United States or Belgium ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Hanlon got up leisurely, but walked purposefully over to confront the Greenie. He smiled and motioned the native back to work. The Greenie's face showed surprise at Hanlon's action, but it made no move to go. It did, however, appear to be keeping its eyes alertly on that dread shock-rod hanging loosely in Hanlon's hand.
Use your shock-rod at every least sign of mutiny or loafing. Make 'em respect you. They know better'n to try to get away, 'cause they hate the rod." "What does it do to them?" "We don't know exactly, except they can feel it, and will do anything to get away from it." "Maybe it hurts them terribly." "Look, punk!" Philander lost his friendliness, and snarled at Hanlon with twisted face.
A few at the back didn't move fast enough to satisfy Philander, and with a curse he ran back and touched them with that shock-rod he carried. Hanlon could see an expression of agony on the faces of those touched, and as they writhed away from the rod he realized it must be very painful, indeed, if not exquisite torture to them. They now jumped forward, and huddled pathetically near the door.
Him mind-tell all we to run far into forest. This crew us stop all they. Tell other Guddu how kind are you. How you get we 'oigm'-food. Tell how you's work to make all we free; make free all Guddu everywhere. Us say maybe so we's all get free now small time. But say come humans with shock-rod, hunt we, hurt we, make we work more hard, be more cruel to we.
He thrust the frequency-transformer into a hole prepared for just such an emergency, grabbed up his shock-rod and stepped closer to the natives. He was standing there, to all appearances strictly on the job of making his charges work, when Philander came crawling up the rise into the pocket where this crew was mining the glossy, lustrous pitch-blank uraninite ore.
They looked at him questioningly for a moment, but he smiled reassuringly at them and they, having learned that he never used that dread shock-rod on them, all went back to their labors, leaving the one native standing there. Hanlon looked earnestly at the Greenie, pointed a finger directly at himself and spoke into the microphone of his transformer.
Word Of The Day