 CHAPTER XII. The Shadow of Niffle-Hun. The sun slid lower and lower toward the horizon behind them as the air-car bulleted south along the broad valley and dry bed of the Hork River, nearing the zone of equal day and night. Hassan Bogdanov drove while Harry Kwong finished his lunch, then changed places to begin his own. Von Schlickten got two bottles of beer from the refrigerated section of the lunch-hamper, and opened one for Paulo Quinton, and one for himself. What are we going to do with these geeks? She was using the nasty and derogatory word unconsciously and by custom now, after this is all over. We can't just tell them, Jolly well played. Nice game, wasn't it? And go back to wherever we were Wednesday evening. Now we can't. There's going to have to be a tyrant seizure of political power in every part of this planet that we occupy, and as soon as we're consolidated around and north of Takadzee, we're going to have to move in elsewhere, he replied. Kigark, Konkruk, and the Free Cities, of course, will be relatively easy. They're in arms against us now, and we can take them over by force. We had to make that deal with Dongfang, or rather, I did, so that will be a slower process. But we'll get it done in time. If I know that pair as well as I think I do, Zhongfang and Yorker will give us plenty of pretexts before long. Then we can start giving them government by law instead of by royal decree and real courts of justice, put an end to the head payment system, and to these arbitrary mass arrests and tax-delinquency imprisonments that are nothing but slave-rides by the geek princes on their own people, and, gradually, abolish serfdom. In a couple of centuries this planet will be fit to admit to the Federation, like Odin and Fria. Well, won't that depend a lot on whom the company sends here to take Harrington's place? Unless I'm much mistaken, the company will confirm me, he replied. Administration on Ular is going to be a military matter for a long time to come, and even the banking cartel and the mercantile interest in the company are going to realize that, and see the necessity for taking political control. The Federation government owns a bigger interest in the company than the public realizes, too. They've always favored it, and just to make sure I'm sending Hitler-Irida terror on the next ship to make a full report on the situation. You think it'll be cleared up by then? The city of Montevideo is due in from Niflheim in the little under three months. It'll have to be cleared up by then. We can't keep this war going more than a month at the present rate. Police action and mopping up, yes. Full-scale war? No. Ammunition, she asked. He looked at her and pleased surprise. Your education has been progressing at that, he said. You know, a lot of professional officers, even up to field rank in the combat branches, seem to think that ammo comes down miraculously from heaven in contra-gravity lorries every time they prayed into a radio for it. It doesn't. It has to be produced as fast as it's expended, and we haven't been doing that. So we'll have to lick these geeks before it runs out, because we can't lick them with gun butts and bayonets. Well, how about nuclear weapons? Paula asked. I hate to suggest it. I know what they did on Amir and Fenris and Midgard, and what they did on Tara during the first century, but it may be our only chance. He finished his beer and shoved the bottle into the waste receiver, then got out his cigarettes. I'd hate to have to make a decision like that, Paula, he told her. The military use of nuclear energy is the last—well, the next the last thing I'd want to see on Uller. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it's a decision I won't have to make. There isn't a single nuclear bomb on the planet. The companies always refuse to allow them to be manufactured or stockpiled here. I don't think there'd be any criticism of your making them now, general, and there's plenty of plutonium. You can make A-bombs, at least. There isn't anybody here who even knows how to make one. Most of our nuclear engineers could work one up in about three months, when we'd either not need one or not be alive. Dr. Gohms, who came in on the Pretoria two weeks ago, can make them—she contradicted—he built at least a dozen of them on Niflheim to use in activating volcanoes and bringing ore-bearing lava to the surface. Vangeluctin's hand, bringing his lighter to the tip of a cigarette, paused for a second. Then he completed the operation, snapped it shut, and put it away. When did all this happen? She took time out for mental arithmetic. Even a spaceship officer had to do that when a question of interstellar time relations arose. About three fifty days ago, galactic standard, they'd put off the first shot, six bombs, before I got in from Terra. I saw the second shot a day or so before I left Niflheim on the Canberra. Dr. Gohms had to stay over till the Pretoria to put off the third shot. Why? Did you run into a geek named Gorkrink while you were in Nif, he asked her. And what sort of work was he doing? Gorkrink? I don't seem to remember. Oh yes! He was helping Dr. Marilla, the seismologist. His ear was up after that second shot, till he came to Euler on the Canberra. Dr. Marilla was sorry to lose him. He understood Lingua Terra perfectly. Dr. Marilla could talk to him the way you do with Concad, without using a geek-speaker. Well, but what sort of work? Helping set-and-fire the A-bombs. Oh, good Lord! You can say that again. In Dylan, Ola Shiva and Callie, Von Schlichten told her, especially Callie, Harry, see if you can get some more speed out of this can. I want to get to Concrutk while it's still there. It was full dark when Concrutk came in view beyond the East Conk Mountains, a lured smear on the underside of the clouds, and at Gongonk Island and at the company farms to the south, a couple of bunches of search lights fingering about in the sky. When Von Schlichten turned on the outside sound pickup, he could hear the distant tom-tombing of heavy guns and the crash of shells and bombs. Keeping the car high enough to be above the trajectories of incoming shells, Harry Kwong circled over the city while Hassan Bogdanov talked to Gongonk Island on the radio. The city was in a bad way. There were seventy-five to a hundred big fires going, and a new one started in a rising ball of thermoconcentrate flame while they watched. The three gun cutters, Elmoren, Gaucho, and Bushranger, and about fifty big freight lorries converted to bombers were shuttling back and forth between the island and the city. The Royal Palace was on fire from end to end, and the entire waterfront and industrial district were in flames. Combat cars and air jeeps were driving into shell and rocket and machine gun streets and buildings. He saw six big bomber lorries move in dignified procession to unload, one after the other, on a row of buildings along what the Terrans called South Tenth Street, and on the roofs of buildings a block away, red and blue players were burning, and he could see figures both human and Ularen setting up mortars and machine guns. Landing on the top stage of Company House on the island, they were met by a Terran whom Von Schlichten had seen a few days ago, bossing native labor at the spaceport, but he was now wearing a major's insignia. He greeted Von Schlichten with a salute, which he must have learned from some movie about the ancient French foreign legion. Von Schlichten seriously returned it in kind. Everybody's down in the Governor-General's office, sir, he said. Your office, that is. King Cacod's here with us, too. He accompanied them to the elevator, then turned to a telephone, when Von Schlichten and Paula reached the office, everybody was crowded at the door to greet them. The masticlase misongui, his arm in a sling, Hans Meierstein, the Johannesburg lawyer, who seemed to have even more bond to bled than the Brigadier-General, Morton Berman, the commercial superintendent, Laviola, the fiscal secretary, and dozen or so other officers and civil administrators. There was a hubbub of greetings, and he was pleased to detect as much real warmth from the civil administration crowd as from the officers. Well, I'm glad to be back with you, he replied, generally, and let me present Colonel Paula Quinton, my new agitant, hit a leery on duty in the North. Thumb, this was a perfectly splendid piece of work here. You can take this not only as a personal congratulation, that is a sort of unit citation for the whole crowd. You've all behaved simply above praise. He turned to King Cacad, who was wearing a pair of automatics and shoulder holsters for his upper hands and another pair and cross-body belt holsters for his lower. And what I've said for anybody else goes double for you, Cacad, he added, clapping the craig in on the shoulder. All he did was save the lot of us, misongui said. We were hanging on by our fingernails here till his people started coming in, and then after you sent the Aldebaran. Where is the Aldebaran, by the way? I didn't see him when I came in. Based on King Cacad's, flying bombardment against Keegark and keeping an eye out for those ships, Prenzlo caught the divet and the docks there and smashed her, but the Jan Smuts got away, and we haven't been able to locate the Umpal Kruger either. They're probably both on the eastern shore, gathering up reinforcements for Orr's Guild. Misongui said, our ability to move troops rapidly is what's kept us on top this long, and Orgzilds had plenty of time to realize it, Bunch looked and said. When we got Procyon down here, I'm going to send her out with a screen of light scout vehicles to find those ships and get rid of them. How's Hidd been making out at Grant, by the way? I didn't have my car radio on coming down. That touched off another hubbub. Haven't you