act more deliberately."
The noises were growing clearer, louder. He picked up the phone andpunched the wavelength of the military airport.
"Von Schlichten, my compliments to Colonel Jarman. Tell him there's ageek mob, or possibly Firkked's regulars, on the main highway fromSkilk, two miles east of the Reservation. Get some combatcontragravity over here, at once. We'll light them up for you. Andtell Colonel Jarman to start flying patrols up and down along theHoork River; this may not be the only gang that's coming out to seeus."
The sounds were directly below, now--the scuffing of horny-soled feeton the dirt road, the clink and rattle of slung weapons, the clickingand squeeking of Ulleran voices.
The lieutenant said, "Here go the flares, sir."
Von Schlichten shut his eyes, then opened them slowly. The driver,upon releasing the flares, had nosed up, banked, turned, and wascoming in again, down the road toward the advancing column. VonSchlichten peered into his all-armament sight, his foot on themachine-gun pedal and his fingers on the rocket buttons. The highwaybelow was jammed with geeks, and they were all stopped dead andstaring upward, as though hypnotized by the lights. A second later,they had recovered and were shooting--not at the airjeep, but at thefour globes of blazing magnesium. Then he had the close-packed mass ofnon-humanity in his sights; he tramped the pedal and began punchingbuttons. He still had four rockets left by the time the mob was behindhim.
"All right, let's take another pass at them. Same direction."
The driver put the airjeep into a quick loop and came out of it infront of the mob, who now had their backs turned and were staring inthe direction in which they had last seen the vehicle. Again, vonSchlichten plowed them with rockets and harrowed them with his guns.Some of the Skilkans were trying to get over the high fences on eitherside of the road--really stockades of petrified tree-trunks. Otherswere firing, and this time they were shooting at the airjeep. It tookone hit from a heavy shellosaur-rifle, and, immediately, the driverbanked and turned away from the road.
"Dammit, why did you do that?" von Schlichten demanded, lifting hisfoot from the gun-pedal. "Are you afraid of the kind of popguns thosegeeks are using?"
"I am not afraid to risk my vehicle, or myself, sir," the lieutenantreplied, with the extreme formality of a very junior officer chewingout a very senior one. "I am, however, afraid to risk my passenger.Generals are not expendable, sir; neither are they issued for use asclay pigeons."
He was right, of course. Von Schlichten admitted it. "I'm too old toplay cowboy, like this," he said. "Back to the Reservation, telecaststation."
Looking back over his shoulder, he saw eight or ten more flaresalight, and the ground-flashes of exploding shells and rockets; theair above the road was sparkling with gun-flames. Jarman must have hadsome contragravity ready to be sent off on the instant.
While he had been out, somebody had gotten a TV-pickup mounted on acontragravity-lifter and run up to two thousand feet, on the end of asteel-tough tensilon mooring-line. The big circular screen was lit,showing the whole Company Reservation, with the surroundingcountryside foreshortened by perspective to the distant lights ofSkilk. The map had been taken up from the floor, and a bigterrain-board had been brought in from the Chief Engineer's office andset up in its place. In front of the screen, Paula Quinton, BarneyMordkovitz, Colonel Cheng-Li, and, conspicuously silent, JulesKeaveney sat drinking coffee and munching sandwiches. Half a dozenTerrans, of both sexes, were working furiously to get the markerswhich replaced the pink and white pills placed on the board, and oneof Captain Inez Malavez's non-coms, with a headset, was gettingcombat reports directly from the switchboard. Everything was clickinglike well-oiled machinery.
On the TV-screen, the Residency area was ablaze with light, and sowere the ship-docks, the airport and spaceport, the shops, and themaintenance-yard. On the terrain-board, the latter was now marked ascompletely in Company hands. The ruins of the native-troops barrackswere still burning, and there was a twinkle of orange-red here andthere among the ruins of the labor-camp. Much of the equipment for thepolar mines had already been shifted into defensible ground. The restof the circle was dark, except for the distant lights of Skilk, wherethe nuclear power plant was apparently still functioning in nativehands.
Then, without warning, a spot of white light blazed into beingsoutheast of the Company area and southwest of Skilk, followed byanother and another. Instantly, von Schlichten glanced up at the rowof smaller screens, and on one of them saw the view as picked up by apatrolling airjeep.
The army of King Firkked of Skilk had finally put in its appearance,coming in two columns, one southward from Skilk and the othernorthward along the west bank of the dry river. The former had crossedover and joined the latter, about three miles south of theReservation. The scene in the screen was similar to the one he had,himself, witnessed through his armament-sight. The Skilkan regularshad been marching in formation, some on the road and some alongparallel lanes and paths. They had the look of trained and disciplinedtroops, but they had made the same mistake as the rabble that had beenshot up on the north side of the Reservation. Unused to attack fromthe air, they had all halted in place and were gaping open-mouthed,their opal teeth gleaming in the white flare-light. However, beforethe aircar had passed over them, the lead company of one regiment,armed with Terran rifles, had begun firing.
