Reward for Retief by Keith Laumer Read Free Book Online Page A

short of his ankle, and used
his key to open the folding gate just wide enough to slip inside, slamming it
on the elongated neck of Loudmouth, who, after a quick recovery, had thrust his
upper end, bearing various sense organs, through the opening. The trapped alien
yelled and whipped his orange-and-black bristled length against the
frail-looking barrier.
     
                The gate bulged inward as
the crowd, noting their chief s discomfiture, heaped themselves against it,
and, incidentally, against their trapped leader, who redoubled his efforts as
well as his vocalizations.
     
                Retief went across to the
closed door to the Guard Room just as it burst outward, and a resentful-looking
Marine Guard sergeant burst out, power pistol in hand.
     
                "Let me to 'em!"
the excited lad yelled. "Oh, hi, Mr. Retief," he added, attempting to
peer over Retief's shoulder. "Where are the crud-bums? Two of em
come under the gate and conned me into the hut and slammed the door. Les and
Dick are due here to relieve me any second, and if they woulda found me locked
in—!" He left the rest to his hearer's imagination. As his eye fell on the
first invaders just slithering under the bulging gate, he loosed off a burst of
needles which chipped the hard, red, unpolished stone floor and sent the
pillars scrambling back to the safety of numbers. Retief took the sergeant's
arm gently and said, "No more shooting at this point in the negotiations,
Bill. It's still early in the day. Let Mr. Magnan and me try the verbal
approach."
     
                "Verbal,
schmerbal," Bill responded carelessly, and attempted to throw off Retief s
restraining grip.
     
                "Here, Mr.
Retief," he said, surprised at his failure to shrug off the latter's
seemingly casual hold. "You got a pretty good grip on you, for a
civilian."
     
                "I wasn't always a
civilian," Retief reminded him.
     
                "Yeah," Bill
offered. "I seen you at the last Armed Forces Day shindig, all tricked out
like a Batt;e Commander, medals and orders and all. Some kind a reservist on
some backwater world, I heard."
     
                "Sergeant!"
Magnan's strained voice cut in abruptly from the gate, through which he had at
last struggled. "Our Mister Retief s rank is quite legitimate, I assure
you; and as you know a Battle Commander outranks a Fleet Admiral-General.
Commander Retief is General-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of his native world,
Northroyal, on detached duty to the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne."
     
                "Oh, par me,
General," Bill said more quietly, to Retief. "But are we just gonna
stand here and let them savages cut us up for bait? Is that how they win wars
out on Northroyal?"
     
                "Hardly, Bill,"
Retief soothed the excited non-com. "But I might point out that no war, in
fact, exists here on Sardon."
     
                "And," Magnan put
in, "it is precisely to the contravention of such an eventuality that our
efforts are dedicated."
     
                Tm glad you made it inside,
sir," Retief told Magnan.
     
                "While they were busy
with the gate, I jumped down like you," Magnan explained. "Tight
squeeze, and I had to step on the yellow headdress while that noisy fellow was
wearing it. But then I can always point out that his head had no business being
in a position to be stepped on.
     
                "I heard that,
Terry!" Loudmouth yelled from his awkward position pinned in the gate.
" 'A technical defense is the last refuge of the scoundrel,' just like
your own CDT Handbook says!"
     
                "The wretch is too
cheeky by half," Magnan huffed, "but still, let us not precipitate
formal hostilities unduly."
     
                "There ain't nothing
formal about a good hose-down with a particle gun," Bill objected. He made
another, less