Retief-Ambassador to Space (14 page)

The two rearmost sailors stepped
closer, mouths open. The professor snapped his fingers; flame shot from the tip
of each pointed forefinger. The Krultch jumped. The tall Terran waved his
hands, whipped a gauzy blue handkerchief from nowhere, swirled it around; now
it was red. He snapped it sharply, and a shower of confetti scattered around
the dumbfounded Krultch. He doubled his fists, popped them open; twin puffs of
colored smoke whoofed into the aliens' face. A final wave, and a white bird was
squawking in the air.

"Now!" Retief said, and took
a step, uppercut the leading sailor; the slender legs buckled as the creature
went down with a slam. Mulvihill was past him, catching Krultch number two with
a roundhouse swipe. The third sailor made a sound like tearing sheet metal,
brought his gun to bear on Retief as Wee Willie, hurtling forward, hit him at
the knees. The shot melted a furrow in the wall as Mulvihjll floored the
hapless creature with a mighty blow.

"Neatly done," Professor
Fate said, tucking things back into his cuffs. "Almost a pity to lose such
an appreciative audience."

With the three Krultch securely
strapped hand and foot in their own harnessess, Retief nudged one with his
foot.

"We have important business to
contract in the control room," he said. "We don't want to disturb
anyone, Jesau, so we'd prefer a nice quiet approach via the back stairs. What
would you suggest?"

The Krultch made a suggestion. Retief
tsked. "Professor perhaps you'd better give him a few more samples."

"Very well," Professor Fate
stepped forward, waved his hands; a slim-bladed knife appeared in one. He
tested the edge with his thumb, which promptly dripped gore. He stroked the
thumb with another finger; the blood disappeared. He nodded.

"Now, fellow," he said to
the sailor. "I've heard you rascals place great store by your beards; what
about a shave?" He reached—

The Krultch made a sound like glass
shattering. "The port catwalk!" he squalled. "But you won't get
away with this!"

"Oh, no?" The professor
smiled gently, made a pass in the air, plucked a small cylinder from nowhere.

"I doubt if anyone will be along
this way for many hours," he said. "If we fail to return safely in an
hour, this little device will detonate with sufficient force to distribute your
component atoms over approximately twelve square miles." He placed the
object by the Krultch, who rolled horrified eyes at it.

"O-on second thought, try the
service catwalk behind the main tube," he squeaked.

"Good enough," Retief said.
"Let's go."

The sounds of Krultch revelry were
loud in the cramped passage.

"Sounds like they're doing a
little early celebrating for tomorrow's big diplomatic victory," Mulvihill
said. "You suppose most of them are in there?"

"There'll be a few on duty,"
Retief said. "But that sounds like a couple of hundred out of circulation
for the moment—until we trip something and give the alarm."

"The next stretch is all
right," Professor Fate said, coming back dusting off his hands. "Then
I'm afraid we shall have to emerge into the open."

"We're not far from the command
deck now," Retief said. "Another twenty feet, vertically, ought to do
it."

The party clambered on up, negotiated
a sharp turn, came to an exit panel. Professor Fate put his ear against it.

"All appears silent," he
said. "Shall we sally forth?"

Retief came to the panel, eased it
open, glanced out; then he stepped through, motioned the others to follow. it
was quieter here; there was deep-pile carpeting underfoot, an odor of alien
food and drug smoke in the air.

"Officers' country,"
Mulvihill muttered.

Retrief pointed toward a door marked
with Krultch lettering. "Anybody read that?" he whispered.

There were shakes of the head and
whispered negatives.

"We'll have to take a
chance," Retief went to the door, gripped the latch, yanked it suddenly
wide. An obese Krultch in uniform but without his tunic looked up from a
brightly colored magazine on the pages of which Retief glimpsed glossy photos
of slender-built Krultch mares flirting saucy derriers at the camera. The alien
stuffed the magazine in a desk slot, came to his feet, gaping, then whirled and
dived for a control panel across the narrow passage in which he was posted. He
reached a heavy lever, hauled it down just as Retief caught him with a flying
tackle. Man and Krultch hit the deck together; Retiefs hand chopped; the
Krultch kicked twice and lay still.