heard, General? Oh, my God! This is simply out of this continuum. Well, tell him somebody, no, get hit on the screen. It's his story. Somebody busied himself at the switchboard. The rest of them sat down at the long conference table, Laviola and Meierstein and Berman, obsequious in seating Vaughn Schlickton in Sid Harrington's old chair, and in getting a chair for Paula Quinton. After a while, the jumbled colors on the big screen resolved themselves into an image of Hadiyoshi O'Leary grinning like a pussycat beside an empty gold fishbowl. Well, what happened, Vaughn Schlickton asked, after they had exchanged greetings? How do yourkirk like the movies? And did you get the pricey on and the northern lights loose? Yourkirk was deeply impressed, O'Leary replied. His story is that he is, and always was, the true and ever-loving friend of the company. He acted to prevent, quote, certain disloyal elements, unquote, from harming the people and property of the company. Procyon's on the way to Conkruk. I'm holding northern lights here and northern starskirk. Where do you want them sent? Leave northern starskirk for the time being. Tell the company's great and good friend, King Yourkirk, that the company expects him to contribute some soldiers for the campaign here and against Kikak when that starts. Be sure you get the best armed and best trained regiments he has, and get them down here as soon as possible. Don't send any of your kregans or Karamisyon's troops here, though. Hold them in grank till we make sure of the high quality of Yourkirk's friendship. Well, General, I think we can be pretty sure now. You see, he turned Rakhid the Prophet over to me. What? Van Shlikton felt his monocle starting to slip and took a firmer grip on it. Who? Pay-me-thummy didn't drop it. Hyde-yoshi O'Leary said, By Rakhid the Prophet, Yourkirk was holding our ships and our people in case we lost. He was also holding Rakhid at the palace in case we won. Of course, Rakhid thought he was an honored guest right up to Yourkirk's guards, dragged him in, and turned him over to us. That geek, Van Shlikton said, is too smart for his own good. Some of these days he's going to play both ends against the mill, and both ends will fold in on him and smash him. A suspicion occurred to him. You sure this is Rakhid? It would be just like Yourkirk to tell it, try to sell us a ringer. O'Leary shook his head solemnly. I thought of that right away. This is the real article. Karamisyon's constabulary and intelligence officer certified him for me. What do you want me to do? Send him down to Konkruk? Van Shlikton shook his head. Get the priests of the locally venerated gods to put him on trial for blasphemy, heresy, impersonating a prophet, practicing witchcraft without a license, or any other ecclesiastical crimes you or they can think of. Then, after he's been given a scrupulously fair trial, have the soldiers of King Yourkirk behead him, and stick his head up over a big sign in all native languages, Rakhid the false prophet, and have audiovisuals made of the whole business, trial, and execution, and be sure that the priests and Yourkirk's officers are in the foreground and our people stay out of the pictures. Soap and towels for General Pontius I pilot, Paula Quinton called out. That's an idea. I was wondering what to give Yourkirk as a testimonial present, Hediyoshi O'Leary said, a nice thirty-piece silver set. Quite a appropriate punch looked and approved well. He did a first-class job. I want you back with us as soon as possible. In Stindling, you're now a Brigadier General. But not till the situation Grant Crink Skilk is stabilized. And eventually you'll probably have to set up permanent headquarters in the North. After Hediyoshi O'Leary had thanked him and signed off, the screen was dark again, he turned to the others. Well, gentlemen, I don't think we need to worry too much about the North for the next few days. How long do you estimate this operation against Concruc's going to take? To complete pacification thumb? How complete is complete pacification, General? The mysticly's mizong we wanted to know. If you mean to the end of organized resistance by larger-than-squad-sized groups, I'd say three days, give or take twelve hours. Of course, there'll be small groups holding out for a couple of weeks, particularly in the farming country and back in the forest. We can forget them. That's minor tactic stuff. We'll need to keep some kind of an occupation force here for some time. They can deal with that. We'll have to get to work on Keegark as soon as possible after we've reduced Keegark. We'll be able to reorganize for a campaign against the free cities on the eastern shore. Beg in your pardon, General, but reduce is a mild word for what we ought to do to Keegark, Hans Meierstein said. We ought to raise that city as flat as a football field and then play football on it with King Orgazild's head. Any special reason Bunch looked and asked, in addition to the Blunt Le Mans massacre, that is. I should say so, General, the mystically as McZungley backed up Meierstein. Bob, you tell him. Colonel Robert Grinnell, the intelligence officer, got up and took the cigar out of his mouth. He was short and round-bodied and bald-headed, but he was old terrain federation regular army. Well, General, we've been finding out quite a bit about the genesis of this business lately, he said. From up north, it probably looked like an all-requied show. That's how it was supposed to look. But the whole thing was hatched at Keegark by King Orgazild. We've managed to capture a few prominent concrucans he named half a dozen, who've been made to talk and a number of others who have come involuntarily and furnished information. Orgazild conceived the scheme in the beginning, where Keed was just the messenger boy. My face gets the color of the company trademark every time I think that the whole thing was planned for over a year, right under our noses, even to the signal that was to touch the whole thing off. The poisoning of Sid Harrington and our announcement of his death, Von Schlichten asked. You figured that out yourself, sir? Well, that was it. Grinnell went on to elaborate while Von Schlichten tried to keep the impatience out of his base. Beside him, Paula Quinton was fidgeting too. She was thinking, as he was, of what King Orgazild and Prince Gorgrink were doing now. And I know positively that the order for the poisoning of Sid Harrington came from the Keegarkan Embassy here and was passed down through Gorgrink and Keeluk to this geek here who actually put the poison in the whiskey. Yes, I agree that Keegark should be wiped out, and I'd like to have an immediate estimate on the time it'll take to build a nuclear bomb to do the job. One of the old-fashioned plutonium fusion A-bombs will do quite well. Everybody turned quickly. There was a momentary silence, and then Colonel Evan Colbert of the Fourth Craig and Rifles, the senior officer under the thymostically's Mazzangui, found his voice. If that's an order, General, we'll get it done. But I'd like to remind you first of the company policy on nuclear weapons on this planet. I'm aware of that policy. I'm also aware of the reason for it. We've been compelled because of the lack of natural fuel on Uler to set up nuclear power reactors and furnish large quantities of plutonium to the geeks to fuel them. The company doesn't want the natives here learning of the possibility of using nuclear energy for destructive purposes. Well, gentlemen, that's a dead issue. They've learned it thanks to our people in Niflheim, and unless my estimate is entirely wrong, King Orgzild already has at least one first-century Nagasaki-type plutonium bomb. I am inclined to believe that he had at least one such bomb, probably more, at a time when orders were sent to his embassy here for the poisoning of Governor General Harrington. With that, he selected a cigarette from his case, offered it to Paula, and snapped his lighter. She had hers lit, and he was puffing on his own when the others finally realized what he had told them. That's impossible, somebody down the table shouted, as though that would make it so. Another, one of the civil administration crowd, almost exactly repeated Jules Kavini's words at Skilk. What the hell was Intelligence doing, sleeping? General Bunchlickton, Colonel Grinnell, took a bleak cognizance of the question you've just made by implication a most grave charge against my department. If you're not mistaken in what you've just said, I deserve to be court-martialed. I couldn't bring charges against you, Colonel, if it were a court-martial matter, I'd belong in the dock with you, Bunchlickton told him. It seems, though, that a piece of vital information was possessed by those who were unable to evaluate it, and until this afternoon I was ignorant of its existence. Colonel Quinten, suppose you repeat what you told me, on the way down from Skilk. Well, General, don't you think we ought to have Dr. Gomes do that? Paula asked. After all, he constructed those bombs on Niflheim, and it'll be he who'll have to build ours. That's right, he looked around. Where's Dr. Lorenzo Gomes, the nuclear engineer who came in on the Pretoria two weeks ago, send out for him and get him in here once? There was another awkward silence. Then Quint pinkering, the chief of the Gongongk Island power plant, cleared his throat. Why, General, didn't you know? Dr. Gomes is dead. He was killed during the first half hour of the uprising. End of Chapter 12. Recording by Acacia Wood. Chapter 13 of Uller Uprising. