Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1959 (16 page)

 
          
He
waited for comment. Again Spence was the one who spoke. "You sound as if
you want us to be mosquitoes."

 
          
"That's
exacdy what I want us to be." Darragh paused again, making sure that he
had the attention of all the chiefs. "Look at it like this, gendemen: We
have some of their secrets, enough of those secrets to make trouble."

           
"Trouble!" whooped Spence
in high disdain.
"Those litde handtype throwers.
It's as if you'd stolen a few pistols, and left the enemy with the heavy
artillery."

 
          
"We
have scientists here, and I've brought more with me," Darragh replied.
"We have both rays in captured mechanisms —the white and the green. Our
scientists can study them and make bigger, more powerful projectors. And we
have a captured ship and know how to fly it. We can make more in our
shops,
we can build and equip shops to turn them out. These
things will give us the wings and the sharp bill to do our mosquito
raiding."

 
          
"I
still don't see what you're driving at," drawled Spence. "Talk up,
Darragh
. "
We're used to straight-forward reports
at these councils."

 
          
"We
lie low until they forget about us somewhat," Darragh explained.
"Their guard will relax. Meanwhile we'll be preparing. Well send envoys
out to all free peoples—maybe clear around on the other side of the world,
there must be communities there. We'll prepare down to the last minute.
"We'll organize for what we must do. Then, fully equipped and disciplined
and ready, we'll sally out..."

 
          
"And
start by blasting those forts you say they're building in the
West Indies
!" cried Capato with warrior relish.

 
          
But
Darragh shook his head. "On the contrary," he said, "we'll not
bother their southern posts any more than we have to. The way I see it, those
advance defenses are subordinate. They depend on the larger strongholds—like
the one these folks got away from—for food and garrisons and orders. Well get
into their main concentrations and hit those, the ones in the extreme frigid
north and south."

 
          
Spence
had been thinking, lean chin on lean hand. Now he looked up and nodded.
"Darragh, that's not a bad idea," he granted. "Maybe we could
even set fire to the woods around their settlements, get a heat up that would
sweat them the way they don't like."

 
          
"Brenda,
make a note of what Chief Spence said about those fires," said Darragh.
"Now, gendemen, we can plan and implement a hundred ways to harass them.
Maddening and damaging ways—the sort of things that will cause them
labor and weariness and confusion."

 
          
"Yet
they're mighty powerful," reminded a chief.

           
"Powerful, yes," agreed
Darragh. "
but
, powerful as they are, they're in a
fairly bad fix here, on a world that's mosdy impossible as regards its climate.
Except at the north and south poles, they have to live in sealed domes and
refrigerate them. Whenever they venture into the open, they must put on
insulated armor. I've got samples of that, too. So, even with peace on Earth,
life is almost too hot for the Cold People. If we could lift the temperature
for only a degree or so everywhere a Cold Creature is, we'd have them in an
unendurable situation." He looked around and wagged his head. "Well,
gentlemen, what do you say? Shall we make old Mother Earth too hot to hold
them—literally and figuratively?"

 
          
Megan
whooped approval, and others took it up. Megan sprang up from where he had been
sitting. "Gendemen of the Council," he said, "I want to make a
motion. I hereby move that we here and now form a policy of nuisance warfare and
aggression along the lines that have been suggested by Mark Darragh, and that
we name Darragh to this council of chiefs."

 
          
"I
second that motion," Capato howled back.

           
"Wait!"

           
That was the voice of Spence, also
rising to his feet. His eyes snapped, his teeth flashed. "I want to amend
the motion," he announced. "I've operated as the hit-or-miss head of
this alliance long enough, and I offer my resignation."

 
          
"But,
Spence!" protested Megan. "We didn't mean to make you mad or go over
your head or anything."

 
          
"Who's
mad?" demanded Spence. "I'm not. What I say is
,
I offer an amendment. Let the motion be stated that we here and now appoint
Mark Darragh as head of this council of chiefs, with full power as military
commander of all the forces we can muster."

 
          
"Why
. . ." began Darragh.

           
"You stay out of this; you
aren't a member of the council yet," Megan laughed him down. "All
right, Spence I accept your amendment. What about the second?"

 
          
"I
seconded the first motion, and I second the second. Let's vote!"

 
          
"All
in favor say aye, and to hell with the noes!" Megan cried.

 
          
Spence
grasped Mark Darragh's hand, but Brenda was hugging Darragh before the eyes of
all of them.