WINMX Assorted Textfiles/Ebooks.tar/Text - Compilations - The Library - Volume 07 - E to K - 218 fiction ebooks (PDF HTM(L) RTF TXT DOC).zip/Hubbard, L Ron - Battlefield Earth - part 2.txt

Text File | 2000-08-04 | 69KB | 523 lines

PART 2

- 1 -

Terl was all efficiency, great plans bubbling in his cavernous skull.
The old Chinkos had had a sort of zoo outside the compound, and despite the years that had intervened since the Chinkos were terminated here, the cages were still there.
There was one in particular that was just right. It had a dirt floor and a cement pool, and netting of heavy mesh strung all around it. They had had some bears there that they said they were studying, and although the bears had died after a while, they had never escaped.
Terl dumped the new beast into the cage. The thing was still only semiconscious, getting over the shock of breathe-gas most likely. Terl looked at it lying there and then looked around. This had to be just right, all precautions taken.
The cage door had a lock on it. It was open to the sky and there was no netting over the top - what bear could climb a thirty-foot set of bars?
But there was a possibility that this new beast might tamper with the cage door. It wasn't probable. But the door didn't have a good lock on it.
Terl had dumped the bags in the cage, having no place else to put them. And the long thong rope he had used was lying on the bags.
He decided it would be wise to tie the beast up. He passed the thong around the neck of the thing and tied it there with a simple rigger knot and tied the other end to a bar.
He stood back and checked things again. It was fine. He went out and closed the cage door. He'd have to put a better lock on it. But it would do just now.
Satisfied with himself, Terl ran the car into the garage and went to his office.
There was not much to do. A few dispatches, just forms, no emergencies. Terl finished up and sat back. What a dull place. Ah, well, he had started wheels rolling to get off it, to get back home.
He decided he had better go out and see how the man-thing was getting along. He picked up his breathe-mask, put a new cartridge into it, and went out through the offices. There were a lot of empty desks these days. There were only three secretarial-type Psychlos there, and they didn't pay much attention to him.
Outside the compound, he reached the gate of the cage. He stopped, his eyebones rattling.
The thing was clear over to the gate!
He went in with a growl, picked the thing up, and put it into its original place.
It had untied the knot.
Terl looked at it. Plainly it was terrified of him. And why not? It only came up to his belt buckle and was about a tenth of his weight.
Terl put the thong back around its neck. Being a mining company worker, accustomed to rigs and slings, Terl knew his knots. So this time he tied a double-rigger knot. That would hold it!
Cheerful once more, Terl went to the garage and got a water hose and began to wash down the Mark II. As he worked, he turned over various plans and approaches in his head. They all depended on that man-thing out there.
On a sudden hunch, he went back outside to look into the cage. The thing was standing inside the door!
Terl crossly barged in, carried it back to its original position, and stared at the rope. It had untied a double-rigger knot.
With fast-working paws, Terl fixed that. He put the rope around its neck and tied it with a bucket-hoist knot.
The thing looked at him. It was making some funny noises as if it could talk.
Terl walked out, fastened the door, and got out of sight. He wasn't a security chief for nothing. From a vantage point behind a building, he levered his face mask glass to telephoto and observed.
The thing, in no time at all, untied the complex bucket-hoist knot!
Terl rumbled back before it could get to the door. He went in, plucked the thing up, and put it back on the far side of the cage.
He wound the rope around and around its neck and then tied it with a double-bucket knot so complex that only a veteran rigger could loosen it.
Once more he went off to an unseen distance.
Again believing itself unobserved, what was the thing doing now?
It reached into a pouch it was wearing, took out something bright, and cut the rope!
Terl rumbled off to the garage and rummaged about through centuries of castoffs and debris until he found a piece of flexi-rope, a welding torch, a welding power cartridge, and a short strip of metal.
When he got back, the thing was over by the door again, trying to climb the thirty-foot bars.
Terl did a very thorough job. He made a collar out of the metal and welded it hotly around the neck. He welded the flexi-rope to the collar and welded the other end into a ring, hooking the ring over a bar thirty feet above the dirt floor of the cage.
He stood back. The thing was grimacing and trying to hold the collar away from its neck, for it was still hot.
That'll hold it, Terl told himself.
But he hadn't finished. He wasn't a security chief for nothing. He went back to his office storeroom and broke out two button cameras, checked them, and switched them to the wavelength of his office viewer.
Then he went back to the cage and put one button camera way up in the bars, pointing down, and put the other one out at a distance where it could view the exterior.
The thing was pointing at its mouth and making sounds. Who knew what that meant?
Only now did Terl feel relaxed.
That night he sat smugly in the employee recreation room, responding to no questions, quietly drinking his kerbango in a very self-satisfied way.

