Upstarts Part 1

Upstarts.

by L. J. Stecher.

Earth was being bet on to break her blockade ... but what was the purse ... and who was to collect?

By L. J. STECHER, JR.

Ill.u.s.trated by DILLON

The sight of an Earthman on Vega III, where it was impossible for an outlander to be, brought angry crowds to surround John Crownwall as he strode toward the palace of Viceroy Tronn Ffallk, ruler of Sector XII of the Universal Holy Empire of Sunda. He ignored the snarling, the spitting, the waving of boneless prehensile fingers, as he ignored the heavy gravity and heavier air of the unfamiliar planet.

John Crownwall, florid, red-headed and bulky, considered himself to be a bold man. But here, surrounded by this writhing, slithering ma.s.s of eight-foot creatures, he felt distinctly unhappy. Crownwall had heard about creatures that slavered, but he had never before seen it done.

These humanoids had large mouths and sharp teeth, and they unquestionably slavered. He wished he knew more about them. If they carried out the threats of their present att.i.tude, Earth would have to send Marshall to replace him. And if Crownwall couldn't do the job, thought Crownwall, then it was a sure bet that Marshall wouldn't have a chance.

He climbed the great ramp, with its deeply carved Greek key design, toward the mighty entrance gate of the palace. His manner demonstrated an elaborate air of unconcern that he felt sure was entirely wasted on these monsters. The clashing teeth of the noisiest of them were only inches from the quivering flesh of his back as he reached the upper level. Instantly, and unexpectedly to Crownwall, the threatening crowd dropped back fearfully, so that he walked the last fifty meters alone.

Crownwall all but sagged with relief. A pair of guards, their purple hides smoothly polished and gleaming with oil, crossed their ceremonial pikes in front of him as he approached the entrance.

"And just what business do you have here, stranger?" asked the senior of the guards, his speaking orifice framing with difficulty the sibilances of Universal Galactic.

"What business _would_ I have at the Viceroy's Palace?" asked Crownwall.

"I want to see Ffallk."

"Mind your tongue," growled the guard. "If you mean His Effulgence, Right Hand of the Glorious Emperor, Hereditary Ruler of the Seventy Suns, Viceroy of the Twelfth Sector of the Universal Holy Empire"--Universal Galactic had a full measure of ceremonial words--"he sees only those whom he summons. If you know what's good for you, you'll get out of here while you can still walk. And if you run fast enough, maybe you can even get away from that crowd out there, but I doubt it."

"Just tell him that a man has arrived from Earth to talk to him. He'll summon me fast enough. Meanwhile, my highly polished friends, I'll just wait here, so why don't you put those heavy pikes down?"

Crownwall sat on the steps, puffed alight a cigarette, and blew expert smoke rings toward the guards.

An elegant courtier, with elaborately jeweled harness, bustled from inside the palace, obviously trying to present an air of strolling nonchalance. He gestured fluidly with a graceful tentacle. "You!" he said to Crownwall. "Follow me. His Effulgence commands you to appear before him at once." The two guards withdrew their pikes and froze into immobility at the sides of the entrance.

Crownwall stamped out his smoke and ambled after the hurrying courtier along tremendous corridors, through elaborate waiting rooms, under guarded doorways, until he was finally bowed through a small curtained arch.

At the far side of the comfortable, unimpressive room, a plump thing, hide faded to a dull violet, reclined on a couch. Behind him stood a heavy and pompous appearing Vegan in lordly trappings. They examined Crownwall with great interest for a few moments.

"It's customary to genuflect when you enter the Viceroy's presence,"

said the standing one at last. "But then I'm told you're an Earthling. I suppose we can expect you to be ignorant of those niceties customary among civilized peoples."

"It's all right, Ggaran," said the Viceroy languidly. He twitched a tentacle in a beckoning gesture. "Come closer, Earthling. I bid you welcome to my capital. I have been looking forward to your arrival for some time."

Crownwall put his hands in his pockets. "That's hardly possible," he said. "It was only decided yesterday, back on Earth, that I would be the one to make the trip here. Even if you could spy through buildings on Earth from s.p.a.ce, which I doubt, your communications system can't get the word through that fast."

"Oh, I didn't mean _you_ in particular," the Vegan said with a negligent wave. "Who can tell one Earthling from another? What I meant was that I expected someone from Earth to break through our blockade and come here.

Most of my advisors--even Ggaran here--thought it couldn't be done, but I never doubted that you'd manage it. Still, if you were on your home planet only yesterday, that's astonishing even to me. Tell me, how did you manage to get here so fast, and without even alerting my detection web?"

