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When she saw all the peasants were clear of her takeoff path, she released the brakes, eased the stick forward. The Kukuruznik needed a longer run than she’d expected before it labored into the air. A sedate performer under the best of conditions, it was positively sluggish-or, better, sluglike-with more than three times the usual crew weight aboard. But it flew. The collective farm receded behind it as it made its slow way north.
“Be alert for Big Uglies, both of you,” Krentel warned from the cupola of the landcruiser.
“It shall be done, commander,” Ussmak agreed. The driver wished the male newly in charge of the landcruiser would shut up and let the crew do their jobs.
“It shall be done,” Telerep echoed. Ussmak envied the way Jager the gunner could keep the faintest hint of scorn from his voice. What Telerep had to say privately about Krentel would addle an egg, but he was all respect when the landcruiser commander was around.
Males of the Race learned to show respect from their smallest days, but Telerep was unusually smooth even by that high standard. Maybe, Ussmak thought, his low-voiced gibes about Krentel were a reaction to the need for public deference. Or maybe not. Telerep had never talked that way about Votal when the previous commander was alive.
Thinking about Votal made Ussmak think about the Big Uglies who had killed him, and did more to make him alert than all of Krentel’s warnings. The natives of Tosev 3 had learned in a hurry that they could not oppose the Race landcruiser against landcruiser, aircraft against aircraft. That lesson should have marked the end of conquest and the beginning of consolidation. So officers had promised the males of the invasion force when battle commenced.
The promises had not come true. The Big Uglies stopped throwing hordes of males and landcruisers and planes into the grinder to be minced up, but they hadn’t stopped fighting. Thus this landcruiser squadron kept rolling over the broad, cool steppeland of the SSSR, seeking to flush out a band of Tosevite raiders and bushwhackers who had shown up on a reconnaissance photo the day before.
A wail from the sky-“Rockets!” Telerep shrieked. Ussmak had already slammed the hatch shut over his head. A moment later, a metallic clang in the button taped to his hearing diaphragm announced that Krentel had done the same. Ussmak twiddled his fingers in approval: previous appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, the new commander, wasn’t a complete idiot.
The salvo of rockets slammed down all around the land-cruisers. Their warheads kicked up great gouts of earth, blinding one of Ussmak’s vision slits. Closed in as he suddenly was, he couldn’t hear very much, but he knew he would have heard a landcruiser going up. When he didn’t, he took it for a good sign.
Krentel, meanwhile, had been on the command circuit with base. “The range of the launcher is 2,200, bearing 42,” he reported. “Gunner, send the Big Uglies back there two rounds of high explosive. That will make them think twice about harassing the Race again.”
“Two rounds of high explosive. It shall be done,” Telerep said tonelessly. The turret spun in its ring until it faced more nearly south than west. The big gun barked twice. Two or three of the other landcruisers in the squadron also fired, though none more than once.
Ussmak thought all those commanders fools, and Krentel a double fool. He doubted the Big Uglies who had fired the salvo were anywhere near their launcher any more; if they had any sense, they’d have touched it off with a long electric wire. That’s what he would have done in their place, certainly. And they made better guerrilas than stand-up soldiers.
Krentel told him, “Shift to bearing 42, driver. I want to finish off that clutch of bandits. They shall not flourish within the bounds of territory controlled by the Race.”
“Bearing 42. It shall be done,” Ussmak said. He swung the landcruiser almost in a half circle, drove back in a direction close to the one from which the squadron had advanced. This time, he admitted to himself, Krentel had a point.
“Watch the ground carefully,” the commander added. “We must not risk driving over a mine. Our landcruiser, like every other, is precious to the Race and its expansion. Exert unusual caution.”
“It shall be done,” Ussmak repeated. He wished Krentel would stop jumping around like a female waiting for her first pair of eggs. How was he supposed to get a good look at the ground while driving buttoned up? He didn’t want to open his hatch, not yet. The Big Uglies had a habit of lobbing a second rocket salvo just about when males were taking a deep breath after the first one.