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Anthony Wilson. Uller Uprising by H. B. Piper. Chapter 13. A bag of tricks we don't have. He flinched inwardly and tightened his eye muscles on the edge of the monocle to keep from flinching physically as well, trying to freeze out of his face the consternation he felt. That's bad, Kent, he said. Very bad. I've been counting heavily on Dr. Gomes to design a bomb of our own. Well, General, if you please. That was Eric Commodore, largely Hargreaves. You say you suspect that King Orgzild had developed a nuclear bomb. If that's true, it's a horrible danger to all of us. But I find it hard to believe that the Kiegerkens could have done so with their resources and at their technological level. Now if it had been the Kragens, that would have been different. But, Paula, you'd better carry on and explain what you told me and add anything else you can think of that might be relevant. Is that sound recorder turned on? Then turn it on, somebody. We want this taped. Paula rose and began talking. I suppose you all understand what conditions are on Niflheim and how these Ullerin native workers are employed. However, I'd better begin by explaining the purpose for which these nuclear bombs were designed and used. He smiled. She realized that he needed time to think, and she was stalling to provide it. He drew a pencil and pad toward him and began doodling in a bored manner, deliberately closing his mind to what she was saying. There were two assumptions he considered. First, that King Orgzild already possessed a nuclear bomb which he could use when he chose. And second, that in the absence of Dr. Gomez, such a bomb could only be produced on Gangang Island after lengthy experimental work. If both of these assumptions were true, he had just heard the death sentence of every Tehran on Uller. The first he did not for a moment doubt. The reasons for making it were too good. He dismissed it from further consideration and concentrated on the second. What's known as a Nagasaki type bomb, the first type of plutonium bomb developed, Paula was saying. Really it's a technological antique, but it was good enough for the purpose and Dr. Gomez could build it with locally available materials. The plutonium bomb from a military standpoint was as obsolete as the flintlock musket had been at the time of the Second World War. He reviewed quickly the history of weapons development since the beginning of the atomic era. The emphasis since the end of the Second World War had all been on nuclear weapons and rocket missiles. There had been the H-bomb itself obsolescent and the Beth Cycle bomb and the Subneutron bomb and the Omega Ray bomb and the Negamatter bomb and then the end of civilization in the Northern Hemisphere and the rise of the new civilization in South America and South Africa and Australia. Today the small arms and artillery his troops were using were merely slight refinements on the weapons of the first century and all the modern nuclear weapons used by the Terran Federation were produced at the Space Navy Base on Mars by a small force of experts whose skills were almost as closed to the general scientific and technical world as the secrets of the medieval guild. The old A-bomb was an historical curiosity and there was nobody on Euler who had more than a layman's knowledge of the intricate technology of modern nuclear weapons. There were plenty of good nuclear power engineers on Gungonk Island but how long would it take them to design and build the plutonium bomb? Also has a good understanding of Lingueterra, Paula was saying. He and Dr. Marillo conversed bilingually just as I've heard General Von Schlickten and King Kankad talking to one another. I haven't any idea whether or not Gorkrink could read Lingueterra or if so what papers or plans he might have seen. Just a minute Paula, he said. Colonel Grinnell what does your branch have on this Gorkrink? He's the son of King Orgzild and the daughter of Prince Jernkank, Grinnell said. We knew he'd signed on for Nif two years ago but the story we got was that he'd fallen out of favor at court and had been exiled. I can see now that that was planted to mislead us. As to whether or not he can read Lingueterra my belief is that he can. We know that he can understand it when spoken. He could have learned to read at one of those schools Mohammed Ferriero set up 10 or 15 years ago. And Dr. Gomez and Dr. Marillo and Dr. Livesy left papers and plans lying around all over the place, Paula added. If he went to Niflheim as a spy he could have copied almost anything. Well there you have it Von Schlickten said. When Gorkrink found out that plutonium can be used for bombs he began gathering all the information he could. And as soon as he got home he turned it all over to Pappy Orgzild. That still doesn't mean that the key geeks were able to do anything with it Erich Commodore Hargreaves argued. I think it does Von Schlickten differed. As soon as Orgzild would hear about the possibility of making a plutonium bomb he'd set up an A-bomb project and don't think of it in terms of the old first century Manhattan project. There would be no problem of producing fissionables. We've been scattering refined plutonium over this planet like confetti. Well an A-bomb's a pretty complicated piece of mechanism even if you have the plans for it. Kent Pickering said. As I recall there have to be several subcritical masses of plutonium or U-235 or whatever blown together by shaped charges of explosive all of which have to be fired simultaneously. That would mean a lot of electrical fittings that I can't see these geeks making by hand. I can, Paula said. Have you ever seen the work these native jewelers do? And didn't you tell me about a clockwork thing that they have at the university here to show the apparent movement of the sun? That's right, Von Schlichten said. And what they couldn't make they could have bought from us. We've sold them a lot of electrical equipment. All right, they could have built an A-bomb. Berman said. But did they? We assumed they tried to. Gork Rink got back from Nif on the Can Barrow three months ago, Von Schlichten said. If Orgzil decided to build an A-bomb, he wouldn't give the signal for the uprising until he either had one or knew he couldn't make one and he wouldn't give up trying in only three months. Therefore, I think we can assume that he succeeded and had succeeded at the time he sent Gork Rink here to get that four tons of plutonium we let him have and incidentally to tell Grogerank to pass the word to have Sid Harrington poisoned according to plan. Then why didn't he just use it on us at the start of the uprising, Meierstein wanted to know? Why should he? Getting rid of us is only the first step in Orgzil's plan, Grinnell said. Back as far as geek history goes, the kings of Kegark have been trying to conquer Concroek and the Free Cities and make themselves masters of the whole Takkad Sea area. Let Concroek wipe us out and then he can move in his troops and take Concroek. Or if we beat off the geeks here as we seem to be doing, he can bomb us out and then move in on Concroek. I think that as long as we're fighting here, he'll wait. The more damage we do to Concroek, the easier it'll be for him. Then we'd better start dragging our feet on the Concroek front, Laviola said, and get busy trying to build a bomb of our own. Von Schlichten looked up at the big screen on which the battle of Concroek was being projected from an overhead pickup. I'll agree on the second half of it, Von Schlichten said, and we'll also have to set up some kind of security patrol system against bombers from Kegark. And as soon as Prokayan gets here, we'll have to send her out to hunt down and destroy those two bower-class freighters, the Jansmuts and the Kruger. And we'll have to arrange for protection of Kankad's town. That's sure to be another of Orgzild's high priority targets. As to the action against Concroek, I'll rely on your advice, them. Can we delay the fall of the city for any length of time? Mazangui shook his head. When we divert contra-gravity to security patrol work, the ground action will slow up a little, of course, but the geeks are about knocked out now. The hell with it, then? I doubt if we'd be able to buy much time from Orgzild by delaying victory in the city, and we'll probably need the troops as workers over here. He turned to Pickering. Dr. Pickering, what sort of crew can you scrape together to design a bomb for us, he asked? Well, there's Mark Terano and Sternberg and Howard Fucheng and Piet van Rienen and… he nodded to himself. I can get six or eight of them in here in about 20 minutes. I'll have their project set up and working in a couple of hours. There has to be somebody qualified on duty at the plant, all the time, of course, but… all right, call them in. I want the bomb finished by yesterday afternoon, and everybody with you and you yourself had better revert to civilian status. This isn't something you can do by the numbers and I don't want anybody who doesn't know what it's all about pulling rank on your outfit. Go ahead, call in your gang and let me know what you'll be able to do as soon as possible. He turned to Hargreaves. Lest, you'll have charge of flying the security patrols and doing anything else you can to keep Orgzyld from bombing us before we can bomb him. You'll have priority on everything second only to Pickering. Hargreaves nodded. As you say, General, we'll have to protect Kankads as well as this place. It's about 500 miles from here to Kankads and 850 miles from Kankads to Kegark. He stopped talking to Bon Shlikton and began muttering to himself running over the names of ships and the speeds and payload capacities of airboats and distances. In about five minutes he would have a program worked out. In the meantime, Bon Shlikton could only be patient and contain himself. He looked along the table and caught sight of a thin-faced Saturnine-looking man in a green shirt with a colonel's three concentric circles marked on the shoulders in silver paint. Emmet Pearson, the communications