Frederik Pohl - O Pioneer!

It was time for the lying to start. “Jesus,” Giyt cried enthusiastically, “am I glad to see you guys! This place is wild. I finally did find the factory, but the damn thing’s locked up.”

Hagbarth studied him thoughtfully without speaking. He gave Maury Kettner a nod; the man turned and walked away as Hagbarth said, “So you were just wandering around, is that what you’re saying?”

“Trying to find the factory,” Giyt agreed, doing his best to see where Kettner was going; afraid he knew the answer in advance, but seeing no choice but to tough it out. “This is a very confusing place, Hoak.”

“Of course it is. Why didn’t you wait for us?”

“Well, you took so long,” Giyt improvised, looking over his shoulder. Kettner had opened the factory door and disappeared inside. He was taking a long time in there, though. Had Giyt left some sign of his entrance? “Anyway,” he added, “I ran into a couple of eeties, and they gave me directions.”

“But when you got there it was locked.”

“Locked, right,” Giyt agreed.

Hagbarth nodded, poker-faced, “Was there any special part you wanted to see?”

“Oh,” Giyt said, shrugging vaguely, “just to get a general idea, you know? So I’ll know what I’m talking about when I see Dr. Patroosh.”

“She’s a busy woman, Giyt. You don’t want to bother her with a lot of unimportant stuff.”

“No, of course not,” Giyt agreed. “It’s just that—”

But his voice trailed off. The factory door opened. Maury Kettner came out, and his expression was cold. Worse than that, he was carrying one of the carbines from the store, and Giyt observed unhappily that Kettner, at least, had known just where to go to find its ammunition clip.

He was staring at Giyt, but it was to the others that he spoke. “He was into the stash, all right,” he said. “The seals were broken.”

Hagbarth exhaled a sigh. “Ah, Giyt,” he said reproachfully, “what did you do that for? More important, what are we going to do with you now?”

It was a rhetorical question. If aimed at anybody, it was at Evesham Giyt; but it was Wili Tschopp who answered it. “There’s always the Heckslider way,” he mentioned.

It took a moment for Giyt to make the connection, and then Tschopp spelled it out for him. “You know about Harry Heckslider, don’t you? The one who fell out of the chopper on the Way to Energy Island. See, he got curious, and he just wouldn’t listen to reason.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Hagbarth said good-naturedly. “Why do you think Evesham here would be like that? You don’t have any special love for our alien brothers, do you, Evesham?”

Hagbarth’s tone was friendly enough—no, Giyt decided, a lot too friendly. The man was putting him on. He said, temporizing, “I’ve got nothing against them.”

“Really? Not even the Kalks?”

“Well, I thought they gave me a lot harder time than was called for—”

“Damn right they did! I really hated to see them working you over like that, Evesham. Not that the others are all that much better. Can’t ever trust any of the freaks, that’s what I say. You know they’ve all been scouting Earth for years, don’t you?”

Giyt was honestly surprised. “Scouting Earth?”

“You bet! They’ve got their ships orbiting the Sun, watching us, learning everything about our capabilities—how do you think they got that portal to Earth so fast?”

“Why, I guess I never thought—”

“No,” Hagbarth agreed bitterly. “You never did. Most people don’t, but there they are, and you know what kind of weapons they’ve got, because your Centaurian friend told you all about their old wars.” He was breathing heavily. He collected himself and spoke more reasonably. “Anyway, Evesham, you’re a patriotic guy, aren’t you?”

I am? Giyt asked, but not out loud. Actually he didn’t know the answer. He had never given much thought to patriotism, but now. . .

Hagbarth was going right on: “I mean, you know what the score is. The freaks would do us in in a minute if they had the chance. What do you think the Kalks have all those big explosives for? And the Delts have those harpoons—think they don’t think of using them on the rest of us now and then? They’ve got all the weapons they need to wipe us all out, they just don’t call them weapons. And what do we have?”

“Well,” Giyt said, pretending to think it over, “I guess we have those water cannons.”

Hagbarth grinned at him, then turned to the others. “See? I told you he wasn’t so dumb. But that’s just piss-ant stuff, the water cannons. They couldn’t really save us if the freaks tried a coup. Which they could do at any time. So that’s what we need the other stuff for, right?”

Giyt gave another imitation of a man trying to work a hard question out. “Maybe you’re right,” he admitted. “One thing that kind of puzzles me—”

“Yeah?”

“When you got me to try to get some weapons imported. Was that just so no one would think you already had some here?”

Hagbarth grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “Smart,” he said admiringly. “So how about it, Evesham? You won’t say anything to anybody about what you saw, will you?”

“I guess not.”

Hagbarth patted his shoulder again approvingly. “That’s good, Giyt. Glad to have you aboard. Just to make sure, you won’t mind if we search you, will you?”

Giyt let out a long breath. He was not a violent man, and there were three of them. There was no way he could stop them if they wanted to search.

“Oh,” he said, reaching inside his tunic. “You mean you’d be looking for something like this?” And he took out the Kalkaboo detonator and displayed it, wondering if they were too far from the bombs for it to work.

“Hey!” Tschopp yelled. “Careful with that thing!”

Giyt was careful. He pressed the button firmly and with care; and as it turned out, they weren’t too far away at all.

Giyt could see that Hagbarth’s mouth was moving. That was how he knew that the man was saying something, or from his expression, most likely furiously bellowing something, but just what Hagbarth was bellowing was drowned out in the thunderous crash and rumble from the doll factory. Giyt saw that the door to the factory was bulging toward them. For a moment he thought it would fly open, but it didn’t; it swelled and shuddered, but it held. As the echoes of the explosion died down, Hagbarth gave Giyt a petulant look. “What the hell have you done now?” he asked, and didn’t wait for an answer. With Kettner he raced to the door and tried to pull it open. It resisted. Kettner set down the minicarbine to get a better grip on the door, while Tschopp was staring after the other two, open-mouthed incredulous and scarlet-faced angry.

Even a nonviolent man can find a little violence in him now and then. Giyt didn’t even pause to think. From behind Tschopp he kicked at the back of the man’s knees. As Tschopp went sprawling Giyt was already running, as far as he could get from the men with the guns—down the corridor, around a turn, through an open door, down another short hall.