H. Piper - The H. Beam Piper Essential - 30 Sci-Fi Classics & Fantasy Titles in One Edition

He came out of the embrace and looked around. It was Lieutenant (j.g.) Morrison.

"What the devil, lieutenant?" he demanded.

"Sorry to interrupt, sir, but we're starting back to Procyon . And here, you'll want this, I suppose." He held out a glass disc. "I never expected to see it, but at that it took three A-bombs to blow you loose from your monocle."

"Oh, that?" Von Schlichten took his trademark and set it in his eye. "I didn't lose it," he lied. "I just jettisoned it. Don't you know, lieutenant, that no gentleman ever wears a monocle while he's kissing a lady?"

He looked around. They were at about eight hundred to a thousand feet above the water, with a stiff following wind away from the explosion area. The 90-mm gun, forward, must have been knocked loose and carried away; it was gone, and so was the TV-pickup and the radar. Something, probably the gun, had slammed against the front of the bridge—the metal skeleton was bent in, and the armor-glass had been knocked out. The cutter was vibrating properly, so the contragravity-field had not been disturbed, and her jets were firing.

"It was the second and third bombs that did the damage, sir," Morrison was saying. "We'd have gone through the effects of our own bomb with nothing more than a bad shaking—of course, on contragravity, we're weightless relative to the air-mass, but she was built to stand the winds in the high latitudes. But the two geek bombs caught us off balance...."

"You don't need to apologize, lieutenant. You and your crew behaved splendidly, lieutenant-commander, best traditions, and all that sort of thing. It was a pleasure, commander, hope to be aboard with you again, captain."

They found Kent Pickering at the rear of the bridge, and joined him looking astern. Even von Schlichten, who had seen H-bombs and Bethe-cycle bombs, was impressed. Keegark was completely obliterated under an outward-rolling cloud of smoke and dust that spread out for five miles at the bottom of the towering column.

There had been a hundred and fifty thousand people in that city, even if their faces were the faces of lizards and they had four arms and quartz-speckled skins. What fraction of them were now alive, he could not guess. He had to remind himself that they were the people who had burned Eric Blount and Hendrik Lemoyne alive; that two of the three bombs that had contributed to that column of boiling smoke had been made in Keegark, by Keegarkans, and that, with a few causal factors altered, he was seeing what would have happened to Konkrook. Perhaps every Terran felt a superstitious dread of nuclear energy turned to the purposes of war; small wonder, after what they had done on their own world.

For one thing, he thought grimly, the next geek who picks up the idea of soaking a Terran in thermoconcentrate and setting fire to him will drop it again like a hot potato. And the next geek potentate who tries to organize an anti-Terran conspiracy, or the next crazy caravan-driver who preached znidd suddabit , will be lynched on the spot. But this must be the last nuclear bomb used on Uller....

Drunkard's morning-after resolution! he told himself contemptuously. The next time, it will come easier, and easier still the time after that. After you drop the first bomb, there is no turning back, any more than there had been after Hiroshima, four-hundred-and-fifty-odd years ago. Why, he had even been considering just where, against the mountains back of Bwork, he would drop a demonstration bomb as a prelude to a surrender demand.

You either went on to the inevitable catastrophe, or you realized, in time, that nuclear armament and nationalism cannot exist together on the same planet, and it is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge. Uller was not ready for membership in the Terran Federation; then its people must bow to the Terran Pax. The Kragans would help—as proconsuls, administrators, now, instead of mercenaries. And there must be manned orbital stations, and the Residencies must be moved outside the cities, away from possible blast-areas. And Sid Harrington's idea of encouraging the natives to own their own contragravity-ships must be shelved, for a long time to come. Maybe, in a century or so....

Kankad had a good idea, at that, a most meritorious idea. He was sold on it, already, and he doubted if it would take much salesmanship with Paula, either. Already, she was clinging to his arm with obvious possessiveness. Maybe their grandchildren, and the Kankad of that time, would see Uller a civilized member of the Federation....

They paused, as the gun-cutter nuzzled up to the Procyon and the canvas-entubed gangway was run out and made fast, looking back at the fearful thing that had sprouted from where Keegark had been.

"You know," Paula was saying, echoing his earlier thought, "but for that female pornographer, that would have been Konkrook."

He nodded. "Yes. I hope you won't mind, but there will always be a place in my heart for Hildegarde."

Then they turned their backs upon the abomination of Keegark's desolation and went up the gangway together, looking very little like a general and his adjutant.

With a broadsword in his hand, von Schlichten fought his way toward the throne. There Firkked waited, a sword in one of his upper hands, his Spear of State in the other, and a dagger in each lower hand. Von Schlichten fought on, trying not to think of the absurdity of a man of the Sixth Century A.E., the representative of a civilized Chartered Company, dueling to the death with a barbarian king for a throne he had promised to another barbarian ... or of what could happen on Uller if he allowed this four-armed monstrosity to kill him!

Table of Contents Table of Contents The Terro-Human Future History Series The Terro-Human Future History Series Table of Contents Uller Uprising Uller Uprising Table of Contents Four-Day Planet Four-Day Planet Table of Contents The Cosmic Computer The Cosmic Computer Table of Contents Space Viking The Return Omnilingual The Edge of the Knife The Keeper Graveyard of Dreams Ministry of Disturbance Oomphel in the Sky A Slave is a Slave Naudsonce Little Fuzzy The Paratime Series He Walked Around the Horses Police Operation Last Enemy Temple Trouble Genesis Time Crime Other Novels Lone Star Planet (A Planet for Texans) Null-ABC (Crisis in 2140) Short Stories Time and Time Again Flight from Tomorrow The Mercenaries Day of the Moron Dearest The Answer Hunter Patrol Crossroads of Destiny

Table of Contents

For Betty and Vall, with

loving remembrance

Table of Contents Table of Contents The Terro-Human Future History Series The Terro-Human Future History Series Table of Contents Uller Uprising Uller Uprising Table of Contents Four-Day Planet Four-Day Planet Table of Contents The Cosmic Computer The Cosmic Computer Table of Contents Space Viking The Return Omnilingual The Edge of the Knife The Keeper Graveyard of Dreams Ministry of Disturbance Oomphel in the Sky A Slave is a Slave Naudsonce Little Fuzzy The Paratime Series He Walked Around the Horses Police Operation Last Enemy Temple Trouble Genesis Time Crime Other Novels Lone Star Planet (A Planet for Texans) Null-ABC (Crisis in 2140) Short Stories Time and Time Again Flight from Tomorrow The Mercenaries Day of the Moron Dearest The Answer Hunter Patrol Crossroads of Destiny

Dedication

1. The Ship from Terra

2. Reporter Working

3. Bottom Level

4. Main City Level

5. Meeting Out of Order

6. Elementary, My Dear Kivelson

7. Aboard the Javelin

8. Practice, 50-MM Gun

9. Monster Killing

10. Mayday, Mayday

11. Darkness and Cold

12. Castaways Working