- 2 -

Jonnie Goodboy Tyler stared in despair at his packs across the yard.
The sun was hot.
The collar on his burned neck hurt.
His throat was parched with thirst. And he felt hungry.
In those packs, just inside the cage door, there was a pig bladder of water. There was some cooked pork, if it hadn't spoiled. And there were hides he could rig for shade.
At first he had just been trying to get out.
The very idea of being caged made him feel ill. Sicker even than the lack of water and food.
It was all so unknown. The last he really remembered was starting to charge the insect and being blown into the air. Then this. No, wait. There was something after he was first stunned.
He had started to come to, lying on something soft and smooth. He had seemed to be inside the insect. He had seen a huge something next to him. And then there was a sensation like breathing fire straight into his lungs that pulled every nerve short and threw him into a convulsion.
There was another glimpse of an occurrence. He had flickeringly regained consciousness for a few moments. He seemed to be tied to the top of the insect speeding across the plain. And then the back of his head bumped and the next he knew he was in here - in this cage!
He put it together. He had hurt the insect, but not fatally. It had eaten him, but then spit him up. It had carried him on its back to its lair.
But the real shock was the monster.
It was true, he knew now, that he had always been "too smart." He had doubted his elders. He had doubted the Great Village and there it had been. He had doubted the monsters and here one was.
When he had come to and found himself looking up at that thing, his head had reeled. He felt himself literally bending the bars behind him to get away. A monster!
Eight or nine feet tall, maybe more. About three and a half feet wide. Two arms. Two legs. A shiny substance for a face and a long tube from the chin down to the chest. Glowing amber eyes behind the shiny front plate.
The ground shook as it approached. A thousand pounds? Maybe more.
Huge booted feet dented the earth.
And it had furry paws and long talons.
He had been certain it was going to eat him right then. But it hadn't. It had tied him up like a dog.
There was something strange about this monster's perceptions. Every time he had tried to get untied and out of the cage, the monster had shown up again. As though it could see when it wasn't around to see.
Possibly those little spheres had had something to do with it. The monster held them in its paws like small detachable eyes. One was up there now, glittering, way up in the corner of the cage. Like a little eye. The other one was out there stuck onto a nearby building side.
But the monster had caught him trying to get out before it planted those eyes.
What was this place? There was a constant rumble from somewhere, a muted roar similar to the one the insect had made. The thought of more of those insects chilled him.
There was a big stone basin in the middle of the cage, a few feet deep with steps up one side. Lots of sand was in the bottom of it. A grave? A place to roast meat? No, there were no charred sticks or ashes in it.
So there were monsters. When he stood in front of it, his face was just above the level of its belt buckle. Belt buckle? Yes, a shiny thing that held a belt together. It suddenly dawned on Jonnie that the monster was wearing a covering that wasn't its own skin. A slippery, shiny purple substance. It wasn't its own hide. Like clothes you'd cut out of a hide. Pants. A coat. A collar. It wore clothes.
Ornaments on the collar. And a device of some sort on the belt buckle. That device was stamped on his mind's eye, right now. It was a picture of ground on which stood small square blocks. Vertical shafts were going up from the square blocks. Out of the shafts seemed to be coming clouds of smoke, and smoke in curls lay all over the top of the picture. The idea of clouds of smoke stirred some memory in him, but he was too hungry and too thirsty and too hot to wrestle with it.
The ground under him began to shake in measured tread. He knew what this was.
The monster came to the door. It was carrying something. It came in and loomed over him. It threw down into the dirt some soft, gooey sticks of something. Then it just stood there.
Jonnie looked at the sticks. They weren't like anything he had ever seen.
The monster made motions, pointing from the sticks to his face. That failing, the monster took up a stick and squashed it against Jonnie's mouth, saying something in a rumbling roaring voice. A command.
Jonnie got it. This was supposed to be food.
He worked a bit of it around in his mouth and then swallowed it.
Abruptly and immediately he was violently ill. He felt like his whole stomach was going to rush back out of his mouth. Before he could control them, his limbs went into the beginning of a convulsion.
He spat. Too thirsty to have much saliva, he tried to get rid of the stuff, all of it, every bit of it, every tiny piece of the acid taste of it.
The monster just backed up and stood there staring at him.
"Water," pleaded Jonnie, getting control of his shaking limbs and voice. "Please. Water." Anything to wash this horrible stuff out.
He pointed to his mouth. "Water."
The monster just went on standing there. The eyes back of the faceplate were slitted, glowing with an eerie fire.
Jonnie composed himself stoically. It was wrong to look weak and beg. There was such a thing as pride. He drew his face into stillness.
The monster leaned over and checked the collar and the flexi-rope, turned around and went back out, closed the gate with a firm clang, wired it shut and left.
The evening shadows were growing long.
Jonnie looked at his packs by the gate. They might as well be on the top of Highpeak!
A cloak of misery settled over him. He had to assume Windsplitter was gravely injured or dead. And he had to assume that in a few days he himself probably would die of thirst or hunger.
Twilight came.
And then with a shock he realized Chrissie's promise to find him would wind up in her certain death. He caved in.
The little bright eye, up in the corner of the cage, stared down unwinkingly.

- 3 -

The following day, Terl probed around the disused quarters of the old Chinkos.
It was unpleasant work. The quarters were outside the pressurized Psychlo domes of the minesite and he had to wear a breathe-mask. The Chinkos were air-breathers. And while the quarters had been sealed off, a few hundred years of neglect and weather leaks had left their marks.
There were rows and rows of bookcases. Lines and lines of filing cabinets full of notes. Old scarred desks, rickety and frail to begin with, collapsing into themselves. Piles of junk in lockers. And everything filmed over with white dust. Good thing he didn't have to breathe it.
What funny beings the Chinkos had been. They were the Intergalactic Mining Company's answer to some protests by more warlike and able worlds that mining was wrecking planetary ecologies. And, the company being plush and profitable at that time, some knothead of a director in Intergalactic's main office had created the culture and ethnology department, or C and E. Maybe it was originally named the ecological department, but Chinkos could paint, and some Intergalactic director's wear-the-claws wife had begun to make a private fortune selling Chinko work on other planets and got the name changed. There was very little that didn't show up in the secret files of the security department.
It was the strike the Chinkos had invented, not the corruption, that caused the final wipeout. Corruption at director level was very paws-off for security. A strike was not.
But the Chinkos here had been gone long before that, and this place looked it. What, after all, was worth culturing on this planet? There weren't enough indigenous populations left to bother with. And who had cared anyway? But like any bureaucracy, the Chinkos had been busy. Look at those hundreds of yards of cabinets and books.
Terl was looking for a manual on the feeding habits of man. Surely these busy Chinkos had studied that.
He pawed and pawed. He opened and flipped hundreds of indexes. He got down and poked into lockers. And while he got a very good idea of what there was in these rambling offices and lockers, he couldn't find one single thing about what man ate. He found what bears ate. He found what mountain goats ate. He even found a treatise, scholarly composed, printed and reeking with wasted expense, on what some beast known as a "whale" ate, a treatise that ended up laughably enough with the fact that the beast was totally extinct.
Terl stood in the middle of the place, disgusted. No wonder the company had phased out C and E on Earth. Imagine roaring around, burning up fuel, keeping a whole book-manufacturing plant steaming like a digger shovel, wearing out eyesight ....
It wasn't all in vain, though. He had learned from the aged and yellowed map he now gripped in his hand that there were a few other groups of men left on this planet. At least there had been a few hundred years ago.
Some were in a place the Chinkos called "Alps." Several dozen, in fact. There had been about fifteen up in the ice belt the Chinkos called "North Pole" and "Canada." There had been an unestimated number at a place called "Scotland" and there had been some in "Scandinavia." And also in a place called "Colorado."
This was the first time he had seen the Chinko name for this central minesite area. "Colorado." He looked at the map with some amusement. "Rocky Mountains." "Pike's Peak." Funny Chinko names. The Chinkos always did their work in painfully severe Psychlo, faithful to their ore. But they had had funny imaginations.
This was getting him no place, however, although it was good to know, for the sake of his planning, that there had been a few more men around.
He would have to rely on what he should have relied on in the first place - security. The techniques of security. He would put them to work.
He walked out and closed the door behind him and stared around at this non-Psychlo alien world. The old Chinko offices, barracks, and zoo were up on the high hill back of the minesite. Close by but higher. The arrogant bastards. One could see all around from this place. One could see the ore transshipment platform as well as the freighter assembly field; the place didn't look very busy down there. Intergalactic would be sending some sizzlers down the line unless quotas were met. He hoped he wouldn't have too many investigations ordered by the home office.
Blue sky. Yellow sun. Green trees. And the wind that tugged at him full of air.
How he hated this place.
The thought of staying made him grit his fangs.
Well, what do you expect in an alien world?
He'd finish that investigation ordered about a lost tractor and then put his tried-and-true security technology to work on that man-thing.
That was the only way out of this hellhole.

