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Updated: June 22, 2025
"Well, Firkked owns, personally, three ten-passenger aircars, a thing like a troop-carrier that he transports some of his courtiers around in, four airjeeps armed with a pair of 15-mm. machine-guns apiece, and two big lorries. There are possibly two hundred vehicles of all types in Skilk and the country around, but some of them are in the hands of natives friendly to us." Von Schlichten nodded.
Motioning the sergeant to accompany, 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. "Governor Harrington's dead." It took von Schlichten all of a second to grasp what had been said. "Good God! When? How?"
It was his first admission that there was trouble, but von Schlichten let it pass. "Her company wouldn't be any heavy cross to bear," he replied. "I won't guarantee anything, of course...." The intercom-speaker on the table whistled, and Harrington flipped a switch and spoke into the box.
Von Schlichten got two bottles of beer from the refrigerated section of the lunch-hamper and opened one for Paula Quinton and one for himself. "What are we going to do with these geeks," she was using the nasty and derogatory word unconsciously and by custom, now "after this is all over?
Mohammed Ferriera and I were attacked by a mob, our native aircar driver was murdered, and if it hadn't been for General von Schlichten and his soldiers, we'd have lost our own lives. Mr. Ferriera is still hospitalized as a result of injuries he received.
Paula Quinton, who had come up during the filming of the scene, exploded. "I thought you had to kill him yourself in order to encourage your soldiers; I didn't think you wanted to make a movie of it to show your friends." Von Schlichten tapped the cigarette on the gold-and-platinum case and stared at her through his monocle. "Sit down, colonel." He lit the cigarette.
"Next, you'll be saying that we ought to depose Jaikark and take control ourselves." "Well, what's wrong with that, for an idea?" von Schlichten demanded. "My God!" Harrington exploded. "Don't let me hear that kind of talk again! We're not conquistadores: we're employees of a business concern, here to make money honestly, by exchanging goods and services with these people...."
A voice at the telecast station furnished it; he punched it out. "Von Schlichten, right overhead. That you, Major Falkenberg? Nice going, major; how are your casualties?" "Not too bad. Twenty or thirty Kragans and loyal Skilkans, and eight Terrans killed; about as many wounded." "Pretty good, considering what you're running into. Get many of your Kragans mounted on those hipposaurs?"
He accompanied them to the elevator, then turned to a telephone; when von Schlichten and Paula reached the office, everybody was crowded at the door to greet them: Themistocles M'zangwe, his arm in a sling; Hans Meyerstein, the Johannesburg lawyer, who seemed to have even more Bantu blood than the brigadier-general; Morton Buhrmann, the Commercial Superintendent; Laviola, the Fiscal Secretary; a dozen or so other officers and civil administrators.
"I've been worrying about that, too, sir," he said. "I can't understand why he hasn't jumped us, already. I know it takes time to get one of these geek armies on the road, but...." "He's hoping our native-troops and the mine laborers will be able to wipe us out, themselves," von Schlichten said.
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