“It wasn’t as bad as all that. We were accompanied by NPF rangers after all.”
John Morgan is either very confident of his abilities, or not as bright as he looks, Jack thought, guess I’ll find out which. “I was just getting ready to make lunch. Fancy some zarabuck, John?”
“I’m game. I try to sample all the local cuisine on every planet I visit, provided it has been declared safe for consumption. Back on Alpha I’ve tried veldbeest and some sort of pig-like animal somebody gave me with my breakfast.”
“Domesticated river pig, probably,” Jack said. “Leaner than the Terran variety.”
“Careful,” Lunt warned, “the Fuzzies will have you eating raw goofer and land-prawn.”
“I might be open to goofer, properly cooked, but I think I’ll pass on the land-prawn,” Morgan said with a smile. “I tried grasshopper and chocolate covered ants on Terra. That was quite enough bug food for me.”
“There is a restaurant owner over on Alpha who claims he tried a land-prawn dish looking for a new item for the menu,” Lunt added. “He said it tastes a bit like haggis.”
“Haggis?” Morgan asked. “What is that?”
“A traditional dish served by Scots on old Terra,” Jack supplied, as he extracted cold sliced zarabuck from the refrigerator. “You would have to visit Australia to get it made right, these days. Kind of like guarmor on Freya.”
Morgan cocked an eyebrow at Jack. “You’ve tried guarmor? Most Terrans wouldn’t touch it.”
“A…woman of my acquaintance…served it to me a few times.” Jack paused a moment before laying out the rest of the food. “I won’t say that I particularly liked it, but I would eat it whenever she prepared it.”
“Is that a Freyan dish?” George Lunt asked.
“Yes. The intestines and various organs of the oukry are shredded and broiled in the skin of the beast,” Morgan supplied. “Some Freyans have taken to adding Terran cheddar cheese and hot sauces, but I prefer it made the traditional way.”
Lunt looked a little green but recovered in time to accept a hot sandwich from Jack. Without any cheese. After the quick lunch George returned to his duties.
No sooner had Major Lunt left, than an airbarge arrived and settled in the open field away from the Fuzzy training grounds. Jack hustled over to meet the tall, thin balding man and four Fuzzies who stepped out of the forward cabin.
"Pappy Jack, Pappy Jack!” It was Flora, Fauna, Allan Quatermain and Natty Bumppo. They surrounded Jack and his guest. After much ruffling of heads Jack pointed to Little Fuzzy and the foursome ran over to make talk with him.
“Mr. Holloway? Governor Rainsford asked me to escort these dogs out for the search.”
“Nifflheim! I had forgotten all about it,” Jack admitted. “Good thing you got here when you did or I would have been out in the field. I’ll call Gerd and Ruth and see if they can help get things arranged around here.”
“Actually, Mr. Grego leased us some robots to setup an electric corral and some prefab shelters for them. Just show me where they go and I’ll get them started.”
“How friendly are they?” Morgan asked.
“Oh, friendly enough if you are a human or Fuzzy,” Larry Wolvin replied. “When they were pups they spent a lot of time with Fuzzies and human children. The overly aggressive ones are separated out and used in security work. All of these were trained to obey human and hypersonic Fuzzy voices. These dogs are all unattached so whichever Fuzzies work with them will be able to keep them. I have some other dogs coming in a few days from my private sales, so they’ll have to go back after we find Mr. Brannhard.”
Jack noted that Larry didn’t say “if.” He liked that.
“I’ll have some more dogs in a week or so after they come out of heat, Mr. Holloway. It’s too risky to have them out here with all these studs around. I only do selective breeding to get the best mix in the next generation.”
“Well, I sure appreciate your coming out here, Larry,” Jack said. “Don’t forget to put in a voucher for your time and trouble.”
“Nope. Gus is a friend of mine. I want him found, too.” Larry smiled. “Besides, it’s his turn to buy the next round.”
Jack turned to Morgan. “John, I’ll have to stick around until Gerd or Ruth gets here. Why don’t you take a look around while I deal with this?”
“Sounds good. Do I need an escort to keep me out of trouble?”
Jack looked around and noticed Mart Burgess lugging a crate on his shoulder. “Hey, Mart, can you spare about thirty minutes to play tour guide?”