- 4 -

Jonnie watched the monster.
Thirsty, hungry, and with no hope, he felt adrift in a sea of unknowns.
The thing had come into the cage, its footsteps shaking the earth, and had stood there for some time just looking at him, small glints of light in its amber eyes. Then it had begun to putter around.
Right now it was testing the bars, shaking them, apparently verifying that they were firm. Satisfied, it rumbled all around the perimeter inspecting the dirt.
It stood for a while looking at the sticks it had tried to make Jonnie eat. Jonnie had pushed them as far away as possible since they had a bad, pungent smell. The monster counted them. Aha! It could count.
It spent some time examining the collar and rope. And then it did a very strange thing. It unhooked the rope's far end from the bar top. Jonnie held his breath. Maybe he could get to his packs.
But the monster now hooked the rope on a nearby bar. He dropped a loop over the bar indifferently and then moved off to the door.
It spent some time at the door, rewinding the wires that kept it closed, and did not seem to notice that when it turned its back on the door, one of the wires sprang free.
The monster rumbled off toward the compound and disappeared.
Lightheaded with thirst and hunger, Jonnie felt he was having delusions. He was afraid to hope. But there it was: the rope could be removed, and the gate fastening might be loose enough to open.
He made very sure the monster was really gone.
Then he acted.
With a flip of the rope he got the far end off the bar.
Hastily he wrapped the length around his body to get it out of his way and tucked the end into his belt.
He dove for his packs.
With shaking hands he ripped them open. Some of his hope died. The water bladder had burst, probably from the earlier impact, and there was only dampness there. The pork, wrapped in hide that retained the sun's heat, was very spoiled, and he knew better than to eat it.
He looked at the door. He would try.
Grabbing a kill-club and rope from the pack and checking his belt pouch for flints, Jonnie crept to the door.
No sign of the monster.
The wires of the fastening were awfully big. But age had weakened them. Even so they tore and bruised his hands as he feverishly sought to open them.
Then they were open!
He pushed against the door.
In seconds he was sprinting through the shrubs and gullies to the northwest.
Keeping low, taking advantage of every bit of cover so as to remain hidden from the compound, he nevertheless went fast.
He had to find water. His tongue was swollen, his lips cracked.
He had to find food. He felt the lightheaded unreality that came with the beginnings of starvation.
Then he had to get back to the mountains. He had to stop Chrissie.
Jonnie went a mile. He examined his backtrail. Nothing. He listened. No sound of the insect, no feel of monster feet shaking the earth.
He ran two miles. He stopped and listened again. Still nothing. Hope flared within him.
Ahead he could see greenery, a patch jutting out of a gully, a sign of water.
His breath hoarse and rattling in his chest, he made the edge of the gully.
No scene could be more heartwarming. A speck of blue and white. The cheerful burble of a small brook running through the trees.
Jonnie lunged forward and a moment later plunged his head into the incalculably precious water.
He knew better than to drink too much. He just kept rinsing his mouth. For minutes he plunged his head and chest in and out of the stream, letting the water soak in.
Gone was the taste of that terrible gooey stick. The freshness and cleanness of the brook were almost as joyful as its wetness.
He drank a few cautious swallows and then sank back, catching his breath. The day looked brighter.
The backtrail was still quiet. The monster might not discover he was gone for hours. Hope surged again.
Far off to the northwest, just a little bit above the curve of the plain, were the mountains. Home.
Jonnie looked around him. There was an old rickety shack on the other side of the stream bed, the roof sunk down to its foundation.
Food was his concern now.
He took more swallows of water and stood up. He hefted his kill-club and walked through the stream toward the ancient shack.
While running, he had seen no game. Perhaps it was cleared out in the vicinity of the compound. But he didn't need big game. A rabbit would do. He had better take care of this fast and keep going.
Something moved in the shack. He crept forward, silent.
In a scurry several big rats raced out of the shack. Jonnie had started his throw and then stopped. Only in the dreariest of a starving winter would one eat rats.
But he had no time and he saw no rabbits.
He picked up a rock and threw it against the shack. Two more rats streamed out and he threw his kill-club straight and true.
A moment later he was holding a dead rat in his hand, a big one. Did he dare light a fire? No, no time for that. Raw rat? Ugh.
He took a piece of the sharp, clear stuff from his pouch and stepped back to the stream. He cleaned and washed the rat.
Hunger or no hunger, it took some doing to bite into the raw rat meat. Almost gagging, he chewed and swallowed. Well, it was food.
He ate very slowly so that he wouldn't get any sicker than he felt at eating raw rat.
Then he drank some more water.
He wrapped a last piece of the rat in a scrap of hide and put it in his pouch. He kicked some sand over the debris he had left.
He stood up straight and looked at the distant mountains. He took a deep breath, bracing himself to start again on his run.
There was a low whistle in the air and something fell over him.
He rolled.
It was a net.
He couldn't get free.
The more he tried to get out of it, the more tangled up he became. He stared wildly around.
Through an opening he saw the truth.
The monster, without haste, was moving forward out of the trees, taking in the slack of the rope to which the net was attached.
The thing exhibited no emotion. It moved as though it had all the time in the world.
It wrapped Jonnie up in the net and tucked the whole bundle under its arm and then began to rumble along back toward the compound.