"You're doing the talking," said Crownwall. "If you wanted someone from Earth to come here to see you, why did you put the cordon around Earth?

And why did you drop a planet-buster in the Pacific Ocean, and tell us that it was triggered to go off if we tried to use the distorter drive?

That's hardly the action of somebody who expects visitors."

Ffallk glanced up at Ggaran. "I told you that Earthlings were unbelievably bold." He turned back to Crownwall. "If you couldn't come to me in spite of the trifling inconveniences I put in your way, your presence here would be useless to both of us. But you did come, so I can tell you that although I am the leader of one of the mightiest peoples in the Galaxy, whereas there are scarcely six billions of you squatting on one minor planet, we still need each other. Together, there is nothing we can't do."

"I'm listening," said Crownwall.

"We offer you partnership with us to take over the rule of the Galaxy from the Sunda--the so-called Master Race."

"It would hardly be an equal partnership, would it, considering that there are so many more of you than there are of us?"

His Effulgence twitched his ear stalks in amus.e.m.e.nt. "I'm Viceroy of one of the hundred Sectors of the Empire. I rule over a total of a hundred Satrapies; these average about a hundred Provinces each. Provinces consist, in general, of about a hundred Cl.u.s.ters apiece, and every Cl.u.s.ter has an average of a hundred inhabited solar systems. There are more inhabited planets in the Galaxy than there are people on your single world. I, personally, rule three hundred trillion people, half of them of my own race. And yet I tell you that it would be an equal partnership."

"I don't get it. Why?"

"Because you came to me."

Crownwall shrugged. "So?"

The Vegan reached up and engulfed the end of a drinking tube with his eating orifice. "You upstart Earthlings are a strange and a frightening race," he said. "Frightening to the Sunda, especially. When you showed up in the s.p.a.ceways, it was decreed that you had to be stopped at once.

There was even serious discussion of destroying Earth out of hand, while it is still possible.

"Your silly little planet was carefully examined at long range in a routine investigation just about fifty thousand years ago. There were at that time three different but similar racial strains of pulpy bipeds, numbering a total of perhaps a hundred thousand individuals. They showed many signs of an ability to reason, but a complete lack of civilization.

While these creatures could by no means be cla.s.sed among the intelligent races, there was a general expectation, which we reported to the Sunda, that they would some day come to be numbered among the Servants of the Emperor. So we let you alone, in order that you could develop in your own way, until you reached a high enough civilization to be useful--if you were going to.

"Intelligence is very rare in the Galaxy. In all, it has been found only fifteen times. The other races we have watched develop, and some we have actively a.s.sisted to develop. It took the quickest of them just under a million years. One such race we left uncontrolled too long--but no matter.

"You Earthlings, in defiance of all expectation and all reason, have exploded into s.p.a.ce. You have developed in an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time. But even that isn't the most disconcerting item of your development. As an Earthling, you have heard of the details of the first expedition of your people into s.p.a.ce, of course?"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"_Heard_ about it?" exclaimed Crownwall. "I was _on_ it." He settled down comfortably on a couch, without requesting permission, and thought back to that first tremendous adventure; an adventure that had taken place little more than ten years before.

The _Star Seeker_ had been built in s.p.a.ce, about forty thousand kilometers above the Earth. It had been manned by a dozen adventurous people, captained by Crownwall, and had headed out on its ion drive until it was safely clear of the warping influence of planetary ma.s.ses.

Then, after several impatient days of careful study and calculation, the distorter drive had been activated, for the first time in Earth's history, and, for the twelve, the stars had winked out.

The men of Earth had decided that it should work in theory. They had built the drive--a small machine, as drives go--but they had never dared to try it, close to a planet. To do so, said their theory, would usually--seven point three four times out of 10--destroy the ship, and everything in s.p.a.ce for thousands of miles around, in a ravening burst of raw energy.

So the drive had been used for the first time without ever having been tested. And it had worked.

In less than a week's time, if time has any meaning under such circ.u.mstances, they had flickered back into normal s.p.a.ce, in the vicinity of Alpha Centauri. They had quickly located a dozen planets, and one that looked enough like Earth to be its twin sister. They had headed for that planet confidently and unsuspectingly, using the ion drive.

Two weeks later, while they were still several planetary diameters from their destination, they had been shocked to find more than two score alien ships of s.p.a.ce closing in on them--ships that were swifter and more maneuverable than their own. These ships had rapidly and competently englobed the _Star Seeker_, and had then tried to herd it away from the planet it had been heading toward.