Morgan went with Mart Burgess over to observe a mob of Fuzzies at the firing range. The Fuzzies were using down-sized 8.5 mm and .22 rifles. Their aim was impressive. One Fuzzy was zeroing his weapon and put three rounds into the paper Canadian Bull. The Fuzzy hit the target low and to the right of the bull, but the bullets made a single hole smaller than a ten centisol coin. Morgan was impressed and said so.
“I’ll have to adjust the sights on that rifle down and to the left.” He shook his head. “I knew a guy back in the army who could shoot like that.”
Morgan inspected the guns that Burgess had just carried in. “Aside from being smaller, these rifles look very different from anything I ever saw before. What model are these?”
“Oh, I based these on the first century A.E. M16A1. I left out the fully automatic setting until I’m certain the Fuzzies won’t abuse it. These rifles are good for them because they are easy to load and recoilless, and not as loud as normal hunting rifles.”
“They’re a lot quieter than my Baldertec 10.3,” Morgan said. “I noticed the Fuzzies are still wearing the ear protection.”
“Well, overuse of any pistol or rifle can damage your hearing, and Fuzzies are particularly sensitive to loud noises.” He passed out the new rifles and took Morgan to the next range. “Here we are trying the Fuzzies out on crossbows.”
Morgan watched intently as a Fuzzy set the nose of his crossbow down against a rock, cocked the string back with a lever, locked it in place and loaded a bolt. He then raised, aimed and fired in a single fluid motion. The bolt missed dead-center of the bull’s-eye by half a centimeter.
“Great Galdor, that was a beautiful shot,” Morgan exclaimed. “But why train the Fuzzies with a crossbow when you make guns for them?”
“Not all Fuzzies like the rifles,” Burgess explained. “They don’t like the loud bang so close to their ears. So, Mr. Holloway has crossbows and standard archery equipment made-up for them. All Fuzzies learn archery, then the ones that are interested can learn to use the rifle and crossbow.”
“Are they taught to make bows and arrows?”
“You betcha. Follow me.”
He showed Morgan several other classes: how to make voice like Big Ones, learn Terran language, fletching, weaving, clay pottery, and smithing.
“A Fuzzy blacksmith?”
“Oh, we have lots of those, now,” he laughed. “This little fellow here makes the arrowheads for the fletchers. Gerd dubbed him Vulcan.”
The Fuzzy blacksmith wore a leather apron to protect his fur from being singed as he hammered out a red-hot arrowhead. When he finished shaping the metal, he cooled it in a bucket of oil and handed it over to another Fuzzy who sharpened the edges on a peddle-powered grindstone.
“I think I understand,” Morgan said. “You are teaching them mostly things they can do without the aid of Terran technology.”
“Right. Jack has been adamant that we not let the Fuzzies become a lot of welfare bums. Many of the Fuzzy villages we set up have become almost completely self-supporting.”
“Farming? Ranching?”
Mart nodded. “Farming, yes. Ranching is stalled until we can find a food animal small enough for the Fuzzies to handle.”
“Goofers?”
“No, they tried that, but the goofers are able to climb over, and burrow under, corral fences. About a year ago an island was surveyed off the coast of Gamma continent. The fauna on that island had adapted t
o the limited living space by becoming pygmies. Veldbeests, damnthings, zarabucks and even harpies were all about a third the size of their Beta continent counterparts.”
“Ah, I learned in college that there were similar cases with dinosaurs sixty-odd million years ago on Terra.”
“Oh, right, the Bristol Dinosaurs. There were also the Malta elephants and, um, the Homo floresiensis of…Flores, I think. I heard Gerd say that the Gamma islanders were one of the more extreme cases he had ever come across. The size reduction is almost perfectly uniform among the various species. Anyway, Jack had a couple dozen veldbeests and zarabuck brought out and distributed among the Fuzzy villages hoping to get their numbers up enough to work as a food source for them. Not that they are starving, now. Come check this out.”
He led Morgan to a prefabricated building with second door sized for Fuzzies. They walked through the front door to find several heavy-duty refrigeration units. Burgess opened one to reveal shelves filled with plastic wrapped meat.
“What animals were these?”