Even if his head was out in the open, he didn’t think he’d spot a buried mine. The Tosevites were extraordinarily good at concealing them under leaves or stones or chunks of the rubble that littered the area from previous battles. He took comfort in remembering the Tosevite mines were designed to disable the weak and clumsy landcruisers the Big Uglies built. Even if one exploded right under his own machine, it might not wreck it. Looking at it with the other eye turret, though, it might.
Sure enough, more rockets rained down on the squadron. Krentel must have reopened the hatch at the top of his cupola, for Ussmak heard him slam it again in a hurry. The driver opened his jaws in amusement. No, the new commander wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. With luck, he’d learn.
A clump of low Tosevite trees, their colors duller than the ones of Home, stood by the landcruisers’ path about halfway to the place from which the natives had touched off their rockets. Ussmak thought about warning Telerep to fix his machine gun on those trees, but decided not to. Telerep knew his business perfectly well. And besides-
“Watch those trees, gunner.” Before Ussmak could finish thinking Krentel would give the unnecessary order, Krentel gave it.
“It shall be done, commander.” Again Telerep’s subordination was perfect.
Ussmak watched the trees, too. Just because the order was unnecessary didn’t make it stupid. If he were a Big Ugly bandit, he’d post males in those trees to see what he could do about the Race’s landcruisers. In fact…
If Krentel had been reading his mind before, now Telerep was. The gunner fired a burst into the little stretch of wood. With luck, he’d kill a Big Ugly or two and flush out some more. Ussmak wouldn’t have wanted to crouch in hiding while bullets snarled through the trees searching for him.
And sure enough, he spied motion at the edge of the trees. So did Telerep. Tracers walked the machine gun toward it. Then Ussmak shouted, “Hold fire!” The stream of bullets had already stopped: Telerep did know his business.
Krentel didn’t. “Why are you holding?” he demanded angrily.
“It’s not a Big Ugly, commander, just one of the animals the
y keep for pets,” the gunner answered in soothing tones. “Be a waste of ammunition to kill it. Besides, for a creature covered with fuzz, it’s not even that homely.”
“Yes it is,” Krentel said. Ussmak sided with Telerep. He’d seen several of these animals now, and thought them far more handsome than their masters. They were lean and graceful, obviously descended from hunting beasts. They were also friendly; he’d heard that a couple of males from another squadron had used raw meat to tame one and get a pet of their own.
“I still think we ought to kill it,” Krentel said.
“Oh, please, no, commander,” Ussmak and Telerep said in the same breath. The gunner added, “See how nice a creature it is? It’s coming straight toward us, even though we’re in a big noisy landcruiser.”
“That doesn’t make it nice,” Krentel said. “That makes it stupid, if you ask me.” But he did not order Telerep to kill the Tosevite animal.
Taking the commander’s silence as consent, Ussmak slowed the landcruiser to let the animal approach. That seemed to please it; it opened its mouth, almost as if it were a male of the Race, laughing. Ussmak knew it was making sharp yelping noises, even if he couldn’t hear them through the landcruiser’s armor. The animal ran right for the machine.
That gave Ussmak pause; maybe it really was stupid, as Krentel had said. Then the driver noticed it had a square package strapped onto its back, a package with a cylindrical rod sticking straight up from it. He’d never seen one of these beasts so accoutered before, and didn’t trust it. “Telerep!” he said sharply, “I think you’d better shoot it after all.”
“What? Why?” the gunner said. “It-” He must have spotted the package the Tosevite animal was carrying, for the machine gun started to chatter in the middle of his sentence.
Too late. By then the animal was very close to, the landcruiser. With a sudden burst of speed, it ran under the right track, even though Ussmak tried to swerve away at the last instant. The strapped-on mine exploded even as the animal was crushed to red pulp.