"That lever—you suppose—"
Wee Willie started,

"Probably an alarm," Retief
said, coming to his feet. "Come on!" he ran along the corridor; it
turned sharply to the right. A heavy door was sliding shut before him. He
leaped to it, wedged himself in the narrowing opening, braced himself against
the thrust of the steel panel. It slowed, with a groaning of machinery.
Mulvihill charged up, grasped the edge of the door, heaved. Somewhere, metal
creaked. Together, Retief and the strong man strained. There was a loud
clunk!
and a clatter of broken mechanism. The door slid freely back.

"Close," Mulvihill grunted.
"For a minute there—" he broke off at a sound from behind him. Ten
feet back along the passage a second panel had slid noiselessly out, sealing
off the corridor. Mulvihill jumped to it, heaved against it.

Ahead, Retief saw a third panel, this
one standing wide open. He plunged through it; skidded to a halt. A braided
Krultch officer was waiting, a foot-long purple cigar in his mouth, a power gun
in each hand. He kicked a lever near his foot. The door whooshed shut behind
Retief.

"Welcome aboard, Terran,"
the captain grated. "You can be the first of your kind to enjoy Krultch
hospitality."

"I have been observing your
progress on my inspection screen here," the captain nodded toward a small
panel which showed a view of the four Terrans pushing fruitlessly against the
doors that had closed to entrap them.

"Interesting," Retief
commented.

"You are surprised at the
sophistication of the equipment we Krultch can command?" the captain
puffed out smoke, showed horny gums in a smilelike grimace.

"No, anybody who can steal the
price can buy a Groaci spy-eye system," Retief said blandly. "But I
find it interesting that you had to spend all that cash just to keep an eye on
your crew. Not too trustworthy, eh?"

"What? Any of my crew would die
at my command!"

"They'll probably get the chance,
too," Retief nodded agreement. "How about putting one of the guns
down—unless you're afraid of a misfire."

"Krultch guns never
misfire." The captain tossed one pistol aside. "But I agree: I am
overprotected against the paltry threat of a single Terran."

"You're forgetting—I have
friends."

The Krultch made a sound like
fingernails on a blackboard. "They are effectively immobilized," he
said. "Now, tell me: what did you hope to accomplish by intruding
here?"

"I intend to place you under
arrest," Retief said. "Mind if I sit down?"

The Krultch captain made laughing
noises resembling a flawed drive bearing; he waved a two-fingered claw-hand.

"Make yourself comfortable—while you
can," he said. "Now, tell me; how did you manage to get your
equipment up to my ship without being seen? I shall impale the slackers
responsible, of course."

"Oh, we have no equipment,"
Retief said breezily. He sniffed. "That's not a Lovenbroy cigar, is
it?"

"Never smoke anything else,"
the Krultch said. "Care for one?"

"Don't mind if I do," Retief
admitted. He accepted an eighteen-inch stogie, lit up.

"Now, about the equipment,"
the captain persisted. "I assume you used fifty-foot scaling ladders, though
I confess I don't see how you got them onto the port—"

"Ladders?" Retief smiled
comfortably. "We Terrans don't need ladders; we just sprouted wings."

"Wings? You mean?"

"Oh, we're versatile, we
Terries."

The captain was wearing an expression
of black disapproval now. "If you had no ladders, I must conclude that you
broached my hull at ground level," he snapped. What did you use? It would
require at least a fifty K-T/Second power input to penetrate two inches of
flintsteel—"

Retief shook his head, puffing out
scented smoke. "Nice," he said. "No, we just peeled back a panel
barehanded. We Terrans—"

"Blast you Terrans! Nobody could
..." The captain clamped his jaws, puffed furiously. "Just outside,
in the access-control chamber, you sabotaged the closure mechanism. Where is
the hydraulic jack you used for this?"