chief. Emmet, he said, those orbiters you have strung around this planet 2,000 miles out for telecast rebroadcast stations. How much of a crew could be put on one of them? Pearson laughed. Crew of what, General? White mice or trained cockroaches? There isn't room inside one of those things for anything bigger to move around. Well, I know they're automatic, but how do you service them? From the outside. They're only 10 feet through by about 20 in length with a 15-foot ball at either end, and everything's in sections which can be taken out. Our maintenance gang goes up in a thing like a small spaceship and either works on the outside in spacesuits or puts in a new section and brings the unserviceable one down here to the shops. Ah, and what sort of thing is a small spaceship now? A thing like a pair of 50-ton lorries with airlocks between and connected at the middle. Air tight, of course, and pressurized and insulated like a spaceship. One side's living quarters for a six-man crew, sometimes the gang's out for as long as a week at a time, and the other side's a workshop. That sounded interesting, with contragravity, of course, terms like escape velocity and mass ratio were a purely antiquarian interest. How long, he asked Pearson, would it take to fit that vehicle with a full set of detection instruments, radar, infrared, and ultraviolet vision, electron telescope, heat and radiation detectors, the whole works, and spotted about a hundred to a hundred and fifty miles above Kegart. That, I couldn't say general, Amit Pearson replied. It'd have to be a shipyard job, and a lot of that stuff's clear outside my department. Ask Air Commodore Hargreaves. LESS, he called out. Wake up, LESS. Just the second general Hargreaves scribbled frantically on his pad. Now, he said, raising his head, what is it, sir? Amit here has a junior-grade spaceship that he uses to service those orbital telecast relay stations of his. He'll tell you what it's like. I want it fitted with every sort of detection device that can be crammed into or onto it, and spotted above Kegart. It should, of course, be high enough to cover not only the Kegart area, but Concrook, Cancads, and the lower Hork and Conk River valleys. Yes, I get it. Hargreaves snatched up a phone, punched out a combination, and began talking rapidly into it in a low voice. After a while, he hung up. All right, Mr. Pearson, at Colonel Pearson, I mean. Have your space buggy sent around to the shipyard. My boy is'll fix it up. He made a note on another piece of paper. If we live through this, I'm going to have a couple of supra-atmosphere ships in service on this planet. Now, general, I have a tentative setup. We're going to need the El Miran for patrol work south and east of Concrook, and the Gaucho and Bush ranger to the north and northeast based on Cancads. We'll keep the El Debaran at Cancads and use her for emergencies, and we'll have patrols of light contragravity like this. He handed a map with red pencil and blue pencil markings along to Von Schlichten. Red are Concod-based, blue are Concrook-based. That looks all right, Von Schlichten said. There's another thing, though. We want scout vehicles to cover the Kegark area with radiation detectors. These geeks are quite well aware of radiation danger from fissionables, but they are accustomed to the ordinary industrial power reactors, which are either very lightly shielded or unshielded on top. We want to find out where Orgzild's bomb plant is. Yes, general, as soon as we can get radiation detectors sent out to Cancads, we'll have a couple of fast air cars fitted with them for that job. We have detectors at our laboratory and reaction plant, Cancads said, and my people can make more as soon as you want them. He thought for a moment. Perhaps I should go to the town now. I could be of more use there than here. Kent Pickering, who had been talking with his experts at a table apart, returned. We've set up a program, general, he said. It's going to be a lot harder than I'd anticipated. None of us seem to know exactly what we have to do in building one of those things. You see, the uranium or plutonium fission bombs been obsolete for over 400 years. It was a classified secret matter long after its obsolescence, because it hadn't been rendered any the less deadly by being superseded. There was that A-bomb that the Christian Anarchist Party put together at Buenos Aires in 378 A.E., for instance. And then, after it was declassified, it had been so far superseded that it was of only antiquarian interest. The textbooks dealt with it only in general terms. The principles, of course, are part of basic nuclear science. The secret of the A-bomb was just a bag of engineering tricks that we don't have, and which we will have to rediscover. Design of tampers, design of the chemical explosive charges to bring subcritical masses together, case design, detonating mechanism, things like that. The complete data on even the old Hiroshima and Nagasaki types is still in existence, of course. You can get it at places like the University of Montevideo Library or Jan Smuts Memorial Library at Cape Town, but we don't have it here. We're detailing a couple of junior technicians to make a search of the library here on Gangang Island, but we're not optimistic. We just can't afford to pass up any chance even when it approaches zero probability. Von Schlick did not it. That's about what I had expected, he said. I suppose Gomez got his data out of one of the dustier storage stacks at Jan Smuts or Montevideo in the first place. Well, I still want that bomb finished by yesterday afternoon, but since that's impractical, you'll have to take a little, but as little as possible, longer. What are we going to do about publicity on this? Howlett, the personnel man, asked. We don't want this getting out in garbled form, though how it could be made worse by garbling I couldn't guess. And having the troops watching the sky over their shoulders and getting into a panic as soon as they saw something they didn't understand. No, we don't. I've seen a couple of troop panics Von Schlickton said. There can't be anything much worse than a panic. I think the Terran's ought to be told the worst, Hargreaves said, and told that our only hope is to get a bomb of our own built and dropped first. As to the Kragans, what do you think King Kankad? Tell them that we are building a bomb to destroy Kegark, that we are running short of ammunition and that it is our only hope of finishing the war before the ammunition is gone, Kankad said. Tell them something of what sort of bomb it is, but do not tell them that King Orgzolt already has such a bomb. Old Kankad, who made me out of himself, told me about how our people fled and panicked from the weapons of the Terran's when your people and mine were still enemies. This thing is to the weapons they faced then, as those weapons were to the old Kragans, spears and bows. And when the geeks from Grenk come here, tell them that we are winning and that if they fight well, they can share the loot of Kankrook and Kegark. Von Schlickton looked up at the big screen. Already, Anastocles Mazzangui had ordered the channel battery to reduce fire. The big guns were firing singly in 30 second interval salvos. There was less bombing too. Contra gravity was being drawn out of the battle. Well, we all have things to do, he said, and I think we've discussed everything there is to discuss. Anybody think of anything we've forgotten? Then we're adjourned. He and Paula Quinton took the elevator to the roof and sat side by side, silently watching the conflagration that was raging across the channel and the nearer flashes of the big guns along the island's city side. Wednesday night, I thought we were all cooked, Paula told him. Cleaning up the north in two days seemed like an impossibility too. Maybe he'll do it again. If I pull this one out of the fire, I won't be a general, I'll be a magician, he said. Pickering will be a magician, I mean. He's the boy who'll save our bacon if it's savable. He looks somberly across the flame reflecting water. Let's not kid ourselves, we're just kicking and biting at the guards on the way of the Gallo steps. Well, why stop till the trap sprung, she asked. What'll happen to these people on this planet after we're atomized? That I don't want to think about. Cankhad's town will get the second bomb, Orgzild won't dare leave the Kragans after he's wiped us out. Your Kirk and Jankvank in the north will turn on Keveni and Shapiro and Karamasunis and Hidoliri and wipe them out. And when the next ship gets in here and they find out what happened, they'll send the Federation Space Navy and this planet will get worse than Fenris did. They'll blast anything that has four arms and a face like a lizard. Half a dozen aircars lifted suddenly from the airport and streaked away to the northeast. As they went past in the light of the burning city, he could see that at least three of them had multiple rocket launchers on top. In a matter of seconds, a gun-cutter raced after them and a second which had been over-concruct jettisoned the bomb and turned away to follow. Maybe that's it, Paula said. Well, if it is, we won't be any better off anywhere else than here, he told her. Let's stay and watch. After what seemed like a long time, however, a twinkle of lights showed over the east conk mountains. They weren't the flashes of explosions, some were magnesium flares and some were lights of a ship. That's Procyon from Granke, he said. Everybody gets a good mark for this. Detection stations, interceptors, gun-cutters. If that had been it, there'd have been a good chance of stopping it. He felt better than he had since Pickering had told them that Laranco Gomez was dead. It's a good thing Gorkrink didn't pick up any dope unguided missiles while he was at it. As long as