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What was coming in was uniformly excited, some panicky, and all in fairly standard Lingua Terra. Garvan Spasso was perturbed. So, in the communication screen from the Space Scourge, was Boake Valkanhayn. "They got radio, and they got radar," he clamored. "Well, so what?" Harkaman asked. "They had radio and radar twenty years ago, when Rock Morgan was here in the Coalsack.
And then that pea diminished until the spaceship from Krim, Walden, Cetis, Rigel and the Nearer Rim had become the size of a dust mote and then could not be seen at all. But one knew that it was going on to Lohala and Tralee and Famagusta and the Coalsack Stars. Hoddan shrugged and began to trudge toward the warehouses. The durya-drawn landing ramp began to roll slowly in the same direction.
'We demand an answer, they says, 'or, be this an' be that, we won't do a thing to ye. Well, maybe Bill has been down to th' corner playin' a game iv spoil-five with his old frind Coalsack, an' has paid no attintion to th' Sons iv Rest. 'Well, he says, 'gintlemen, I'm in favor iv doin' ivrything in reason f'r th' hoboes, he says.
Blithely, and cheerfully, and dutifully, they would give the appearance of monstrous piratical strength. They would awe Walden thoroughly. And then they'd go on, faithfully leaving similar letters and similar impressions on Krim, and Lohala, and Tralee, and Famagusta, and throughout the Coalsack stars until the stock of addressed missives ran out.
We know you've got good rockets and a fighting force that's worth a lot to us. We want to make a treaty for you to take over and defend as much territory as you're able to, against some characters heading this way from the Coalsack region." Silence. The interpreter translated, and the Huks muttered astonishedly among themselves. The interpreter received instructions.
"You'll be back with your wife soon, Willis," he said encouragingly. "Yes, sir." Then the patrolman said explosively: "Sergeant! There's nothing coming from the Coalsack way! There's nothing for the Huks to fight!" "True, at the moment," admitted Sergeant Madden, "but something could come. Not likely But you see, Willis, the Huks have had armed forces for a long time. They've glamour.
That was the landing grid in operation out at the spaceport, letting down a twenty-thousand-ton liner from Rigel, Cetis, and the Nearer Rim. Presently it would take off for Krim, Darth, and the Coalsack Stars, and if Hoddan was lucky he would be on it. But at the earliest part of the day there was only tranquillity over the city and the square and the Interstellar Embassy.
The nearby suns were totally strange in their arrangement. But the Coalsack area was a space-mark good for half a sector of the galaxy. There was a condensation in the Nearer Rim for a second bearing. And a certain calcium cloud with a star-cluster behind it was as good as a highway sign for locating one's self. He lined up the yacht again and went into overdrive once more.
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