- 5 -

Terl, fiddling with forms at his desk, felt very cheerful.
Things were working out fine, just fine. Security techniques were always best. Always. He now knew exactly what he had wanted to know: the thing drank water and drank it by plunging its head and shoulders into a stream or pond. And more importantly, it ate raw rat.
This made things very easy. If there was any animal available near the compound, it was rat.
He guessed he could teach the old Chinkos a thing or two. It was elementary to let the man-thing loose and elementary to keep him under surveillance with a flying scope. It was, of course, a little trying to be out in the open wearing a breathe-mask and yet make speed over the ground. That man-thing didn't run very fast compared to a Psychlo, but it had been a bit of an exertion. It was hard to exert oneself while wearing a breathe-mask.
But he hadn't lost his skill in casting nets, old-fashioned though it might be. He hadn't wanted to use a stun gun again: the thing seemed frail and went into convulsions.
Well, he was learning.
He began to wonder how many raw rats a day the thing had to consume. But he could find that out easily.
He looked with boredom at the report before him. The lost tractor had been found along with its Psychlo driver at the bottom of a two-mile-deep mine shaft. They ate up a lot of personnel these days. There'd be a yowl from the main office about replacement costs. Then he cheered up. This fitted very well into his plans.
He checked around to make sure he had no more work to do and put his desk in order for the end of day.
Terl went over to a cabinet and took out the smallest blast gun he could find. He put a charge cartridge in it and set it to minimum power.
He took some rags and cleaned up his face mask and put a new cartridge in it.
Then he went outside.
Not a hundred yards north of the compound he saw his first rat. With the accuracy that had won him an honored place on his school shoot team, even though the thing was in streaking motion, he blew its head off.
Fifty feet farther, another rat leaped out of a culvert and he decapitated it in midair. He paced off the distance. Forty-two Psychlo paces. No, he hadn't lost his touch. Silly things to be hunting, but it still took a master's touch.
Two. That would be good enough to start with.
Terl looked around at the hateful day. Yellow, blue, and green. Well, he'd get quit of this.
Feeling very cheerful, he rumbled up the hill to the old zoo.
His mouthbones stretched in a grin. There was the man-thing crouched down at the far side of the cage, glaring at him. Glaring at him? Yes, it was true. It was the first time Terl had noticed it had emotions.
And what else had it been doing?
It had gotten to the packs - he remembered the thing clutching at them when he had returned it to the cage yesterday - and it was now sitting on them. It had been doing something else. It had been looking down at a couple of books. Books? Now where the crap nebula had it gotten books? Didn't seem possible it could have gotten into the old Chinko quarters. The collar, the rope were all secure. He'd investigate that in due course. The thing was still here, which was what was important.
Terl advanced, smiling behind his mask. He held up the two dead rats and then tossed them to the man-thing.
It didn't jump hungrily at them. It seemed to withdraw. Well, gratitude wasn't something you found in animals. No matter. Terl wasn't after gratitude from this thing.
Terl went over to the old cement bear pool. It didn't seem to be cracked. He traced the piping. The piping seemed to be all right.
He went outside the cage and fumbled around in the undergrowth, looking for the valves, and finally found one. He turned it. Hard to do with a valve that old. He was afraid his great strength would just twist the top off.
From the nearby garage he got some penetrating oil and went back and worked the valve over. Finally he got it open. Nothing happened.
Terl traced the old water system to a tank the Chinkos had built. He shook his head over the crudity of it. It had a pump but the charge cartridge was long expended. He freed up the pump and put a new cartridge in it. Intergalactic was never one for innovations, thank the stars. The cartridges the pump needed were the same ones still in use.
He got the pump whirring but no water came. Finally he found the pond. The old pipe was simply not in the water, so with one stamp of his boot he put it back in.
Up at the tank the water began to run in. And down in the cage the pool began to fill swiftly. Terl grinned to himself. A mining man could always handle fluids. And here too he hadn't lost his touch.
He went back into the cage. The big center pool was filling rapidly. It was muddy and swirling since it had been full of sand. But it was wet water!
The pool filled up to the top and slopped over, spilling across the floor of the cage.
The man-thing was hastily picking up its things and jamming them into the bars to escape the inundation.
Terl went back outside and shut off the valve. He let the tank on the hill fill and then shut that off.
The cage was practically awash. But the water was draining off through the bars. Good enough.
Terl slopped over to the man-thing. It was clinging to the bars to keep out of the water. It had the hides way up, jammed over the cross braces. To keep them dry?
It was holding on to the books with one hand.
Terl looked around. Everything was in order now. So he had better look into these books.
He started to take them out of its hand but it held on. With some impatience, Terl smashed at its wrist and caught the two books as they fell.
They were man-books.
Puzzled, Terl leafed through them. Now where could this thing have picked up man-books? He drew his eyebones together, thinking.
Ali, the Chinko guidebook! There had been a library in that town. Well, maybe this animal had lived in that town.
But books? This was better and better. Maybe, like the Chinkos had said, these animals could grasp meaning. Terl could not read the man-characters but they obviously were readable.
This first one here must be a child's primer. The other one was some kind of child's story. Beginner books.
The animal was looking stoically away in another direction. It was useless, of course, to try to talk to it -
Terl halted his thought in mid-blink.
Better and better for his plans! It had been talking! He remembered now. What he had thought were growls and squawks like you get from any animal had been reminiscent of words!
And here were books!
He made the thing look at him by turning its head. Terl pointed to the book and then at the thing's head.
It gave no sign of understanding.
Terl pushed the book up close to its face and pointed at its mouth. No sign of recognition occurred in the eyes.
It either wasn't going to read or it couldn't read.
He experimented some more. If these things could actually talk and read, then his plans were sure winners. He turned the pages in front of its face. No, no sign of recognition.
But it had books in its possession. It had books, but it couldn't read. Maybe it had them for the pictures. Ah, success. Terl showed it a picture of a bee and there was a flicker of interest and recognition. He showed it the picture of the fox and again that flick of recognition. He took the other book with pages of solid print. No sign of recognition.
Got it. He put the small books in his breast pocket.
Terl knew what to do. He knew every piece of everything in the old Chinko quarters and that included man-language discs. They had never written up what man ate but they had gone to enormous trouble with man-language. Typically Chinko. Miss the essentials and soar off into the stratosphere.
He knew tomorrow's program. Better and better.
Terl checked the collar, checked the rope, securely locked up the cage, and left.