In the big screen, it could be seen that Colonel Jarman had thrownmost of his available contragravity at them, including thecombat-cars, that had already started to form the second wave of theattack on the mob to the north. Other flares bloomed in the darkness,and the fiery trails of rockets curved downward to end in yellowflashes on the ground.
The airjeep with the pickup circled back; the troops on the road andin the adjoining fields had broken. The former were caught between thefences which made Ulleran roads such death-traps when underair-attack. The latter had dispersed, and were running away,individually and by squads; at first, it looked like a panic, but hecould see officers signaling to the larger groups of fugitives to openout, apparently directing the flight. By this time, there were ten ortwelve combat-cars and about twenty airjeeps at work. In the movingview from the pickup-jeep, he saw what looked like a 90-mm rocket landin the middle of a company that was still trying to defend itself withsmall-arms fire on the road, wiping out about half of them.
"Make the most of it, boys," Barney Mordkovitz, his mouth full ofsandwich, was saying. "Heave it to them; you won't get another chancelike that at those buggers."
"Why not?" Colonel Paula Quinton wanted to know. Her militaryeducation was progressing, but it still had a few gaps to fill in.
"The next time they're air-struck, they won't stay bunched,"Mordkovitz replied. "A lot of them didn't stay bunched this time, ifyou noticed. And they'll keep out from between the fences."
In the large screen, a quick succession of gun-flashes leaped up fromthe direction of the Hoork River and shells began bursting over the sceneof the attack. The screen tuned to the pickup on the airjeep wentdead; in the big screen, there was a twinkling of falling fire. Almostat once, thirty or forty rocket-trails converged on the gun-position,and, for a moment, explosions burned like a bonfire.
"They had a 75-mm at the rear of the column," somebody called from thebig switchboard. "Lieutenant Kalanang's jeep was hit; LieutenantVermaas is cutting in his pickup on the same wavelength."
The small screen lighted again. In the big screen, a cluster ofmagnesium-lights appeared above where the Skilkan gun had been; in thesmall screen, there was a stubbl
ed grain-field, pocked with craters,and the bodies of fifteen or twenty natives, all rather badly mangled.An overturned and apparently destroyed 75-mm gun lay on its side.
Five or six fairly large fires had broken out, by this time, aroundthe point of attack. Von Schlichten nodded approvingly.
"I was wondering how long it'd take somebody to think of that," hesaid. "Granaries and forage-stacks on some of these farms. They'llburn for half an hour, at least." He looked at his watch. "And by thattime, it'll be daylight."
"As far as we know, that was the only 75-mm gun Firkked had," ColonelCheng-Li said. "He has at least six, possibly ten, 40-mm's. It's awonder we haven't seen anything of them."
"Well, there's no way of being sure," Jules Keaveney said, "but Ihave an idea they're all at or around the Palace. Firkked knows abouthow much contragravity we have. He's probably wondering why we aren'tbombing him, now."
"He doesn't know we've sold the Palace to King Jonkvank for an army,"von Schlichten said. "And that reminds me--how much contragravitycould Firkked scrape together, for an attack on us? I've beenexpecting a geek _Luftwaffe_ over here, at any moment."
Colonel Cheng-Li studied the smoking tip of his cigarette for amoment. "Well, Firkked owns, personally, three ten-passenger aircars,a thing like a troop-carrier that he transports some of his courtiersaround in, four airjeeps armed with a pair of 15-mm machine-gunsapiece, and two big lorries. There are possibly two hundred vehiclesof all types in Skilk and the country around, but some of them are inthe hands of natives friendly to us and or hostile to Firkked. I canget the exact figures from the Constabulary office at Company House."
"That's close enough," von Schlichten told him. "And there'll beoodles of thermoconcentrate-fuel, and blasting explosives. ColonelQuinton, suppose you call Ed Wallingsby, the Chief Engineer, rightaway; have him commissioned colonel. Tell him to get to work makingthis place secure against air attack; tell him to consult with ColonelJarman. Tell him to get those geeks Leavitt has penned in therepair-dock at the airport and use them to dig slit-trenches and fillsandbags and so on. He can use Kragan limited-duty wounded to guardthem.... Mr. Keaveney, you'll begin setting up something in the way ofan ARP-organization. You'll have to get along on what nobody elsewants. You will also consult with Colonel Jarman, and with ColonelWallingsby. Better get started on it now. Just think of everythingaround here that could go wrong in case of an air attack, and try todo something about it in advance."
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