John Rackham by The Double Invaders Read Free Book Online

obey my
orders, or this woman will be killed."
    For a moment it seemed that Mordin smiled. Then
he shrugged again. "This is fool's talk, meaning nothing. How can I obey
what you say, when I have not heard yet what you say?"
    Aha! Bragan thought, but kept his face bleak. "Very well, I will tell you now what I want. You will be taken to the radio station.
You will speak to your people, to the whole of Scarta. You will make it known
to them who you are. Then you will command them to return, in good order, to
surrender and do as we order them. You will explain to them that if they do
not—"
    Mordin shook his head heavily. "This is
still fool's talk. No people will obey me, or you. They will not heed my words
any more than they have heeded yours. Why should they?"
    "Then your woman will
die."
    "What of it? We must
all die sometime."
    So
far as Bragan could determine, the man was utterly sincere. He felt baffled,
but only for a moment. Zorgan had several depths.
    "All right," he nodded. "Now I know more about you than I did before. You claim not to fear death. It
is a big claim and death can come in many ways. We shall see how true the claim
is. Perhaps we can find some way to make you bend, to change your mind. I ask
you to think of this. You are a conquered people, whether you realize it yet or
not In the end you will come to know it, and admit it. It lays within your
power to choose whether the lesson is hard or easy. Last night some forty of
your aircraft, with crews, were destroyed before you learned you could not hurt
us. You were warned. That loss was unnecessary. It is no desire on the part of Zorgan
to inflict unnecessary suffering or destruction, to kill without reason. That
is not the Zorgan way. But what we take we hold, even if it means reducing
every city on the surface and killing every last Scartanni. Is that
understood?"
    "Why
tell me?" Mordin retorted evenly. Tell the people. You talk large words,
Bragan of Zorgan. Tell the people!"
    "I
will. By this time tomorrow I will have something else to tell them. This talk
is finished." He turned abrupdy away, hooking the lieutenant with a
gesture.
    In a voice amply loud
enough for the prisoners to hear he said, "No more food and drink for
them. Nothing. Let them go hungry and thirsty for a while and see what comes of
their stubborn manner."
    "You mean that?" the lieutenant
murmured. "No grub, nothing?"
    "They look well-fed to me. A bit of
starvation won't hurt. Now, on the matter of this sub-headquarters. This
building is useless. They all are, for our purposes. Move out, out there into
the square."
    "I'd already begun to think something of
the kind myself, sir. Stone walls do not a prison
make, not this kind anyway."
    "Yes. Makes you wonder what the devil
the Scartanni do with their jailbirds. Maybe they don't have any. Anyway,
you'll have to build, out in the square. You can make a start right away, laying out the site-plan. You'll need ample space for
accommodations, and a big stockade, a big one.
It must be escape-proof and requiring the minimum guard. You know the kind. I'm
going back to the ship and arrange for personnel to be sent out to help. And
the equipment. Mark me, nowl I want that stockade big enough to hold a lot of prisoners. A lot!"
    Bragan got back to the ship to find Karsh and
Swann keenly interested in how he had managed. They had been studying data from
the other ships and had begun to realize just how twisted the situation was.
They listened as he gave them the gist of his interview with Mordin.
    Karsh commented, "It's a tough one. These laddies don't bend!"
    "It's a bluff!" Swann offered.
"It's got to be. Nobody holds his life as cheap as all that. Still less
his wife's. And that guff about him not being a boss won't work either. They
are organized, we've seen that, and you can't have organization without
somebody in charge. So it's a bluff!"
    "If it is," Bragan pointed out
coldly, "we are going to have a hell of a time calling it. I want you two
to