Somebody down the table--one of the military, of course--said, "Hear, hear!" Von Schlichten came as close as a man wearing a monocle can to winking at Paula. Good girl, he thought; she"s started playing on the Army team!

"Well, of course...." Keaveney began. Then he stopped, as a Terran sergeant came up to the table and bent over Barney Mordkovitz"

shoulder, whispering urgently. The black-bearded brigadier rose immediately, taking his belt from the back of his chair and putting it on. Motioning the sergeant to accompany him, he spoke briefly to Keaveney and then came around the table to where von Schlichten sat, the Resident-Agent accompanying him.

"Message just came in from Konkrook, general," he said softly. "Sid Harrington"s dead."

It took von Schlichten all of a second to grasp what had been said.

"Good G.o.d! When? How?"

"Here"s all we know, sir," the sergeant said, giving him a radioprint slip. "Came in ten minutes ago."

It was an all-station priority telecast. Governor-General Harrington had died suddenly, in his room, at 2210; there were no details. He glanced at his watch; it was 2243. Konkrook and Skilk were in the same time-zone; that was fast work. He handed the slip to Mordkovitz, who gave it to Keaveney.

"You from the telecast station, sergeant?" he asked. "All right, let"s go."

"Wait a minute, general." Keaveney put out a hand to detain him as he took his belt and put it on. "How about this?" He gestured nervously with the radioprint slip.

"Get up and make an announcement, now," von Schlichten told him, fastening the buckle and hitching his pistol and survival-kit into place. "It"ll be out all over the planet in half an hour. Never hold news out unnecessarily." He stubbed out his cigarette. "Come on, sergeant."

As he hurried from the banquet-room, he could hear Keaveney tapping on his wine-gla.s.s.

"Everybody, please! Let me have your attention! There has just come in a piece of the most tragic news...."

VII.

Bismillah! How Dumb Can We Get?

The lights had come on inside the semicircular and now open storm-porch of Company House, but it was still daylight outside. The sky above the mountain to the west was fading from crimson to burnt-orange, and a couple of the brighter stars were winking into visibility. Von Schlichten and the sergeant hurried a hundred yards down the street between low, thick-walled office buildings to the telecast station, next to the Administration Building.

A woman captain met him just inside the door of the big soundproofed room.

"We have a wavelength open to Konkrook, general," she said. "In booth three."

He nodded. "Thank you, captain.... We"ve all lost a true friend, haven"t we?"

Another girl, a tech-sergeant, was in the booth; on the screen was the image of a third young woman, a lieutenant, at Konkrook station. The sergeant rose and started to leave the booth.

"Stick around, sergeant," von Schlichten told her. "I"ll want you to take over when I"m through." He sat down in front of the combination visiscreen and pickup. "Now, lieutenant, just what happened?" he asked. "How did he die?"

"We think it was poison, general. General M"zangwe has ordered autopsy and chemical a.n.a.lysis. If you can wait about ten minutes, he"ll be able to talk to you, himself."

"Call him. In the meantime, give me everything you know."

"Well, the governor decided to go to bed early; he was going hunting in the morning. I suppose you know his usual routine?"

Von Schlichten nodded. Harrington would have taken a shower, put on his dressing-gown, and then sat down at his desk, lighted his pipe, poured a drink of Terran bourbon, and begun to write his diary.

"Well, at 2210, give or take a couple of minutes, the Kragan guard-sergeant on that floor heard ten pistol-shots, as fast as they could be fired semi-auto, in the governor"s room. The door was locked, but he shot it off with his own pistol and went in. He found Governor Harrington on the floor, wearing only his gown, holding an empty pistol. He was in convulsions, frothing at the mouth, in horrible pain. Evidently he"d fired his pistol, which he kept on his desk, to call help; all the bullets had gone into the ceiling. The sergeant punched the emergency b.u.t.ton, beside the bed, and reported, then tried to help the governor, but it was too late. One of the medics got there in five minutes, just as he was dying. He"d written his diary up to noon of today, and broken off in the middle of a word. There was a bottle and an overturned gla.s.s on his desk. The Constabulary got there a few minutes later, and then Brigadier-General M"zangwe took charge.

A white rat, given fifteen drops from the whiskey-bottle, died with the same symptoms in about ninety seconds."

"Who had access to the whiskey-bottle?"

