"Hold it!" I checked him. "Are you sure he's really on the annexation side?"

He opened his mouth to answer me quickly, then closed it, waited a moment, answered me slowly. "I can guess what you are thinking, Mr.

Silk. But, remember, when Colonel Hick.o.c.k came here as our first Amba.s.sador, he came here as a man with a mission. He had studied the problem and he believed in what he came for. He has never changed.

"Let me emphasize this, sir: we know he has never changed. For our own protection, we've had to check on every real leader of the annexation movement, screening them for crackpots who might do us more harm than good. The Colonel is with us all the way.

"And now, in the fourth place, underlined by what I've just said, the Colonel and Mr. c.u.mshaw were really friends."

"Now you're talking!" Hoddy burst in. "I've knowed A. J. ever since I was a kid. Ever since he married old Colonel MacTodd's daughter. That just ain't the way A. J. works!"

"On the other hand, Mr. Amba.s.sador," Thrombley said, keeping his gaze fixed on Hoddy's hands and apparently ready to both duck and shut up if Hoddy moved a finger, "you will recall, I think, that Colonel Hick.o.c.k did do everything in his power to see that these Bonney brothers did not reach court alive. And, let me add," he was getting bolder, tilting his chin up a little, "it's a choice as simple as this: either Colonel Hick.o.c.k told them, or we have--and this is unbelievable--a traitor in the Emba.s.sy itself."

That statement rocked even Hoddy. Even though he was probably no more than one of Natalenko's little men, he still couldn't help knowing how thoroughly we were screened, indoctrinated, and--let's face it--mind-conditioned. A traitor among us was unthinkable because we just couldn't think that way.

The silence, the sorrow, were palpable. Then I remembered, told them, Hick.o.c.k himself had been a Department man.

Stonehenge gripped his head between his hands and squeezed as if trying to bring out an idea. "All right, Mr. Amba.s.sador, where are we now?

n.o.body who knew could have told the Bonney boys where Mr. c.u.mshaw would be at 1030, yet the three men were there waiting for him. You take it from there. I'm just a simple military man and I'm ready to go back to the simple military life as soon as possible."

I turned to Gomez. "There could be an obvious explanation. Bring us the official telescreen log. Let's see what calls were made. Maybe Mr.

c.u.mshaw himself said something to someone that gave his destination away."

"That won't be necessary," Thrombley told me. "None of the junior clerks were on duty, and I took the only three calls that came in, myself.

First, there was the call from Colonel Hick.o.c.k. Then, the call about the wrist watch. And then, a couple of hours later, the call from the Hick.o.c.k ranch, about Mr. c.u.mshaw's death."

"What was the call about the wrist watch?" I asked.

"Oh, that was from the z'Srauff Emba.s.sy," Thrombley said. "For some time, Mr. c.u.mshaw had been trying to get one of the very precise watches which the z'Srauff manufacture on their home planet. The z'Srauff Amba.s.sador called, that day, to tell him that they had one for him and wanted to know when it was to be delivered. I told them the Amba.s.sador was out, and they wanted to know where they could call him and I--"

I had never seen a man look more horror-stricken.

"Oh, my G.o.d! I'm the one who told them!"

What could I say? Not much, but I tried. "How could you know, Mr.

Thrombley? You did the natural, the normal, the proper thing, on a call from one Amba.s.sador to another."

I turned to the others, who, like me, preferred not to look at Thrombley. "They must have had a spy outside who told them the Amba.s.sador had left the Emba.s.sy. Alone, right? And that was just what they'd been waiting for.

"But what's this about the watch, though. There's more to this than a simple favor from one Amba.s.sador to another."

"My turn, Mr. Amba.s.sador," Stonehenge interrupted. "Mr. c.u.mshaw had been trying to get one of the things at my insistence. Naval Intelligence is very much interested in them and we want a sample. The z'Srauff watches are very peculiar--they're operated by radium decay, which, of course is a universal constant. They're uniform to a tenth second and they're all synchronized with the official time at the capital city of the princ.i.p.al z'Srauff planet. The time used by the z'Srauff Navy."

Stonehenge deliberately paused, let that last phrase hang heavily in the air for a moment, then he continued.

"They're supposed to be used in religious observances--timing hours of prayer, I believe. They can, of course, have other uses.

"For example, I can imagine all those watches giving the wearer a light electric shock, or ringing a little bell, all over New Texas, at exactly the same moment. And then I can imagine all the z'Srauff running down into nice deep holes in the ground."