they have to deliver it with contra-gravity, we have a chance. They rose from the ball straight where they had been sitting and for the first time he discovered that he had had his left arm over her shoulder and that she had had her right hand resting on the point of his right hip just above his pistol. He picked up the folder of papers she had been carrying and put her into the elevator ahead of him. And it was only when they parted on the living quarters level that he recalled having followed the older protocol of gallantry rather than the precedence of military rank. End of chapter 13 Chapter 14 of Ulur Uprising This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Akesha Wood Ulur Uprising by H. Beam Piper Chapter 14 The reviewers panned hell out of it. He woke with a guilty start and looked up at the clock on the ceiling. It was 9.45. Kicking himself free of the covers he slid his feet to the floor and sprinted for the bathroom. While he was fussing to get the shower adjusted to the right temperature he bludgeoned his conscious by telling himself that a wide awake general is more good than a half asleep general that there was nothing he could do but hope that Hargreaves patrols would keep the bomb away from concrueck until Pickering's brain trust came up with one of their own and that the fact that the commander-in-chief was making sack time would be much better for morale than the spectacle of him running around in circles. He shaved carefully a stubble of beard on his chin might betray the fact that he was worried. Then he dressed, put his monocle in his eye and called the headquarters that it had been set up in Sid Harrington's now his office. A girl at the switchboard appeared on his screen and gave place to Paula Quinton who had been up for the past two hours. The Northern Lights got in about three hours ago general, she told him. She had four of King Yurkirk's infantry regiments aboard, the seventh, glorious and terrible, the fourth, firm in adversity, the second, strength of the throne, and the twelfth, forever admirable. There the sariest-looking rabble I ever saw, but Hideyoshi says they're the best Yurkirk has and they all have taran rifles. General Mazongui broke them into battalions and put a battalion in with each of the cragen regiments. I think they're more afraid of the cragens than they are of the rebels. He nodded. That was probably the best way to employ them within the existing situation. The trouble was, them Mazongui was incurably tactical minded. Put those geeky Yurkirks in with the cragens and they'd be most useful in conquering Konkruk, but the trouble was that, after associating with cragens, they might develop inter-reasonably good troops themselves to the undesired improvement of King Yurkirk's army. On the other hand, maybe not. Keep them in company service long enough, and they might want to forget about Yurkirk and stay there. How's the situation over in town? He asked. Well, it's slowing up since we began pulling Contra-Gravity out, she told him, but the geeks are breaking up rapidly. Oh, there was something funny about that hassle last evening when the prosion came in. Two Contra-Gravity vehicles, an air car and an air lorry that went out to meet the ship or unaccounted for. You mean two of our vehicles are missing? She shook her head frowning in perplexity. Well, no. All the vehicles that answered that unidentified aircraft alert returned, but there were these two that went out that we haven't any record of. Colonel Cornell is investigating, but he can't find out anything. Tell him not to waste any more time, he said. Those two were probably geeks from Conkruk. You know, that's how the Von Schluchten family got out of Germany in the year three. Flew a bomber to Spain. The Conkruk war criminals are getting out before the army of occupation moves in. Well, the posts at the old Kragen castles report some contragravity and parties riding SARS moving west from the city, she told him. There are a lot of refugees on the roads and combat reports from Conkruk agree that resistance is getting weaker every hour. In the super atmosphere observation craft they're beginning to call her the sky spy, is up 150 miles over Kegark. We have a radar and vision screens and telemeter radiation and other detectors here tuned to her. They're installing a similar set on the northern lights at the shipyard. By the way, Air Commander Hargreaves wants to know if he can take a pair of 155 millimeter rifles from the channel battery and mount them on the lights. Yes, of course, he can have anything he wants as long as it isn't urgently needed for the bomb project. Sky spy reports normal contragravity traffic between Kegark and the farming villages around, air cars, lorries, a few scows, but nothing suspicious. No trace of either of the bore class ships. Kincad's people are building receiving sets to install on the Procyon and the Aldebaran and another set for Kincad's town. Pickering and his people are still working, but they all look pretty frustrated. They have Major Thornton at the ammunition plant doing experimental work on chemical explosive charges to bring the subcritical masses together and hold them together until an explosion can be produced. They're using most of the skilled electrical and electronics people to work up a detonating device. That's why Kincad's people are doing most of the detection device work. Hargreaves is fitting a lot of small craft, combat cars, and civilian air cars with radar sets to use for patrolling. That sounds good, Vunch looked and said. I'll be around and see how things are after I've had some breakfast. He had breakfast at the main cafeteria four floors down. There wasn't as much laughing and talking as usual, but the crowd there seemed in good spirits. He spent some time at headquarters watching Kegark by TV and radar. So far nothing had been done about direct reconnaissance over Kegark with radiation detectors, but Hargreaves reported that a couple of privately owned air cars were being fitted for the job. He made a flying inspection trip around the island and visited the farm south of the city on the mainland and finally made a sweep in the command car over the city itself. Reconnaissance in person was an archaic and unprogressive procedure and it was a good way to get generals killed, but one could see a lot of things that would be missed on TV. He let down several times in areas that had already been taken and talked to company and platoon officers. For one thing King Yurkirk's flamboyantly named regiments weren't quite as bad as Paula had thought. She'd been spoiled by the Kragans and her appreciation of other native troops. They had good standard quality, volent made arms, they were brave and capable and they had been just enough insulted by being integrated into Kragon regiments to try to make a good showing. By noon resistance in the city was beginning to cave in. Surrender flags were appearing on one after another of the Concrucian rebels strong points and at 1430 after he had returned to the island a delegation headed by the Concrucian equivalent of Lord Mayor and composed largely of prominent merchants came across a channel under a flag of truth to surrender the city's spirit of state with abject apologies for not having Yurkirk's head on the point of it. Yurkirk they reported had fled to Keegark by air the night before which explained the incident of the unaccountable air-car in Lori. The channel battery stopped firing and with the exception of an occasional spatter of small arms fire the city fell silent. At 1600 Von Schlichten visited the headquarters pickering and set up in the office building at the power plant. As he stepped off the lift on the third floor a girl running down the hall where their arms full of papers and folders collided with him. The load of papers flew in all directions he stooped to help her pick them up. Oh General! Isn't it wonderful? She cried. I just can't believe it. Isn't what wonderful? He asked. Oh don't you know? They've got it. Huh. They have. He gathered up the last of the big envelopes and gave them to her. When? Just half an hour ago. And to think those books were around here all the time and oh I've got a run. She disappeared into the lift. Inside the office one of Pickering's engineers was sitting on the middle of his spinal column a stenograph phone in one hand and a book in the other. Once in a while he would say something into the mouthpiece of the phone. Two other nuclear engineers had similar books spread out on a desk in front of them. They were making notes and looking up references in the nuclear engineers handbook and making calculations with their slide rules. There was a huddle around the drafting boards where two more such books were in use. Well what's happened? he demanded catching Pickering by the arm as he rushed from one group to another. Ha! We have it! Pickering cried. Everything we need! Look! He had another of the books under his arm. He held it out to Von Schlichten and Von Schlichten suddenly felt sicker than he had ever felt since at the age of 14 he had gotten drunk for the first time. He had seen men crack up under intolerable strain before but this was the first time he had seen a whole roomful of men blow their tops in the same manner. The book was a novel, a jumbo-sized historical novel of some seven or eight hundred pages. It's dust jacket bore a slightly more than bust-length picture of a young lady with crimson hair and green eyes and jade earrings and a plunging not to say power-diving neckline that left her affiliation with the class of Mamalia in no doubt whatever. In the background a mushroom-top smoke-column rows and away from it something intended to be a four-motor propeller-driven bomber of the first century was racing madly. The title he saw was Dyer Donne and the author