- 6 -

It had been a damp, cold, thoroughly miserable night.
Jonnie had clung to the bars for hours, loath to sit down or even step down. Mud was everywhere. The gush of water had taken the sand and dirt in the pool and spread it all over the cage and the dirt of the floor had avidly soaked it up. The mud became ankle deep.
But at last, exhausted, he had given in and slept lying in the mud.
Midmorning sun was drying it somewhat. The two dead rats had floated away out of reach and Jonnie didn't care.
Already dehydrated from his previous experience, he felt the hot sun increase his thirst. He looked at the muddy pool, contaminated with slime from the cage. He could not bring himself to drink it.
He was sitting miserably against the bars when the monster appeared.
It stopped outside the door and looked in. It was carrying some metallic object in its paws. It looked at the mud and for the moment Jonnie thought it might realize he couldn't go on sitting and sleeping in the mud.
It went away.
Just as Jonnie believed it would not come back, it reappeared. This time it was still carrying the metal object, but it was also carrying a huge rickety table and an enormous chair.
The thing made tricky work getting through the door with all that load, a door too small for it in the first place. But it came on in and put the table down. Then it put the metal object on the table.
Jonnie had at first believed that the huge chair was for him. But he was quickly disabused. The monster put the chair down at the side of the table and sat down on it: the legs of it sunk perilously into the mud.
It indicated the mysterious object. Then it took the two books out of its pocket and threw them on the table. Jonnie reached for them. He had not thought he would ever see them again and he had begun to make out of them a kind of sense.
The monster cuffed his hand and pointed at the object. It waved a paw across the top of the books in a kind of negative motion and pointed again at the object.
There was a sack on the back of the object and it had discs in it about the diameter of two hands.
The monster took out one of the discs and looked at it. It had a hole in the middle with squiggles around it. The monster put the disc on top of the machine. There was a rod there that fitted into the middle of the disc.
Jonnie was extremely suspicious, his hand bruised from the cuff. Anything this monster was up to would be devious, treacherous, and dangerous. That had been adequately proved. The game was to bide one's time, watch, and learn - and out of that possibly wrest freedom.
The monster now pointed to two windows on the front of the object. Then it pointed to a single lever that stuck out from the front of it.
The monster pushed the lever down.
Jonnie's eyes went round. He backed up.
The object talked!
Clear as a bell, it had said, "Excuse me . . ."
The monster pulled the lever up and it stopped talking.
Jonnie drew back further. The monster clouted him between the shoulder blades and drove him up to the table so hard the edgy hit his throat. The monster raised a cautionary finger at him.
It shoved the lever up, and by standing on tiptoe Jonnie could see that the disc went backward from the way it had gone.
The monster pulled the lever down again. The object said, "Excuse me, but I am. . ." The monster centered the lever and the machine stopped. Then it pushed the lever up and the machine went backward again.
Jonnie tried to look under the machine and back of it. The thing wasn't alive, surely. It didn't have ears or a nose or a mouth. Yes, it did have a mouth. A circle low down in front of it. But the mouth didn't move. Sound just came out of it. And it was talking Jonnie's language!
The monster pushed the lever down again and the object said, "Excuse me, but I am your. . ." This time Jonnie saw that some odd squiggles had been showing up in the top window and a strange face in the lower window.
Once more the monster pushed the lever up and the disc on top went backward. Then the monster centered the lever. It pointed a talon at Jonnie's head and then at the object.
Jonnie noticed then that the monster had been moving the lever off center, all positions to the left. The monster now moved the lever all the way over to the right and down, and different squiggles appeared but the same picture showed, and the machine said something in some strange tongue.
The monster backed it up and put the lever in the left-right center and down. Different squiggles, same lower picture, but an entirely different set of sounds.
Behind the face mask the monster seemed to smile. It repeated the last maneuver again and pointed to itself. Jonnie suddenly understood that that was the monster's language.
Jonnie's interest was immediate, intense, and flaming.
He reached up and pushed the monster's paw away. It was hard to reach because the table was so high and big, but Jonnie made nothing of that.
He moved the lever up and to the left. Then he moved it down.
The machine said, "Excuse me, but I am your instructor . . . ." Then Jonnie did the same operation in the right-hand position and it said something that was language but strange. Then he did it in the center position and it spoke again in the language of the Psychlos.
The monster was looking at him closely, even suspiciously. It bent way over and peered back into Jonnie's face. The flickering, amber eyes slitted. Then it made a doubtful motion toward the machine as though it would pick it up and carry it off.
Jonnie slapped the huge hands away and fastened again on the lever. He put it in the left track and let it roll.
"Excuse me," the machine said, "but I am your instructor if you will forgive such arrogance. I do not have the honor to be a Psychlo. I am but a lowly Chinko." The face in the bottom window bowed twice and put a hand over its eyes.
"I am Joga Stenko, Junior Assistant Language Slave in the Language Division of the Department of Culture and Ethnology, Planet Earth." Squiggles were running rapidly in the upper window.
"Forgive my presumption, but this is a course of study in reading and speaking the man-languages of English and Swedish.
"On the left-hand track of the record, I hope you will have no trouble in finding English. On the right-hand track you will find the same text in Swedish. On the center track the same text is in Psychlo, the Noble Language of Conquerors.
"The written equivalent in each case appears in the upper window and suitable pictures appear in the lower window.
"You will pardon my humble pretensions of learnedness. All wisdom abides in the Governors of Psychlo and one of their major companies, the great and mighty Intergalactic Mining Company, on which let there be profit!"
Jonnie centered the lever. He was breathing hard. The language was stilted, oddly pronounced, and many of the words he did not know. But he grasped it.
He looked more closely at the object. He frowned, concentrating heavily. And then he grasped that it was a machine, a not-live thing. That meant that the insect had been not live either.
Jonnie looked at the monster. Why was this thing doing this? What fresh dangers and privations did it have in mind? There was no kindness in those amber eyes. They were like a wolf's eyes seen in firelight.
The monster pointed toward the machine and Jonnie pulled the lever down to the left.
"Excuse me," it said, "but we will begin with the necessary alphabet. The first letter is A. Look at the upper window." Jonnie did and saw the marks.
"A . . . pronounced ay. Its sound is also a as in "pat,' ay as in "pay,' ay as in "care,' ah as in "father.' Look at it well, excuse me please, so you can always recognize it. The next letter of the alphabet is B. Look at the window. It always has the sound of b as in bat . . . ."
The monster batted his hand up and opened the primer to the first page. It tapped a talon on A.
Jonnie had already made the connection. Language could be written and read. And this machine was going to teach him how to do it. He centered the lever and pulled it down and there it was evidently spouting an alphabet in Psychlo. The little face in the lower window was showing mouth formations to say the sounds. He swung the lever over to the right and it was saying an alphabet in . . . Swedish?
The monster stood up, looking the four feet down to Jonnie. It took two dead rats from its pocket and dangled them in front of Jonnie.
What was this? A reward? It made Jonnie feel like a dog being trained. He didn't take them.
The monster made a sort of shrugging motion and said something. Jonnie couldn't understand the words. But when the monster reached over to pick up the machine, he knew what they must have been. Something like, "Lesson's over for the day."
Jonnie instantly pushed the arms away from the machine. He moved over defiantly and stood there, blocking the reach. He wasn't sure what would happen, if he'd be batted halfway across the cage. But he stood there.
So did the monster. Head on one side, then the other.
The monster roared. Jonnie did not flinch. The monster roared some more and Jonnie divined, with relief, that it was laughing.
The monster's belt buckle, showing the clouds of smoke in the sky, was a few inches below Jonnie's eyes. It connected with the ancient legend that told of the end of Jonnie's race. The laughter beat at Jonnie's ears, a growling thunder of mockery.
The monster turned around and went out, still laughing as it locked the gate.
There was bitterness and determination on Jonnie's face. He had to know more. Much more. Then he could act.
The machine was still on the table.
Jonnie reached for the lever.