“Goofer and zarabunny. These are the kills made by the Fuzzies while they were clearing out the farmlands and transplanting trees for the Company.”
“Why bother keeping all this meat? Don’t the Fuzzies prefer Extee-Three?”
“Fuzzies do not live by Extee-Three alone,” he said. “Fuzzies are carnivorous omnivores. They eat pretty much anything, but prefer meat. No point in wasting all this, anyway. I heard Victor Grego is thinking of canning goofer so that Fuzzies adopted by city folk can still get some.
Victor Grego seriously never misses a trick. Morgan was about to ask another question when a Fuzzy ran in yelling his name.
“John Mo’gan! John Mo’gan! Pappy Jack ready to go.”
“That means go with him,” Burgess supplied. “I have to get back to my workshop, anyway.”
“Thank-you for the tour, Mart.”
Morgan followed the Fuzzy out and started running. He hadn’t thought a Fuzzy could move so fast on such short legs. The Fuzzy noticed Morgan was lagging behind and slowed his pace.
Jack had waited until Gerd and Ruth came in to supervise the setup, said his farewells to Larry Wolvin, then Jack and Morgan loaded up the aircar to rejoin the hunt for Gus.
During several hours of flight time Jack pointed out various landmarks and wildlife and gave a crash course on Zarathustra. John took careful note of everything the elder man said. It was getting late and the two men started scouting for a campsite.
“How long were you on Freya,” Morgan asked after a while.
“A few years,” Jack said tersely.
Morgan pressed, “Why did you leave? Most Terrans I have spoken with who had been there claim they wished they never left.”
“You can add me to that list,” Jack admitted. “Why did you leave, John?”
“Well, when you are raised there it doesn’t seem all that special, I guess. I wanted to see other planets, get an education, that sort of thing.”
Jack nodded. “That was why I left Terra. Only I wanted more than the education I received in school. It’s a big galaxy out there, and we’ve barely scratched the surface of it.”
“So you left Freya to see more of the galaxy?”
Jack considered for a moment before answering. John Morgan was awfully curious for somebody he’d just met. Still, there was no harm in answering the question. “No, I was prepared to settle down and stay put by that time. I met a pretty little thing that was willing to put up with me.She was something special.”
Jack stopped talking and Morgan was about to press for more when he spotted a large beast charging across the veldt. It was a monstrous thing with a long straight horn protruding from its brow like some demonic unicorn, and two tusk-like horns jutting from the sides of its lower jaw. It had to weigh 3000 pounds if it weighed an ounce.
“What the hell is that thing?”
“Shimo-kato,” Jack replied. “What us Big Ones call a damnthing.”
“The book description doesn’t do it justice. They still range this close to your place?”
“We’re a fair pace from there, by now, but no, not usually. We cleaned them out pretty good. This is the first one I’ve seen around this area in over a year.” Jack pulled out a set of old style binoculars. “Hey! There’s a family of Fuzzies out there.”
Before Jack could turn around Morgan grabbed the 12.7 Express and took a bead on the charging damnthing through an open portal. The first shot caught the beast in the right shoulder but failed to halt it charge. The second shot caught its center of mass causing the damnthing to stumble and fall. Jack circled around for a better view. The beast was trying to get back up.
“What does it take to stop that thing?” Morgan asked, as he lined up a third shot.
“Try for the head,” Jack advised. “Body shots just make him mad.”
“He doesn’t look very cheerful as it is.” John did as Jack suggested and fired. The slug caught the damnthing just above the eye and took off a sizable portion of its skull. “That should do it.”
“We’ll land and make sure. Anytime you think a damnthing is dead you want to shoot it again. You check on that and I’ll check with the Fuzzies to be certain they’re all right.”
Jack brought down the aircar and the two men left the vehicle. John carefully approached the damnthing making sure to keep the rifle at the ready. He was almost convinced it was dead when he noticed a small cloud of dust arise from in front of its muzzle. Without hesitation Morgan put another round in its head.
Jack and the Fuzzies came at a dead run until they noticed Morgan working on the damnthing with a Freyan dagger. “Taking a trophy?”
“Good idea. That center horn will make a good walking stick, but first I’m skinning, gutting and stripping it of meat.”