"A geek servant, who takes care of the room. He was caught, an hour earlier, trying to slip off the island without a pa.s.s; they were holding him at the guardhouse when Governor Harrington died. He"s now being questioned by the Kragans." The girl"s face was bleakly remorseless. "I hope they do plenty to him!"

"I hope they don"t kill him before he talks."

"Wait a moment, general; we have General M"zangwe, now," the girl said. "I"ll switch you over."

The screen broke into a kaleidoscopic jumble of color, then cleared; the chocolate-brown face of Themistocles M"zangwe was looking out of it.

"I heard what happened, how they found him, and about that geek chamber-valet being arrested," von Schlichten said. "Did you get anything out of him?"

"He"s admitted putting poison in the bottle, but he claims it was his own idea. But he"s one of Father Keeluk"s parishioners, so...."

"Keeluk! G.o.d d.a.m.n, so that was it!" von Schlichten almost shouted.

"Now I know what he wanted with Stalin, and that goat, and those rabbits!"

Five thousand miles away, in Konkrook, Themistocles M"zangwe whistled.

"_Bismillah_! How dumb can we get?" he cried. "Of course they"d need terrestrial animals, to find out what would poison a Terran! Wait a minute; I"ll make a note of that, to spring on this geek, if the Kragans haven"t finished him by now." Von Schlichten watched M"zangwe pick up a stenophone and whisper into it for a moment. "All right, Carlos, what else?"

"Has Eric been notified?"

"We called Keegark, but he"s in audience with King Orgzild, and we can"t reach him."

"Well, who"s in charge at Konkrook, now?"

"Not much of anybody. Laviola, the Fiscal Secretary, and Hans Meyerstein, the Banking Cartel"s lawyer, and Howlett, the Personnel Chief, and Buhrmann, the Commercial Secretary, have made up a sort of quadrumvirate and are trying to run things. I don"t know what would happen if anything came up suddenly...." A blue-gray uniformed arm, with a major"s cuff-braid, came into the screen, handing a slip of paper to M"zangwe; he took it, glanced at it, and swore. Von Schlichten waited until he had read it through.

"Well, something has, all right," the African said. "We just got a call from Jaikark"s Palace--a revolt"s broken out, presumably headed by Gurgurk; Household Guards either mutinied or wiped out by the mutineers, all but those twenty Kragan Rifles we loaned Jaikark. They, and about a dozen of Jaikark"s courtiers and their personal retainers, are holding the approaches to the King"s apartments. The native-lieutenant in charge of the Kragans just radioed in; says the situation is desperate."

"When a Kragan says that, he means d.a.m.n near hopeless. Is this being recorded?" When M"zangwe nodded, he continued: "All right. Use the recording for your authority and take charge. I"m declaring martial rule at Konkrook, as of now, 2253. Tell Eric Blount what"s happened, and what you"ve done, as soon as you can get in touch with him. I"m leaving for Konkrook at once; I ought to get in by 0800.

"Now, as to the trouble at the Palace. Don"t commit more than one company of Kragans and ten airjeeps and four combat-cars, and tell them to evacuate Jaikark and his followers and our Kragans to Gongonk Island. And alert your whole force. These geek palace revolutions are always synchronized with street-rioting, and this thing seems to have been synchronized with Sid Harrington"s death, too. Get our Kragans out if you can"t save anybody else from the Palace, but sacrificing thirty or forty men to save twenty is no kind of business. And keep sending reports; I can pick them up on my car radio as I come down."

He turned to the girl sergeant. "Keep on this; there"ll be more coming in."

He rose and left the booth. If we can pull Jaikark"s bacon off the fire, he was thinking, the Company can dictate its own terms to him afterward; if Jaikark"s killed, we"ll have Gurgurk"s head off for it, and then take over Konkrook. In either case, it"ll be a long step toward getting rid of all these geek despots. And with Eric Blount as Governor-General....

The girl captain in charge of the station met him as he came out.

"Poison," he told her. "A geek servant did the job, on orders from Gurgurk and possibly Rakkeed. Gurgurk"s started a putsch against King Jaikark; I"m going to Konkrook at once. Call the military airport and have my command-car brought to Company House."

Harry Quong and Ha.s.san Bogdanoff had been at the banquet, too; on a world of lizard-faced silicate-eaters, the social difference between a human general and a human aircar-driver was almost infinitesimal. He"d have to talk to Barney Mordkovitz, too; when word of events at Konkrook got out among the local geeks, as it probably had already....