He looked at his own watch. "And that reminds me: my gang of pirates are at the s.p.a.ceport by now, ready to blast off. I wonder if someone could drive me there."

"I'll drive him, boss," Hoddy volunteered. "I ain't doin' nothin' else."

I was wondering how I could break that up, plausibly and without betraying my suspicions, when Parros and Captain Nelson came out and joined us.

"I have a lot of stuff here," Parros said. "Stuff we never seemed to have noticed. For instance--"

I interrupted. "Commander Stonehenge's going to the s.p.a.ceport, now," I said. "Suppose you ride with him, and brief him on what you learned, on the way. Then, when he's aboard, come back and tell us."

Hoddy looked at me for a long ten seconds. His expression started by being exasperated and ended by betraying grudging admiration.

CHAPTER VII

The next morning, which was Sat.u.r.day, I put Thrombley in charge of the routine work of the Emba.s.sy, but first instructed him to answer all inquiries about me with the statement, literally true, that I was too immersed in work of clearing up matters left unfinished after the death of the former Amba.s.sador for any social activities. Then I called the Hick.o.c.k ranch in the west end of Sam Houston Continent, mentioning an invitation the Colonel and his daughter had extended me, and told them I would be out to see them before noon that same day. With Hoddy Ringo driving the car, I arrived about 1000, and was welcomed by Gail and her father, who had flown out the evening before, after the barbecue.

Hoddy, accompanied by a Ranger and one of Hick.o.c.k's ranch hands, all three disguised in shabby and grease-stained cast-offs borrowed at the ranch, and driving a dilapidated aircar from the ranch junkyard, were sent to visit the slum village of Bonneyville. They spent all day there, posing as a trio of range tramps out of favor with the law.

I spent the day with Gail, flying over the range, visiting Hick.o.c.k's herd camps and slaughtering crews. It was a pleasant day and I managed to make it constructive as well.

Because of their huge size--they ran to a live weight of around fifteen tons--and their uncertain disposition, supercows are not really domesticated. Each rancher owned the herds on his own land, chiefly by virtue of constant watchfulness over them. There were always a couple of helicopters hovering over each herd, with fast fighter planes waiting on call to come in and drop fire-bombs or stun-bombs in front of them if they showed a disposition to wander too far. Naturally, things of this size could not be shipped live to the market; they were butchered on the range, and the meat hauled out in big 'copter-trucks.

Slaughtering was dangerous and exciting work. It was done with medium tanks mounting fifty-mm guns, usually working at the rear of the herd, although a supercow herd could change directions almost in a second and the killing-tanks would then find themselves in front of a stampede. I saw several such incidents. Once Gail and I had to dive in with our car and help turn such a stampede.

We got back to the ranch house shortly before dinner. Gail went at once to change clothes; Colonel Hick.o.c.k and I sat down together for a drink in his library, a beautiful room. I especially admired the walls, panelled in plastic-hardened supercow-leather.

"What do you think of our planet now, Mr. Silk?" Colonel Hick.o.c.k asked.

"Well, Colonel, your final message to the State was part of the briefing I received," I replied. "I must say that I agree with your opinions.

Especially with your opinion of local political practices. Politics is nothing, here, if not exciting and exacting."

"You don't understand it though." That was about half-question and half-statement. "Particularly our custom of using politicians as clay pigeons."

"Well, it is rather unusual...."

"Yes." The dryness in his tone was a paragraph of comment on my understatement. "And it's fundamental to our system of government.

"You were out all afternoon with Gail; you saw how we have to handle the supercow herds. Well, it is upon the fact that every rancher must have at his disposal a powerful force of aircraft and armor, easily convertible to military uses, that our political freedom rests. You see, our government is, in effect, an oligarchy of the big landowners and ranchers, who, in combination, have enough military power to overturn any Planetary government overnight. And, on the local level, it is a paternalistic feudalism.

"That's something that would have stood the hair of any Twentieth Century 'Liberal' on end. And it gives us the freest government anywhere in the galaxy.

"There were a number of occasions, much less frequent now than formerly, when coalitions of big ranches combined their strength and marched on the Planetary government to protect their rights from government encroachment. This sort of thing could only be resorted to in defense of some inherent right, and never to infringe on the rights of others.

Because, in the latter case, other armed coalitions would have arisen, as they did once or twice during the first three decades of New Texan history, to resist.

"So the right of armed intervention by the people when the government invaded or threatened their rights became an acknowledged part of our political system.