was one Hildegard Hernandez. Well, it has a picture of an A-bomb explosion on it, he agreed. It has more than that. It has the whole business. Case specifications, tampers, charge design, detonating device, everything. The endpapers even have diagrams, copies of the original Nakasaki bond drawings. Look! Von Schlichten looked. He had no more than the average intelligent layman's knowledge of nuclear physics enough to recharge or repair a conversion unit. But the drawings looked authentic enough. They seemed to be copies of ancient blueprints lettered in first century English with lingua-terra translations added and marked Top Secret and US Army Corps of Engineers and Manhattan Engineering District. And look at this! Pickering opened at a marked page and showed it to him. And this! He opened where another slip of paper had been inserted. Everything we want to know! Practically. I don't get this. He wasn't sick anymore just bewildered. I read some reviews of this thing. All the reviews panned hell out of it. World War II through a bedroom keyhole. Hinty and black lace panties. That sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, sure. Pickering agreed. But this Hernandez had illusions of being a great serious historical novelist. See? She won't try to write a book till she's put in years of research. Actually, about six months' research by a herd of librarians and college juniors and other such literary coolies. And she boasts that she never yet has been caught in an error of historical background detail. Well, this opus is about the old Manhattan Project. The heroine is a sort of super-Madahari who is alternately and sometimes simultaneously in the pay of the Nazis, the Soviets, the Vatican, Chiang Kai-Shak, the Japanese emperor and the Jewish international bankers. And she sleeps with everybody, but Joe Stalin and Mount C soon. And of course, she's on every step of the A-Bomb Project. She even manages to stow away on the Enola Gay with the help of a general she spent 50 incandescent pages seducing. In order to tool up for this production job, La Hernandez did her researching just where Lorenzo Gomes probably did his. University of Montevideo Library. She even had access to the photo stats of the old U.S. data that General Lanningham brought to South America after the debacle in the United States in A-114. Those in papers are part of the Lanningham stuff. As far as we've been able to check mathematically, everything is strictly authentic and practical. We'll have to run a few more tests on the chemical explosive charges. We don't have any data on the exact strength of the explosives they used then. And the tampers and detonating device will have to be tested a little. But in about half an hour, we ought to be able to start drawing plans for the case, and as soon as they're finished, we'll rush them to the shipyard foundries for casting. Bunch looked and handed the book back to Pickering and sighed deeply. And I thought everybody here had gone after rocker, he said. We will erect, on the ruins of Keegark, a hundred foot statue of Srita Hildegard Hernandez. How did you get onto this? Pickering pointed to a young man with dull, brick-colored hair who was punching out some kind of problem on a small computing machine. Pete Van Reenen, over there, he has a girlfriend whose taste runs to this sort of literary bubblegum. She told him it was all in a book she just read and showed him. We descended in force on the bookshop and grabbed every copy in stock. We are now writing a sort of gaseous diffusion process to separate the nuclear physics from the pornography. I must say, Hildegard has her biological data very well in hand, too. I'll bet she'd have fun writing a novel about these geeks, Bunch looked and said. Well, how soon do you think you can have a bomb ready for us? Casting the cases is going to slow us down the most, Pickering said. But even with that, we ought to have one ready in three days, at the most. By two weeks, we'll be turning them out on an assembly line. I hope we don't need more than one. Bet you'd better produce at least half a dozen and have some practice bombs made up out of concrete or anything as long as they're the right weight and airfoil and have some way of releasing smoke. Get them done as soon as you have your case designed. We want to be able to make a couple of practice drops. There was no use, he thought, of raising hopes which might prove premature. He told Paula Quinton, of course, and Thaumastichle's Mazzangui, and by telecast on Sealed Beam, King Cacad and Air Commander Hargreaves. Beyond that, there was nothing to do but wait and hope that Hargreaves could keep or exiled bombers away from Gongonk Island in Cacad's town and that Hildegard Hernandez had been playing fair with her public. He visited the city where a few pockets of die-hard resistance were being liquidated and where everybody who had not been too deeply and publicly involved in this nid-suit-a-bit conspiracy was now coming forward and claiming to have been a lifelong friend of the Terrans and the company. Funch looked in return to Gongonk Island debating with himself whether to declare a general amnesty or to set up a dozen guillotines in the city and run them around the clock for a week. There were cogent arguments for and against either procedure. By 2100 the last organized resistance had been wiped out and curfew had been imposed and peace of a sort restored. There was still the threat from Kegarc but it was looking less ominous now than it had the evening before. Funch looked in and Paula were having dinner in the Broadway room confident that there was nothing left to do that they could do anything about when the extension phone that had been plugged in at their table rang. Colonel Quintenire, Paula identified herself into it and listened for a moment. There has? When? Where did it come from? I see. In the direction? Anything else? Apparently there was nothing else. She hung up and turned to Von Schlichten. The sky spy just detected a ship lifting out from Kegarc presumed one of the Boer-class fighters either the Jan Smetz or the Unpaul Kruger. It was first picked up on contragravity at about a hundred feet rising vertically from near the palace. This opposition is a gig-satter camouflage since the time Commander Prinsley first bombarded Kegarc with the Aldebaran. That was about twenty minutes ago. At last report, she's fifty miles north of Kegarc headed up the Hork River. Von Schlichten started thinking aloud, that could be a faint to draw our ships north after her and leave the approach to concrug or concats open, but that would be presuming that they know about the sky spy and I doubt that, though not enough to take chances on. They know we have ground and ship radar and they may think they can slip down the Conk Valley either undetected or mistaken for one of our ships from North Ulur. He picked up the phone. Get me through on telecast to Air Commander Hargreaves aboard the Procyon," he said. I'll take it in the office. I'll be up directly. He rose. Finish your dinner and have a rest of mine sent up," he told Paula. Leaving the elevator, he rushed into the big headquarters room just as contact was established with the Procyon on station over the northwestern corner of Tekad Sea between Kekadstown and Kegarc. The Aldebaran he knew was west of Kegarc. The northern lights now fitted with a pair of 155 millimeter guns in addition to her 90s had just arrived at Kekadstown. He had the Aldebaran sent north along the crest of the mountain range between the Kork and Conk River valleys where she could cover both with her own radar and other detection devices and exchange information with the Sky Spy and the Gaucho sent in what looked like the right course to intercept the Bore-class freighter from Kegarc. The northern lights, also with screens turned to Sky Spy, was sent to take over the Aldebaran's regular station. Finally he called Skilk and had the northern star sent south down the Hork Valley. After that there was nothing to do but wait and watch the screens. Paula Quinton put in an appearance shortly after he had finished calling Skilk pushing a cocktail wagon on which their interrupted dinners had been placed. They finished eating and drank coffee and smoked. Most of the rest of the staff who were not busy on the bomb project or at the shipyards or at the occupation of Konkruk drifted in. They all sat and stared from one to another of the screens which told in radar patterns and direct vision and telescopic vision and heat and radiation detection the story of what was going on to the northeast of them. Kegarc was dark on the vision screen. Evidently King Orgzild had invented the blackout too. Not that it did him any good the radar screen showed the city clearly and it was just as clear on the radiation and heat screens. The Kegarcenship was completely blacked out but the radiations from her engines and the distinctive radiation pattern of her contragravity field showed clearly and there was a spec that marked her position on the radar screen. The same position was marked with a pinpoint of light on the vision screen. Some device on the sky spy synchronized with the detectors kept it focused there. The company ships and contragravity vehicles all were carrying topside lights visible only from above which flashed alternate red and blue to identify them. Time crawled slowly around the clock face on the wall. The 65 second minutes of Uler dragging like ours. The spots that marked the enemy ship and our hunters crawled too. Seen from the 150 mile altitude of the sky spy even the 600 mile speed of the gaucho was barely visible. They drank coffee till the stuff revolted them. They smoked until their throats and mouths were dry. They watched the screens until they thought that they would see them in their dreams