Spacepaw by Gordon R. Dickson Read Free Book Online

Fatties became clear to Bill. A cold feeling like a cramp made itself felt at the pit of his stomach.
    It was Bone Breaker, apparently, who had been taking the advice of Fatties—or of this one Fatty in particular. Unexpectedly, Bill found himself facing a Hemnoid in exactly the sort of ticklish interracial situation that the Human-Hemnoid treaty of noninterference in native Dilbian affairs had been signed to prevent. Too late now, he realized that he had intruded on the type of incident that should be dealt with by no human below the rank of a Resident in the Diplomatic Service. Let alone a trainee-assistant in mechanical engineering who was like a fish out of water in being assigned to an agricultural project. And let alone a trainee-assistant who had been unable to contact his superiors by off-planet communications, and who was operating totally without authority and on his own initiative.
    “Turn around!” Bill hissed frantically in the Hill Bluffer’s ear. “I’ve got to get out of here!”
    “Out? What for?” said the Bluffer, surprised. “Anyway, it’s too late now.”
    “Too late—?”
    Bill never finished echoing the Bluffer’s words.
    From just outside the door behind him there came a sound like that of a large, untuned, metal gong being struck. A voice shouted:
    “ Sun’s down! Close the gates.”
    There was only a second or two of pause, and then floating back from the far distance of the valley entrance with a clarity that only the lung-power of a Dilbian could provide with such pressure, came the answering cry:
    “The gates are closed!”

Chapter 5
    The long, drawn-out cry from the valley gate had barely died away, before the Hill Bluffer was in motion, heading toward the short table in front of the fireplace. Bill opened his mouth to protest, then quickly shut it again. Now he saw that the room was crowded with Dilbians of all sizes, and probably of both sexes, both standing about and seated at the various benches. At first this crowd had not noticed the Bluffer and Bill, standing just inside the doorway. But as they began to move toward the small, square table at the head of the room, before the fireplace, they drew all eyes upon them, and silence spread out through the room like ripples from a stone flung into a pond. By the time the Bluffer reached the table where the Hemnoid and the black-furred Dilbian sat, that silence was absolute.
    The Bluffer stopped. He looked down at the seated Hemnoid and the seated Dilbian.
    “Evening, Bone Breaker,” he said to the Dilbian, and transferred his gaze to the Hemnoid. “Evening, Barrel Belly.”
    “Evening to you, Postman,” replied Bone Breaker. His unbelievably deep, bass voice had an echoing, resonant quality that made it seem to ring all around them. The outlaw chief was, Bill saw, almost as outsize for a Dilbian as was the Hill Bluffer. Probably not quite as tall as the Bluffer, judged Bill, as he tried to estimate from the seated figure of the outlaw, but heavier in the body, and certainly wider in the shoulders. A shiver trickled coldly down Bill’s back. There was an air of competence and authority about this one Dilbian that was strangely at odds with the appearance of other members of that same race that Bill had met so far. The eyes looking at him now out of the midnight black of the furry face had a brilliant, penetrating quality. Could someone like this be holding prisoner a human being for such emotional and obvious reasons as Sweet Thing had attributed to him?
    But he had no chance to ponder the question. Because the Hemnoid was, he found, already talking to him, gazing up at him over the Bluffer’s furry shoulder, and speaking in a voice which, while not so deep as those of the Dilbians, had the ponderous, liquid quality of some heavy oil, pouring out of an enormous jug.
    “Mula- ay , at your service,” gurgled the Hemnoid with a darkly sinister sort of cheerfulness. He was speaking Dilbian, and the fact he did so, alerted Bill