- 7 -

The summer heat dried out the mud.
White clouds spotted the skies above the cage.
But Jonnie had no time for them. His whole concentration was on the teaching machine.
He had gotten the huge chair shifted around and by lifting the seat height with folded skins, he could hunch over the table, close facing the old Chinko who, in the picture, fawned in an agony of politeness as he taught.
Mastering the alphabet in English was quite a trick. But mastering it in Psychlo was even worse. Far far easier to trail game by its signs and know, almost to the minute, how long ago it had passed and what it was doing. These signs and symbols were fixed deathless on a screen and the meanings that they gave were unbelievably complex.
In a week, he thought he had it. He had begun to hope. He had even commenced to believe that it was easy. "B is for Bats, Z is for Zoo, H is for Hats and Y is for You." And by going over the same text in Psychlo, the Bats, Zoos, Hats and Yous became (a little incomprehensibly) Pens, Shovels, Kerbango and Females. But when he finally grasped, under the Chinko's groveling tutelage, that Psychlo words for Hats, Zoos and Bats would start with different letters, he knew he had it.
He at length could lie back and rattle off the alphabet in English. Then he could, with a bit of squinting, sit up and rattle off the Psychlo alphabet in Psychlo. And with all the different nuances of how they sounded.
Jonnie knew he mustn't take too long at this. The diet of raw meat would eventually do him in; he was close to semi-starvation since he could barely bring himself to eat it.
The monster would come and watch him a little while each day. While he was there, Jonnie was silent. He knew he must sound funny while he drilled. And the monster's laughter made the back of his hair stand up. So he would be very quiet under that scrutiny from outside the cage.
It was a mistake. The monster's eyebones behind the breathe-mask plate were coming closer and closer together with a growing frown.
The triumph of the alphabet was short-lived. At the end of it, the monster, one beautiful bright day, yanked open the door of the cage and came roaring in like a storm!
It yelled at Jonnie for minutes on end, the cage bars shaking. Jonnie expected a cuff but he didn't cringe when the monster's paw snaked out.
But it was reaching for the machine, not Jonnie. It yanked the lever down into a second stage that Jonnie had never suspected.
A whole new set of pictures and sounds leaped out!
The old Chinko said, in English, "I am sorry, honored student and forgive my arrogance, but we will now begin the drill of progressive cross-association of objects, symbols and words."
And there was a new sequence of pictures! The sound for H, the picture of H began to follow one another at a slow interval. Then the Psychlo letter that had an H-like sound began to repeat, in sound and picture. And then they went faster and faster until they were an almost indistinguishable blur!
Jonnie was so astonished he did not realize the monster had left.
Here was a new thing. The lever was so big and resistive he had not realized that all this lurked just beyond another thrust of pressure.
Well, if a little push DOWN would do that, what happened with a little push UP?
He tried it.
It almost blew his head off.
It took him quite a space of travel of the sun-made bar shadows to get brave enough to try it again.
Same thing!
It almost knocked him off the chair.
Holding back, he stared at the thing suspiciously.
What was it that came out of it?
Sunlight?
He tried it again and let it hit his hand.
Warm.
Tingling.
Carefully staying off to the side, he saw that pictures were appearing in the frames. And he heard, in the weirdest way, sort of with his head, not his ears, "Beneath the level of your consciousness, the alphabet will now go in. A,B,C. . ."
What was this? Was he "hearing" through his hand? No, that couldn't be! He wasn't hearing at all except for that meadowlark.
Soundless somethings were coming from the MACHINE!
He moved a little further back. The impression was less. He moved closer: he felt that his brains were frying.
"Now we will do the same sounds in Psychlo . . . ."
Jonnie went over to the furthest extension of his chain and sat down against the wall.
He thought and thought about it.
He grasped at last that the cross-association drill of symbols, sounds and words was to get him very fast and then faster and faster so he did not have to grope for what he had been taught but would be able to use it without hesitation.
But this shaft of "sunlight" coming out of the machine?
He got braver. He went back and found a disc that must be very advanced and put it on. Bracing himself, he grimly pushed the lever all the way up.
Suddenly he KNEW that if all three sides of a triangle were equal, all its enclosed three angles were also equal.
He backed up. Never mind what a triangle was or an angle, he now KNEW.
He went back and sat down against the wall. Suddenly he reached out with his finger and drew in the dust a three pointed shape. He poked a finger at each inside bend. He said, wonderingly, "They're equal."
Equal what?
Equal each other.
So what?
Maybe it was valuable.
Jonnie gazed at the machine. It could teach him in the ordinary way. It could teach him by speeding the lesson up. And it could teach him very smoothly and instantly with a beam of "sunlight."
Abruptly an unholy joy began to light his face.
Alphabet? He had to learn the whole civilization of the Psychlos!
Did that monster realize why he wanted it?
Life became a long parade of discs, stacks of discs. Every hour not needed for sleep was spent at the table - with straight picture learning, with progressively speeding cross-association, with the piercing beams of "sunlight."
Half-starved, his sleep was restless. Nightmares of dead Psychlos were intertwined with raw rats chasing mechanical horses that flew. And the discs went round and round.
But Jonnie kept on, kept on cramming years of education into weeks and months. There was so MUCH to know! He had to grasp it ALL!
And with only one goal in mind: vengeance for the destruction of his race! Could he learn enough fast enough to accomplish his purpose?

