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But they wore garments, and some of the garments were identical and impressive, so they could be guessed to be uniforms. "How-do," said the voice that had guided the ship down. "We are r-ready to listen to your message." Sergeant Madden said heavily: "We humans believe you Huks have got a good fleet. We believe you've got a good army.
By someone. "The rockets came this way," said the sergeant, with finality. "Hauled over this pass to the Cerberus. Somebody must've knocked this bush loose while workin' at getting 'em along. So he replanted it. Only not good enough. It wilted." "Who did it?" demanded Patrolman Willis. "Who we want to know about," growled Sergeant Madden. "Maybe Huks. Come on!" He scrambled ahead.
The Huks were hiding from the cops, so they'd shoot. "Hop on past," commanded Sergeant Madden, "the instant I jerk the ejector lanyard. Don't fool around. Over the pole will do." Patrolman Willis set the hop-timer. Twenty seconds. Twenty-two. Three. Four. "Hop!" said Sergeant Madden. As he spoke, he jerked the lanyard.
The Huks were extremely co-operative. They even supplied materials for the repair job on the Cerberus, including landing rockets to be used in case of need. But they weren't needed for take-off. The Cerberus had been landed at a Huk spaceport, which obligingly lifted it out to space again when its drive had been replaced.
Took years to get 'em out. Had to use all the off-duty men from six precincts to handle the last riot." The conflict he called a riot would have been termed a space battle by a navy or an army. But the cops operated within a strictly police frame of reference, which was the reverse of military. They weren't trying to subjugate the Huks, but to make them behave.
The Huks could not have expected the appearance of an enemy just here and now. It was the first such appearance in all the planet's history. They certainly looked for no consequences of the seizure of the Cerberus, carefully managed as that had been. So to detonate a bomb against an unexpected inimical object within thirty-four seconds after its appearance was very good work indeed.
The outer door closed. The lock filled with air, and gas-crystal fragments turned to reeking vapor as they warmed. The skipper bled them out and refilled the lock. Then he came inside. He opened his face plate. "Well?" "There's Huks here," Sergeant Madden told him, "their hair in a braid and all set to go.
He knew what they were, and his spine crawled at the thought of what would happen if the Huks found out. But the distant objects were at the limit of certain range for detection devices. The planet's instruments could just barely pick them up. They subtended so small a fraction of a thousandth of a second of arc that no information could be had about them.
But the Huks or their ancestors would need to have been flesh-eaters also, for brains to be useful in hunting and therefore for mental activity to be recognized as useful. A vegetarian community can maintain a civilization, but it has to start off on meat. A clump of ground-cars waited for the squad ship's landing. The ship touched, delicately. Sergeant Madden rumbled and got out of his chair.
There being no longer any armies or navies when the Huks were discovered, the matter of intelligent nonhumans was a matter for the cops. So the police matter-of-factly tried to incorporate the Huk culture into the human. They explained the rules by which human civilization worked. They painstakingly tried to arrange a sub-precinct station on the largest Huk home planet, with Huk cops in charge.
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