Gordon Dickson - Wolfling

“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.”