Anne McCaffrey - Decision at Doona

The guard came back and his report caused Landreau to shrug with indifference. Ken saw the guard hesitate, glance to his left and address Landreau again. The spaceman's answer was sufficiently curt to bring the guard snapping to attention, make a crisp about-face and resume his position at the perimeter of the Common.

Regretting the lack of binoculars, Ken kept close watch on the growing cloud, aware of the increasing, odor on the light morning breeze. The thin whine of a com-unit alert penetrated the placid scene.

Landreau lifted his wrist up, his whole attitude one of sudden alert. Lowering his arm, he addressed a few crisp remarks to Chaminade, whose disagreement was cut short by Landreau's peremptory gesture.

Instantly the guards quick-marched to the mess hall and began herding out the colonists. At the same time, Ken saw the ship's launch rise from the landing field and head toward the ominous cloud in the valley.

Going on a reccy, Ken decided, and then wondered why in hell the colonists were being marched away from the Common, away from the landing field. That didn't make much sense. Even from this distance he could hear the frantic thud of hooves against wooden stalls, as the now hysterical animals tried to free themselves from their tethers.

Cautiously Ken rose to a crouch, crept sideways for an unobstructed view of the barn. Alarm began to grow in him as he watched the colonists herded into the corral, A flash in the distance caught his eye. The flash was repeated, stabbing through the dust cloud.

The launch was shooting laser bolts at the snakes. First sensible thing Landreau had done since he got here! Ken tried to relax but his apprehension did not dissipate. The guards now had their lasers aimed at the colonists and were moving back from the corral. Ken saw Lawrence waving his fist, make a move toward the high corral fence, saw the laser bolt dig a clod of earth right at the man's feet, saw Lawrence pull back with an angry yell, the words indistinguishable above the commotion of the horses.

Two things Ken realized simultaneously: the lasers were not killing the snakes, they were herding them toward the barn. The second was that no one was guarding the mess hall. Ken dashed toward the hall, running low and fast, leaping the railing with an agility born of desperation. As his feet hit the porch, he saw that the hall was not entirely empty. But he barged right in, clobbering one startled Codep man across the head and felling the other with a crack to the jaw.

With a fluid motion he overturned the tables nearest him, forcing his trembling hands to move slowly, searchingly across the underside. Nothing! One of the men groaned and Ken kicked him in the head with unexpected ruthlessness. He flipped over the next table. There was no way of telling at which one Hrrula had sat at that first breakfast; all had been moved many times. The third table was the jackpot. Where the center brace joined the legs, Ken felt a half-sphere. He heard the faint pop of a seal breaking as he pulled the hemisphere loose. It was the size of the first joint of his thumb, a dull brown metal covered with minute screenlike patterns. There was a small circular seam in the base which was of a softer material.

Please God let this not be made of Rralan metals, Ken prayed. He weighed it in the palm of his hand; it was heavy for its size. A frantic screaming penetrated his reflections. He glanced toward the window and saw a terrifying sight. The monstrous heads of the great snakes were all too identifiable as the creatures undulated closer and closer to the barn.

“Hide, will you, Hrrubans?” he cried at the device. “Look what's happening because you won't meet us! In honor help us!”

Whirling, he jerked the laser guns from the belts of the two unconscious Codep men. Another quick glance out the window showed him that the colonists had taken refuge in the barn itself while their guards, still firing sporadically in the dirt around the barn, were pulling back across the wide sweep of the land to the Common and the mess hall. Ken positioned himself to the side of the window and waited till the squads had drawn into sight, their tempting backs toward him.

He lobbed off several quick shots into the dust at their feet, got off another which twisted into uselessness the gun of the man nearest him. The man cried out as the overheated metal burned his hands.

“Drop your guns. Raise your hands,” Ken shouted, “or the next shots get Landreau and Chaminade.” Then he barked some unintelligible phrases in mock Hrruban, as if he had brought reinforcements. “The Hrrubans' weapons are heavier than ours, Landreau. Don't try anything.”

A trigger-happy marine attempted to turn in the act of dropping his rifle. Ken dropped him with a bolt through his leg and no one else tried to turn.

“Okay, Landreau, let me see you order those snakes herded away from the barn. Now!”

Ken could imagine the expression on the spaceman's face, but at that moment one of the guards let out a startled howl, jabbing his hand frantically toward the barn.

The main door had been flung wide and from the barn charged every head of the stock-horses, cattle, pigs. Leading them on the bull, a pitchfork carried like an archaic lance, was Ben Adjei, his wife clinging to him on the back of their improbable mount. The guards were overrun by this unlikely cavalry before they could recover their rifles.

Ben leapt from his bull, pulling down the spaceman. Even before Ken could reach the scene, Ben was ordering the launch to turn back the reptiles or hear a laser bolt sear through their commander's skull.

In the subsequent confusion, no one immediately noticed that the homing beacon was lit; everyone was too busy helping the wounded and recapturing the stock. By the time someone did notice the beacon, an uneasy truce existed between the colonists holding hostages and the remaining crews aboard the two spaceships.

«Hey,» Kate Moody cried out, returning from a trip to her cabin for more medical supplies, «the beacon's lit – and you can already see the ship.»

“It had better be Alreldep,” Ken growled and suddenly remembered the Hrruban bug in his pocket.

“See this, Landreau,” he held the metal object right under the spaceman's nose, although the man was still groggy from Ben's stunning leap on him. “Here's proof of the Hrrubans' existence. And watch what you say, because the whole thing's being transmitted back to them. In fact, everything, since we made first contact, has been relayed to Hrruba. And, man, just think how that makes you look.”

As the spaceman thrust it away, Chaminade intercepted the object.

“Truthfully, I would like to see your allegations substantiated.”

“Is that why you were so eager to agree to Landreau's scheme of having the snakes destroy us?” Lee Lawrence demanded. His head was bandaged but the arm that cradled a laser rifle was steady on the hostages.

“An extraordinary situation requires extraordinary measures,” Chaminade replied in a bland voice.

"The appropriate measures were laid down close to two centuries ago," Hu Shih remarked in a crisp stern voice, cutting through Lawrence's outraged roar. "We followed them when we asked for transport which was denied us. We filed reports which were disbelieved.

You," and he pointed at Chaminade, "and you," he swung on Landreau, "have complicated a very simple incident and you shall not escape its consequences."

“It's an Alreldep ship,” someone yelled from the porch.

Ken activated the com-unit.

“Doona colony calling Alreldep ship. Come in.”

“Sumitral speaking. What has been happening there? What's that armed launch doing? Where is Shih? Why are Codep and Spacedep ships reporting a state of siege? They have no jurisdiction here.”