forever. Then the gaucho reported radar contact with the Kegarcenship which had begun to turn in a hairpin shaped course and was coming south down the conch valley. After that the gaucho began reporting directly and her topside identification line went out. Douser lights were down in the valley altitude about a thousand feet. We're trying to get a glimpse of her against the sky a voice came in we're cutting in our forward TV pickup. The voice repeated several times the wavelength and somebody got an auxiliary screen tuned in. There was nothing visible on it but the darkness of the valley the star-jeweled sky and the loom of the east conch mountains. We still can't see her but we ought to any moment. Radar shows her well above the mountains. Ah, there she is. She just obscured Beta Hydre 5. She's moving toward that big constellation to the east of it the one they call Finnegan's Goat. Now she'll be right in the center of the screen. We're going straight for her. We're going to try to slow her down till the Aldebaran can get here. The enemy ship was vaguely visible now becoming clearer in the starlight. She was a bore class freighter all right. Probably the on smiths that Oompaul Kruger had last been reported at work and there was little chance that she had slipped into Kegarc since the uprising and started. For all anybody new she could have been destroyed in the fighting before the Bork residency fell. All right. We have her spotted. We're going to open up on her. The voice from the goucho announced. She has 290s to R1. We'll try to disable them first. The vision screen lit with the indirect glare of the gun flash and the image in it juggled violently as the ship shook to the recoil then steadied again with the enemy ship visible in the middle of it growing larger and larger as the goucho rushed toward her. The gun fired again and again flooding the screen with momentary yellow light and disturbing the image as the recoil shook the gun cutter. The enemy ship began firing in reply. The shots were all wide misses. Apparently the geek gun crew didn't know how to synchronize the radar sites and were ignorant of the correct setting for their proximity fuses. The goucho searchlights came on bathing her quarry in light. It was the on smiths. The name and the figure had best to the old soldier philosopher were plainly visible. Her forward gun had been knocked out and she was trying to swing about to get a field of fire for her stern gun. We're going to give her a rocket salvo, the boy said. Watch this now. The rockets leap forward from the topside racks four and four and four and four at half second intervals. The first four hit the smiths midships and low exploding with a flare that grew before it could die away as the second four landed. Nobody ever saw the third and fourth four land. The on smiths vanished in a blaze of light that blinded everybody in the room. When they could see again after some 30 seconds the screen was dark. In the direct vision screen from the sky spy the whole countryside of the conch valley 500 miles north of Kankruk was lighted. The heat and radiation detectors were going insane and in the shifting confusion on the radar screen there was no trace either the on smiths or the goucho. Well, the geeks did have an abomb. Themistically's Ms. Ong we said at length. I've been trying to kid myself that we were just preparing against a million to one chance. I wonder how many more they have. Paula find out who was in command of the goucho. He'd be a junior grade lieutenant picks up orders promoting him to Navy captain as of now. It's probably the only thing we can do for him anymore. And promotions of the same order for everybody else aboard that cutter. Authority Carlos von Schlichten acting governor general. He picked up a phone. Give me commander Pinsley on Aldebaran. He ordered Pinsley to launch airboats and make a search cautioned him to be careful of radiation but to take no chances on any of the gouchos compliment being still alive and in need of help. While that was going on the sky spy reported another ship coming over her horizon to the east from the direction of Bork. That would be the unpaul Kruger. Hargreaves had already learned of the advent of the second freighter. He was unwilling to take the prosion off her station until the Aldebaran returned from the conch valley. And this von Schlichten concurred. Somebody suggested that a drink would be in order. They had just watched the all but certain death of three Terran officers, 15 Terran airmen and 10 Kragans but they had all been living in too close companionship with death in the past three days or was it three centuries to be too deeply affected. And they had also watched at least for a day or so the removal of the threat that had hung over their heads and they had seen proof that they had a defense against King Orgsyll's bombs. They were still mixing cocktails when Pickering phoned in. Some good news, General, from Operation Hildegard. We ought to have at least one bomb ready to drop by 1500 tomorrow, four or five more by next midnight. He said, We don't need to have cases cast. We got our dimensions decided and we find that there are a lot of big empty liquid oxygen flasks or tanks, rather, at the spaceport that'll accommodate everything, visionables, explosive charges, tampers, detonator, and all. We'll go ahead with it, make up a few of them as many as you can between now and 2400 Sunday. He thought for a moment, don't waste time on those practice bombs I mentioned. We'll make a practice drop with a live bomb and don't throw away the design for the cast case. We may need that later on. End of Chapter 14 Reading by Akesha Wood Chapter 15 of Uler Uprising This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Akesha Wood Uler Uprising by H. B. Piper Chapter 15 A Place in My Heart for Hildegard The company fleet hung off Kegark at 15,000 feet in a belt of calm air just below the seesaw incurrence from the warming Antarctic and the cooling deserts of the Arctic. There was the prosaeon from the bridge of which Vange looked and watched the movements of the other ships and airboats and the distant horizon. The Aldebaran was 10 miles off to the west, her metal sheathing glinting the red light of the evening sun. There was a northern star down from Skilk, a smaller and more distant twinkle of reflected light to the north of Aldebaran. The northern lights was off to the east and between her and prosaeon was a fifth ship. Turning the arm-mounted binoculars around, he could just make out on her bow the figure had bust of a man in an ancient top hat and a fringe of chin beard. She was the Oompaul Kruger captured by the prosaeon after a chase across the mountains northeast of Kigark the day before and remote from the other ships to the south a tiny speck of blue-gray almost invisible against the sky and a smaller twinkle of reflected sunlight a garbage-scow unflatteringly but somewhat aptly rechristened Hildegard Hernandez which had been altered as a bomb carrier and the gun-cutter Elmaran. With the glasses he could see a bulky cylinder being handled off the scow and loaded onto the improvised bomb catapults on the Elmaran stern. Shortly thereafter the gun-cutter broke loose from the tender and began to approach the fleet. General, I must protest against your doing this, Air Commander Hargreaves said. There's simply no sense in it. That bomb can be dropped without your personal supervision aboard, sir, and you're endangering yourself unnecessarily. That infernal machine hasn't been tested or anything it might even let go on the catapult when you try to drop it. And we simply can't afford to lose you now. No, what would become of us if you go out there and blow yourself up with that contraption? Berman supported him. My God! I thought Don Quixote was a Spaniard instead of a German! Argentino! Spongebob looked incorrect. And don't try to sell me that irreplaceable man-line, either. Themizongli can replace me. Hiddeliri can replace him. Barney Mordkovitz can replace him. And so on down to where you make a second lieutenant out of some sergeant. We've been all over this last evening. Admitted we can't take time for a long string of test shots and admitted we have to use an untested weapon. I'm not sending men out under those circumstances and staying here on this ship and watch them blow themselves up. If that bombs our only hope it's got to be dropped right and I'm not going to take a chance on having it dropped by a crew who think they've been sent out on a suicide mission. What happened to the goucho when she blew the smuts up? It's too fresh in everybody's mind. But if I, who ordered the mission, accompany it, they'll know I have some confidence that they'll come back alive. Well, I'm coming along too, General. Kent Pinkering spoke up. I made the damn thing and I ought to be along when it's dropped on the principle that a restaurant proprietor ought to be seen eating his own food once in a while. I still don't see why we couldn't have made at least one test shot. First, Hans Meierstein, the banking cartel man, objected. Well, I'll tell you why Apollo Quintin spoke up. There's a good chance that the geeks don't know we have a bomb of our own. They may believe that it was something invented on Niflheim for mining purposes and that we haven't realized its military application. There's more than a good chance that the loss of the young smuts has temporarily demoralized them. Personally, I believe that both King Orgzild and Prince Gorgorink were bored her when she blew up. That's something we'll never know, positively, of course. That ship and everything and everybody in her were simply vaporized and the particles are registering on our geigers now. But I'm as sure as I am if anything about these geeks that one or both of them accompanied her. Paulinez, what