- 8 -

Terl had felt smug right up to the moment he received the summons from the Planetary Director. He was nervous now, waiting for the appointment to occur.
The weeks had fled on, the summer fading into the chill of autumn. The man-animal was doing well. Its every waking moment seemed to be spent crowded up against the Chinko language and technical instruction machine.
It hadn't begun to talk yet, but of course it was just an animal and stupid. It hadn't even grasped the principle of progressive speed cross-association until it had been shown. And it didn't even have enough sense to stand squarely in front of the instantaneous conceptual knowledge transmitter. Didn't it realize you had to get the full wave impulse to get it through your skull bones? Stupid. It would take months at this rate to get an education! But what could you expect of an animal that lived on raw rat!
Still, sometimes when he went in the cage, Terl had looked into those strange blue eyes and had seen danger. No matter. Terl had decided that if the animal proved dangerous, he could simply use it to get things started, and then at the first sign it was getting out of hand it could be vaporized fast enough. One button push on a hand-blaster. Zip-bang, no man-animal. Very easily handled.
Yes, things had been going very well until this summons.
Such things made one nervous. There was no telling what the Planetary Director might have found out, no telling what tales some employee might have carried to him. A security chief was ordinarily not much consulted. In fact, by a devious chain of command, a security chief was not directly under the Planetary Director on all points. This made Terl feel better. In fact, there had been cases where a security chief had removed a Planetary Director - cases involving corruption. But still, the Planetary Director remained the administrative head and was the one who filed reports, reports that could transfer one, or continue one on post.
The summons had come late the night before and Terl had not slept very well. He had tumbled around in his bed, imagining conversations. At one time he had actually gotten up and combed through his office files wondering what he had on the Planetary Director, just in case. That he couldn't recall or find anything depressed him. Terl only felt operational when he had big leverage in terms of potential blackmail.
It was almost with relief that he saw the appointment time arrive and he rumbled into the office of the top Psychlo.
Numph, Planetary Director of Earth, was old. Rumor had it that he was a discard from the Central Company Directorate. Not for corruption, but just for bumbling incompetence. And he had been sent as far away as they could send him. An unimportant post, a rim star in a remote galaxy, a perfect place to send someone and forget him.
Numph was sitting at his upholstered desk, looking out through the pressure dome at the distant transshipment center. He was gnawing absently on a corner of a file folder.
Terl approached watchfully. Numph's executive uniform was neat. His fur, turning blue, was impeccably combed and in place. He didn't look particularly upset, though his amber eyes were introverted.
Numph didn't look up. "Sit down," he said absently.
"I come in response to your summons, Your Planetship."
The old Psychlo turned to his desk. He looked wearily at Terl. "That's obvious." He didn't much care for Terl, but he didn't dislike him either. It was the same with all these executives, definitely not first team. Not like the old days, other planets, other posts, better staffs.
"We're not showing a profit," said Numph. He threw the folder down on his desk. Two kerbango saucepans rattled, but he did not offer any.
"I should imagine this planet is getting mined out," said Terl.
"That's not it. There's plenty of deep-down ore to keep us going for centuries. Besides, that's the concern of the engineers, not security."
Terl didn't care to feel rebuked. "I've heard that there's an economic depression in a lot of the company's markets, that prices are down."
"That could be. But that's the concern of the economics department at the home office, not security."
This second rebuke made Terl a bit restless. His chair groaned alarmingly under his bulk.
Numph pulled the folder to him and fiddled with it. Then he looked wearily at Terl.
"It's costs," said Numph.
"Costs," said Terl, getting his own back a bit, "has to do with accounting, not security."
Numph looked at him for several seconds. He couldn't make up his mind whether Terl was being insolent. He decided to ignore it. He threw the folder back down.
"Mutiny is," said Numph.
Terl stiffened. "Where's the mutiny?" Not the slightest rumor of it had reached him. What was going on here? Did Numph have his own intelligence system that bypassed Terl?
"It hasn't occurred yet," said Numph. "But when I announce the pay cuts and drop all bonuses, there's liable to be one."
Terl shuddered and leaned forward. This affected him in more ways than one.
Numph tossed the folder at him. "Personnel costs. We have three thousand seven hundred nineteen employees on this planet scattered over five active minesites and three exploratory sites. That includes landing field personnel, freighter crews, and the transshipment force. At an average pay of thirty thousand Galactic credits a year, that's C111,570,000. Food, quarters, and breathe-gas is averaged at fifteen thousand credits each; comes to C55,785,000. The total is C167,355,000. Add to that the bonuses and transport and we have nearly exceeded the value of our output. That doesn't count wear and tear, and it doesn't count expansion. "
Terl had been dimly aware of this and in fact had used it as an argument - a false one - in furthering his own personal plan.
He did not think the time was ripe to spring his project. But he had not anticipated that the powerful and rich Intergalactic Company would go so far as to cut pay and wipe out bonuses. While this affected him directly, he was far more interested in his own plan of personal wealth and power.
Was it time to open up a new phase in his own scheme? The animal was actually doing pretty well. It probably could be trained for the elementary digging venture. It could be used to recruit other animals. He was pretty well convinced it could do the necessary mining, dangerous though it was.
Stripping that vein out of the blizzard - torn, sheer cliff would he quite a trick and might be fatal to some of the animals involved. But who cared about that? Besides, the moment the stuff was gotten out, the animals would have to be vaporized so the secret could never leak.
"We could increase our output," said Terl, fencing in toward his target.
"No, no, no," said Numph. "That's pretty impossible." He sighed. "We're limited on personnel."
That was cream to Terl's earbones.
"You're right," said Terl, heading Numph further into the trap. "Unless we solve it, it will lead straight into mutiny."
Numph nodded glumly.
"In a mutiny," said Terl, "the first ones the workers vaporize are the executives."
Again Numph nodded, but this time there was a flicker of fear in the depths of his amber eyes.
"I'm working on it," said Terl. It was premature and he hadn't intended to spring it, but the time was now. "If we could give them hope that the cuts weren't permanent and if we imported no new personnel, the threat of mutiny would be reduced."
"True, true," said Numph. "We are already not bringing in any additional or new personnel. But at the same time our installations are working very hard, and there's already some grumbling."
"Agreed," said Terl. He plunged. "But what would you say if I told you that right this minute I was working on a project to halve our work force within two years?"
"I'd say it would be a miracle."
That was what Terl liked to hear. Plaudits from one and all in the home office would be his yet.
Numph was looking almost eager.
"No Psychlo," said Terl, "likes this planet. We can't go outside without wearing masks -"
"Which increases costs in breathe-gas," said Numph.
"- and what we need is a work force of air-breathers that can do elementary machine operation."
Numph sank back, doubt hitting him. "If you're thinking of... what was their name . . . Chinkos, they were all wiped out ages back."
"Not Chinkos. And I congratulate Your Planetship on his knowledge of company history. Not Chinkos. There is a potential local supply. "
"Where?"
"I am not going to say any more about it right now, but I want to report that I am making progress and that it is very hopeful."
"Who are these people?"
"Well, actually, they are not "people,' as you would say. But there are sentient beings on this planet."
"They think? They talk?"
"They are very manually adept."
Numph pondered this. "They talk? You can communicate with them?"
"Yes," said Terl, biting off a bit more than he really knew. "They talk."
"There's a bird down on the lower continent can talk. A mine director there sent one. It could swear in Psychlo. Somebody didn't replace the air cartridge in its dome and it died. " He frowned. "But a bird isn't manually -"
"No, no, no," said Terl, cutting off the bumbling. "These are little short things, two arms, two legs -"
"Monkeys! Terl, you can't be serious -"
"No, not monkeys. Monkeys could never operate a machine. I am talking about man."
Numph looked at him for several seconds. Then he said, "But there are only a very few of them left, even if they could do what you say."
"True, true," said Terl. "They have been listed as an endangered species."
"A what?"
"A species that is about to become extinct."
"But a few like that would not resolve our -"
"Your Planetship, I will be frank. I have not counted how many there are left -'
"But nobody has even seen one for ages. Terl . . ."
"The recon drones have noted them. There were thirty-four right up in those mountains you see there. And they exist on other continents in greater numbers. I have reason to believe that if I were given facilities I could round up several thousand."
"Ah, well. Facilities . . . expense. . ."
"No, no. No real expense. I have been engaged on an economy program. I have even reduced the number of recon drones. They breed fast if given a chance -"
"But if nobody has even seen one . . . what functions could they replace?"
"Exterior machine operators. Over seventy-five percent of our personnel is tied up in just that. Tractors, loading rigs. It's not skilled operation."
"Oh, I don't know, Terl. If nobody has even seen one -"
"I have one."
"What?"
"Right here. In the zoo cages near the compound. I went out and captured one - took a bit of doing, but I made it. I was rated high in marksmanship at the school, you know."
Numph puzzled over it. "Yes . . . I did hear some rumor there was a strange animal out in the zoo, as you call it. Somebody, one of the mine directors, I think . . . yes, Char it was, laughing about it."
"It's no laughing matter if it affects pay and profits," glowered Terl.
"True. Very true. Char always was a fool. So you have an animal under testing that could replace personnel. Well, well. Remarkable. "
"Now," said Terl, "if you will give me a blanket requisition on transport -'
"Oh, well. Is there any chance of seeing this animal? You know, to see what it could do. The death benefits we have to pay on equipment accidents would themselves tip the profit-loss scale if they didn't exist. Or were minimized. There's also machine damage potential. Yes, the home office doesn't like machine damage."
"I've only had it a few weeks and it will take a little time to train it on a machine. But yes, I think I could arrange for you to see what it could do."
"Fine. Just get it ready and let me know. You say you're training it? You know it is illegal to teach an inferior race metallurgy or battle tactics. You aren't doing that, are you?"
"No, no, no. Just machine operation. The push-pull of buttons and levers is all. Have to teach it to talk to be able to give it orders. I'll arrange for a demonstration when it's ready. Now if you could just give me a blanket requisition -"
"When I've seen the test there will be time enough," said Numph.
Terl had risen out of his chair, the prepared sheets of requisitions half out of his pocket. He put them back. He'd have to think of some other way - but he was good at that. The meeting had come off pretty well. He was not feeling too bad. And then Numph dropped the mine bucket on him.
"Terl," said Numph. "I certainly appreciate this backup. Just the other day there was a dispatch from home office about your continued tour of duty here. They plan in advance, you know. But in this case they needed a security chief with field experience on home planet. I'm thankful I turned it down. I recommended you for another ten-year tour of duty."
"I had only two years left to run," gagged Terl.
"I know, I know. But good security chiefs are valuable. It will do your record no harm to show you are in demand."
Terl made it to the door. Standing in the passageway he felt horribly ill. He had trapped himself, trapped himself right here on this cursed planet!
The glittering vein of gold lay in the mountains. His plans were going well in all other ways. It would take perhaps two years to get those forbidden riches, and the end of this duty tour would have been a personal triumph. Even the man-thing was shaping up. Everything had been running so well.
And now ten years more! Diseased crap, he couldn't stand that!
Leverage. He had to have leverage on Numph. Big leverage.