"As I said, we Terrans—"

"You entered the secret access
passage almost as soon as you boarded my vessel!" the captain screeched.
"My men are inoculated against every talk-drug known! What did you use on
the traitor who informed you—"

Retief held up a hand. "We
Terrans can be very persuasive, Captain. At this very moment, you yourself, for
example, are about to be persuaded of the futility of trying to outmaneuver
us."

The Krultch commander's mouth "opened
and closed. "Me!" he burst out. "You think that you can divert a
Krultch officer from the performance of his duty?"

"Sure," a high voice piped
from above and behind the captain. "Nothing to it."

The Krultch's hooves clattered as he
whirled, froze at the sight of Wee Willie's small, round face smiling down at
him from the ventilator register above the control panel. In a smooth motion,
Retief cracked the alien across the wrist, twitched the gun from his nerveless
hand.

"You see?" he said as the
officer stared from him to the midget and back. "Never underestimate us
Terrans."

The captain dropped in his chair,
mopping at his face with a polka-dotted hanky provided by Wee Willie.

"This interrogation is a gross
illegality!" he groaned. "I was assured that all your kind did was
talk—"

"We're a tricky lot," Retief
conceded. "But surely a little innocent deception can be excused, once you
understand our natures. We love strife, and this seemed to be the easiest way
to stir up some action."

"Stir up action?" the
Krultch croaked.

"There's something about an
apparently defenseless nincompoop that brings out the opportunist in
people," Retief said. "It's a simple way for us to identify
troublemakers, so they can be dealt with expeditiously. I think you Krultch' qualify
handsomely. It's convenient timing, because we have a number of new
planet-wrecking devices we've been wanting to field-test—"

"You're bluffing!" the
Krultch bleated.

Retief nodded vigorously. "I have
to warn you, but you don't have to believe me. So if you still want to try
conclusions—"

There was a sharp buzz from the panel;
a piercing yellow light blinked rapidly. The captain's hand twitched as he eyed
the phone.

"Go ahead, answer it,"
Retief said. "But don't say anything that might annoy me. We Terrans have
quick tempers."

The Krultch flipped a key.

"Exalted One," a rapid
Krultch voice babbled from the panel. "We have been assassinated by
captives! I mean, captivated by assassins! There were twelve of them—or perhaps
twenty! Some were as high as a hundred-year Fufu tree, and others smaller than
hoof-nits! One had eyes of live coals, and flames ten feet long shot from his
hands, melting all they touched, and another—"

"Silence!" the captain
roared. "Who are you? Where are you? What in the name of the Twelve Devils
is going on here!" He whirled on Retief. "Where are the rest of your
commandos? How did they evade my surveillance system? What—"

"Ah-ah," Retief clucked.
"I'm asking the questions now. First, I'll have the names of all Gaspierre
officials who accepted your bribes."

"You think I would betray my
compatriots to death at your hands?"

"Nothing like that; I just need
to know who the cooperative ones are so I can make them better offers."

A low
brackk!
sounded; this
time a baleful blue light winked. The Krultch officer eyed it warily.

"That's my outside hot line to
the local Foreign Office," he said. "When word reaches the Gaspierre
government of the piratical behavior you alledgedly peaceful Terries indulge in
behind the fagade of diplomacy—"

"Go ahead, tell them,"
Retief said. "It's time they discovered they aren't the only ones who
understand the fine art of the triple-cross."

The Krultch lifted the phone.
"Yes?" he snapped. His expression stiffened. He rolled an eye at
Retief, then at Wee Willie.

"What's that?" he barked
into the communicator. "Flew through the air? Climbed where? What do you
mean, giant white birds!"

"Boy," Wee Willie exclaimed,
"them Gaspers sure exaggerate!"