she's talking about, King Kincaad-Jabbert in the Tekadzee language which they all understood, just like Vaughn saying that he has to go on our cutter to encourage the crew. They always insisted their kings and generals go into battle, particularly if something important is to be done. They think that gods get angry if they don't. And we have to hit them now, Vaughn Schluchten said. They still have a couple of bombs left. We haven't been able to locate them with detectors, but those geeks, Kincaad's men caught on that commando raid last night, say that there are at least three of them made. We can't take a chance that some fanatic may load one into an air-car and make a kamikaze raid on Gongongk Island. The Elmerin ran alongside with her Maasai warrior figurehead and the black cylinder on her catapult aft. Somebody had painted on the bomb Dyer Don by Hildegard Hernandez, compliments of the author to H. M. King Orgzild and Keegark. A canvas-intubed gangway was run out to connect the ship with a cutter. Vaughn schlicked him and Kent Pinkering went down the ladder from the bridge, the others accompanying them. As he stepped into the gangway, Paula Quinton fell in behind him. Where do you think you're going? he demanded. Along with you, she replied, I'm your adjutant, I believe. You definitely are not going along. Personally, I don't believe there's any danger, but I'm not having you run any unnecessary risks. Vaughn, I don't know much about the way Terrans think, except about fighting and about making things, Kincaad told him, and I don't know anything at all about the kind of Terrans who have young, but I believe this is something important to Paula. Let her go with you, because if you go alone and don't come back, I don't think she will ever be happy again. He looked at Kincaad curiously, wondering, as he had so often before, just what went on inside that lizard skull. Then he looked at Paula, and after a moment he nodded. All right, Colonel, objection withdrawn, he said. Aboard the Elmeran, they gave the bomb a last-minute inspection and checked the catapult and the bomb site, and then went up onto the bridge. Ready for the bombing mission, sir? The skipper, a Lieutenant, J.G. Morrison, asked. Ready for you, our Lieutenant? Carry on. We're just passengers. Thank you, sir. We thought of going in over the city at about 5,000 for a target check, turning when we're halfway back to the mountains and coming back for our bombing run at 15,000. Is that all right, sir? Punch looked and nodded. You're the skipper, Lieutenant. You better make sure, though, that as soon as the bomb off signals flashed, your engineer hits his auxiliary rocket propulsion button. We want to be about 15 miles from where that thing goes off. The Lieutenant, J.G., muttered, something that sounded unmilitarily like, You ain't foolin', brother. No, I'm not, Punch looked and agreed. I saw the on-smoots on the TV screen. The Elmeran pointed or bow, and a long blade of the figurehead wore your spear toward Kegark. The city grew out of the ground mist, a part of colored blurt, the delta of the dry, horc river, and then a color-splashed triangle between the river and the bay and the hills on the landward side, and then it took shape cross-ruled with streets and granulated with buildings. As I came in, Von Schlickten, who had approached it from the air many times before, could distinguish the landmarks. The site of King Orgzild's nitroglycerin plant, now a crater surrounded by a quarter-mile radius of ruins. The residency, a nether crater since Rodolfo McKinnon had blown it up under him, the smashed Christian DeVette at the company docks, King Orgzild's palace fire-stained, and with a hole blown in one corner by the Elmeran's bombs. Then they were past the city, an over-open country. I wish we had some idea where the rest of those bombs are stored, sir, Lieutenant Morrison said. We don't seem to have gotten anything significant when we flew reconnaissance with the radiation detectors. Now, about all that was picked up was the main power plant, and the radiation escape from there was normal, Pickering agreed. The bombs themselves wouldn't be detectable, except to the extent that, say, a nuclear conversion engine for an airboat would be. They'd probably have them underground somewhere, well shielded. Those prisoner-kinkeds commanders dragged in only knew that they were in the city somewhere, Von Schlichten considered. How about midway between the palace and the residency for our ground zero, Lieutenant? That looks like the center of the city. The cutter turned and started back, having risen another 10,000 feet. Morrison passed the word to the bombardier. The city, with the sea beyond it now, came rushing at them, and Von Schlichten, standing at the front of the bridge, discovered that he had his arm around Paula's waist and was holding her a little more closely than was military. He made no attempt to release her, however. There's nothing to worry about, really, he was assuring her. Pickering's boys built this thing according to the best principles of engineering, and the stuff they got out of that big economy-size shilling-shocker all checked mathematically. The red light on the bridge flashed, and the intercom shouted, BOMB OFF! He forced Paula down on the bridge-deck and crouched beside her. Cover your eyes, he warned. You remember what the flash was like in the screen when the Yon smiths blew up, and we didn't get the worst of it. The pick-up on the goucha was knocked out too soon. He kept on lecturing her about gamma rays and ultraviolet rays and X-rays and cosmic rays, trying to keep making some sort of intelligent sounds while they clung together and waited, and with the other half of his mind trying not to think of everything that could go wrong with that Jerry-built improvisation they had just dumped onto Kegark. It didn't blow, and the geeks found it. They'd know that another one would be along shortly. And an invisible hand caught the gun-cutter and hurled her end over end, sending one schlicked in and Paula sprawling at full length on the deck, still clinging to one another. There was a blast of almost palpable sound and a sensation of heat that penetrated even the airtight superstructure of the Elmerin. An instant later there was another, and another, similar shock. Two more bombs had gone off behind them in Kegark that meant that they had found King Orgzill's remaining nuclear armament. There were shattering sounds of breaking glass and heavy thumps that told of structural damage to the cutter and hoarse shouts and lurid cursing as Morrison and his airmen struggled with the controls. The cutter began losing altitude, but she was back on a reasonably even keel. Von Schlickton rose, helping Paula to refeed and found that they had been kissing one another passionately. They were still in each other's arms when the pitching and rolling of the cutter ceased and somebody tapped him on the shoulder. 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 Schlickton took his trademark and said 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. There were about 800 to 1,000 feet above the water with a stiff following wind away from the explosion area. The 90-millimeter 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 contra-gravity 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 contra-gravity we're weightless relative to the air-mass, but she was built to stand the winds and the high latitudes. But the two geek bombs caught us off balance. You don't need to apologize, Lieutenant. You and your crew behave 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 Beth Cyclebombs, was impressed. Keygark 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 150,000 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 Hendrick Lemoine alive, that two of the three bombs that had contributed to that column of boiling smoke had been made in Keygark, by Keygarkans, and that with a few causal factors altered, he was seeing what would have happened to Conkrewk. 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 thermoconcentrite 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 Znidsutibit will be lynched on the spot. But this must be the last nuclear bomb used on Ular. Derunkered some morning after resolution, he told himself contemptuously, the next time it will come easier and easier still the time after that. After he dropped the first bomb, there is no turning back any more than there had been after Hiroshima 450 odd years ago. Why, he had even been considering just where against the mountains back of Bork, he would drop a demonstration bomb as a prelude to a surrender demand. He either went on to the inevitable catastrophe or he 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. Ular was not ready for membership in the Terran Federation, then its people must bow to the Terran Packs. The Kragans would help as pro-consuls 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 contra-gravity ships must be shelved for a long time to come, maybe in a century or so. Kinkat 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 Kinkat of that time would see Ular a civilized member of the Federation. They paused as the gun-cutter nestled up to the prosaeon and the canvas-intubed gangway was run out and made fast looking back at the fearful thing that had sprouted from where Kigark had been. You know, Paula was saying, echoing his earlier thoughts, but for that female pornographer, that would have been concrete. He nodded, Yes, I hope you won't mind, but there will always be a place in my heart for Hildegard. Then they turned their backs upon the abomination of Kigark's desolation and went up the gangway together, looking very little like a general, and his adjutant. End of Chapter 15 Recording by Acacia Wood End of Ular Uprising by H. B. Piper