“You’re planning on eating that?” Jack was surprised. Typically, he would just haul the carcass out into the wilderness and dump it for the scavengers.
“Is it poisonous?”
Jack said he didn’t think so.
“On Freya we generally eat what we kill.” Morgan nodded towards the Fuzzies. “Are they okay?”
“Yeah. They’re some of my gang from the Rez out on the search.”
“Maybe they would like some of this meat?” Morgan nodded towards the rifle. “By the way, my apologies for using your rifle. I didn’t think my .457 would do the job.”
Jack inspected his rifle, then the dead damnthing. “Clean it and we’ll call it even. That was some real nice shooting.”
“Your rifle really pounded the hell out of my shoulder.” Morgan said.
“Yeah, it takes some getting used to. You’ll be sore for a few days. Remind me to give you some ointment for that when we get back.” Jack pulled out his own knife and joined in skinning the damnthing. He knew enough about Freyan tradition not to offend his guest.
“We may as well make camp here.” The Fuzzies joined in the skinning effort. It was a rare opportunity for a Fuzzy to skin a damnthing.
“This should make a nice wall decoration,” Jack observed. “Are you planning on eating the heart?”
Morgan smiled and gestured at the Fuzzies who were nibbling on loose pieces of meat as they worked. “Only if we cook it first. Wait, why aren’t these Fuzzies on dogs?”
“There weren’t enough dogs to go around until Larry Wolvin brought out that barge-load, today,” Jack answered. “This group was dropped by aircar and supplied with a set of radios a few days ago. If I had known this big fella” –Jack stabbed the damnthing with his bowie knife– “was out here, I would have killed it first.”
“Well, I don’t think any harm was really done,” Morgan observed. “These Fuzzies don’t seem worse for wear, and they are getting a rare treat of…shimo-kato?”
“Yeah, generally speaking a live Fuzzy is a happy Fuzzy. Well, I’ll set up camp while you carve out dinner.”
“Good idea,” Morgan said, “but leave the tent to me. I have a special self-erecting model.”
XV
“Do you think there is anything to it?” Governor Riansford asked.
Colonial Marshal Max Fane took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I can’t be sure of anything at this point, Governor. It’s just a couple of rumors we picked up while doing the door to door.”
Ben Rainsford swore under his breath. “This is the sort of thing I would normally talk over with Gus. He understands all this cops and robbers stuff way better than I do. Actually, he would be talking with you, if . . .”
“I understand, sir.”
“Marshal, would you do me a favor?”
“Governor?”
“Take off that gun belt and join me on the terrace.” Before the Marshal could react, Rainsford got up and walked out to the terrace where he took a seat. Max Fane hung up his belt and joined him. He indicated a seat and Fane sat down. “Now we can talk like normal people, Max. I want your sincere opinion.”
Marshal Fane thought for a moment before speaking. “Well, as a cop I chased down a lot of leads based on rumor. Here we have it that Leo Thaxter knows something about Gus being grabbed up and that he is the target of a prison hit because of it. Before he was arrested and convicted nobody would have dared breathe a word about him or his activities. Now people feel safer to talk about him. That doesn’t prove anything.”
“What do you suggest, Max?”
The Colonial Marshal shrugged. “Normally, we would interrogate Thaxter in protective custody, under veridication, of course. If he knows something, we make a deal. Maybe add a few years to his sentence,” he chuckled. Any other convict would want less time on his sentence. More criminals should have a death sentence waiting for them at the end of their term of incarceration. “If it’s a wild goose chase, we dump him back at Prison House and move on to the next lead. Frankly, the leads have been few and far between. I’m ready to grab at some straws.”
“Why not question him at the prison?”
The Marshal let out a long breath. He had to remind himself that this was all new to the Governor. “If there is a hit out on him, it would be a guard or fellow inmate who would carry it out. For that matter the warden himself could be in on it.” Fane anticipated Ben’s next question. “We can’t question the warden under veridication without either just cause or his cooperation. If he refuses, that doesn’t even prove he’s up to something since most people would do the same. But if he is crooked and we ask him oh-so-politely to please sit down in the hot seat with the glowing globe on top and he refuses, we not only fail to prove anything, but we have now warned him that we think he may be dirty.
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