- 9 -

The explosion had been sharp and loud. Completely unlike the dull roar that every five days regularly shook the cage and compound.
With some skill and agility, Jonnie had found that he could go up the bars, using a cage corner, and, bracing himself there, look far and wide across the plains to the mountains and down on the domed compound of the Psychlos. Feet braced against the crossbars, he could almost relax in this precarious position.
Winter had come. The mountains for some time now had been white. But today they were invisible under white-gray skies.
To the east of the compound there lay a curious huge platform. It was surrounded by widely spaced poles and wires. It had a flooring that was bright and shiny, some sort of metal. At its southern edge there was a domed structure from which Psychlos came and went. At the northern side of it was a different kind of field, a field where strange, cylindrical craft arrived and departed.
The craft would land with a cloud of dust. Their sides would open and rock and chunks of things would spill out and the vessel would rise again into the air and fly away, dwindling to nothingness beyond the horizon.
The dumped material would be pushed onto a belt that ran between towers, carrying the load over to the huge area of bright and shiny flooring.
Through the days, craft after craft would come, and by the fifth day there would be an enormous pile of material mounded up on the platform.
It was then that the most mysterious thing would occur. At exactly the same time of the day, exactly every fifth day, there would be a humming. The material on the platform would glow briefly. Then there would be a roar like a low thunderclap. And the material would vanish!
It was this one feature, of all the mysteries that surrounded him on his post at the top of the bars, that riveted his attention.
Where did it go? There it would be, a small mountain of material. And then - hum-roar-bang - it would be gone. Nothing ever reappeared on that shiny platform. The material was brought in by those flying objects, taken over by the belt. And there it vanished.
Jonnie had seen it happen often enough now that he could predict the minute, hour, and day. He knew the dome to the south would light up, the wires around the platform would vibrate and hum, and then roar-bang, the piled material would be gone.
But that wasn't what had happened down there today. One of the machines that pushed the material onto the belt had blown up. A swarm of Psychlos were down there around it now. They were doing something with the driver. And a couple more were putting out a fire on the machine itself.
The machines had big blades in front and were covered with a transparent dome where the driver sat. But the dome was off that one now, apparently blown off.
A squat vehicle came up. The driver had been stretched out on the ground. They now put the body in a basket and put it into the squat vehicle, which was driven away.
Another machine with a blade came over and pushed the damaged vehicle off to one side out of the way, and then went back to pushing material onto the belt. The Psychlos went back to their machines and the dome.
An accident of some sort, thought Jonnie. He hung there for a while but nothing else was going on.
Yes, there was. His cage bars were trembling. But this was near to hand and ordinary. It was footsteps of the Psychlo who kept him caged. Jonnie slid down to the floor.
The monster came to the door and unfastened it and entered. He glared at Jonnie.
The monster was quite unpredictable of late. He seemed calm one time and ruffled and impatient the next.
Right now he was very impatient. He made a savage gesture at Jonnie and then at the language machine.
Jonnie took a deep breath. Every waking hour for months he had been at that machine, working, working, working. But he had never spoken a word to the monster.
He did so now. In Psychlo, Jonnie said, "Broke."
The monster looked at him curiously. Then it went over to the machine and pushed down the lever. It didn't work. The monster shot a glare at Jonnie as though Jonnie had broken it and then picked the machine up and looked under it. That was quite a feat in Jonnie's eyes, for he himself couldn't budge it an inch on the table.
The machine had just quit that morning, shortly before the explosion. Jonnie moved closer to see what the monster was doing. It removed a small plate in the bottom and a little button dropped out. The monster read some numbers on the button and then laid the machine on its side and left the cage.
He came back shortly with another button, put it in the same place, and put the plate back on. He righted the machine and touched the lever. The disc turned and the machine said, "Forgive me, but addition and subtraction. . ." And the monster put it in neutral.
The monster pointed a talon at Jonnie and then urgently back at the machine.
Jonnie plunged again. In Psychlo he said, "Know all those.. Need new records."
The monster looked at the thick original sheaf of recordings, hundreds of hours of them. It looked at Jonnie. Its face was grim back of its face mask. Jonnie was not sure he wasn't going to get knocked halfway across the cage. Then the monster seemed to make up its mind.
It yanked the pack of discs out of the back of the machine and left. Shortly it returned with a new, thicker stack of discs and shoved them into the storage compartment of the machine. It took the old disc off and put the next sequentially numbered one on. Then it pointed at Jonnie and back at the machine. Plainly, Jonnie was supposed to get to work and get to work now.
Jonnie took a deep breath. In Psychlo he said, "Man does not live on raw rat meat and dirty water."
The monster just stood there staring at him. Then it sat down in the chair and looked at him some more.

- 10 -

Terl knew leverage when he saw it.
As a veteran security officer, he depended on leverage at every turn. And advantage. And blackmail. A method of forcing, compliance.
And now it was turned around. This man-thing had sensed that it had leverage.
He sat there studying the man-thing. Did it have any inkling of the plans? No, of course not. Possibly he had been too insistent, day after day, so that this thing sensed he wanted something of it.
Possibly he had been too indulgent. He had gone to the trouble every day or two to go out and shoot rats for it. And earlier, hadn't he gotten it water? And look at all the cunning and difficulty of establishing what it ate.
Here it stood, brave and strong, telling him it didn't eat that. Terl looked at it more closely. Well, not brave and strong. It looked pretty sickly, really. It had a worn robe around it and yet it was almost blue with the coldness of the day. He glanced over at the pond. It was frozen over, dirt and all.
He looked around further. The cage wasn't as dirty as it might have been. The thing evidently buried its jobs.
"Animal," said Terl, "you had better get to work if you know what is good for you." Bluster sometimes made it even when one didn't have leverage.
"The winter weather," said Jonnie in Psychlo, "is bad for the machine. At night and in rain or snow I keep it covered with a deerhide from my pack. But the dampness is not good for it. It is becoming tarnished."
Terl almost laughed. It was so funny to hear this animal actually speaking Psychlo. True, there was some accent, probably Chinko. No, maybe not Chinko, since all the polite phrases, the "forgive-mes" and "pardon-mes" Terl had heard when he checked the records, were not there. Terl had never met a Chinko since they were all dead, but he had met a lot of subject races on other planets and they were carefully servile in their speech. As they should be.
"Animal," said Terl, "you may know the words but you do not understand a proper attitude. Shall I demonstrate?"
Jonnie could have been launched on a flight to the bars with one sweep of those huge paws.
He drew himself up. "My name is not "animal.' It is Jonnie Goodboy Tyler."
Terl absolutely gaped at him. The effrontery. The bald gall of this thing!
He hit him.
The collar almost broke Jonnie's neck as the rope brought him up short.
Terl stalked out of the cage and slammed the door. The ground shook like an earthquake as he stamped away.
He had almost reached the outer door of the compound when he stopped. He stood there, thinking.
Terl looked at the gray-white world, felt the cold glass of his face mask cutting his gaze. Blast this stinking planet.
He turned around and walked back to the cage. He opened the door and went over to the man-thing. He picked it up, wiped the blood off its neck with a handful of snow, and then put it standing in front of the table.
"My name," said Terl, "is Terl. Now what were we talking about?" He knew leverage when he saw it.
But never in their association thereafter did he ever address Jonnie as anything other than "animal." A Psychlo after all could not ignore the fact that his was the dominant race. The greatest race in all universes. And this man-thing - ugh.