Lone Star Planet | Page 2

me out of the airlock.
"Mr. Silk is, as you know, in our Consular Service," Ghopal was saying
to the others. "Back on Luna on rotation, doing something in Mr.
Halvord's section. He is the gentleman who did such a splendid job for
us on Assha--Gamma Norma III.
"And, as he has just demonstrated," he added, gesturing toward the
Statesman's Journal on the Benares-work table, "he is a student both of
the diplomacy of the past and the implications of our present policies."
"A bit frank," Klüng commented dubiously.
"But judicious," Natalenko squeaked, in the high eunuchoid voice that
came so incongruously from his bulk. "He aired his singularly accurate
predictions in a periodical that doesn't have a circulation of more than a
thousand copies outside his own department. And I don't think the
public's semantic reactions to the terminology of imperialism is as bad
as you imagine. They seem quite satisfied, now, with the change in the
title of your department, from Defense to Aggression."
"Well, we've gone into that, gentlemen," Ghopal said. "If the article
really makes trouble for us, we can always disavow it. There's no
censorship of the Journal. And Mr. Silk won't be around to draw fire
on us."
Here it comes, I thought.
"That sounds pretty ominous, doesn't it, Mr. Silk?" Natalenko tittered
happily, like a ten-year-old who has just found a new beetle to pull the
legs out of.
"It's really not as bad as it sounds, Mr. Silk," Ghopal hastened to
reassure me. "We are going to have to banish you for a while, but I
daresay that won't be so bad. The social life here on Luna has probably
begun to pall, anyhow. So we're sending you to Capella IV."

"Capella IV," I repeated, trying to remember something about it.
Capella was a GO-type, like Sol; that wouldn't be so bad.
"New Texas," Klüng helped me out.
Oh, God, no! I thought.
"It happens that we need somebody of your sort on that planet, Mr.
Silk," Ghopal said. "Some of the trouble is in my department and some
of it is in Mr. Klüng's; for that reason, perhaps it would be better if
Coördinator Natalenko explained it to you."
"You know, I assume, our chief interest in New Texas?" Natalenko
asked.
"I had some of it for breakfast, sir," I replied. "Supercow."
Natalenko tittered again. "Yes, New Texas is the butcher shop of the
galaxy. In more ways than one, I'm afraid you'll find. They just
butchered one of our people there a short while ago. Our Ambassador,
in fact."
That would be Silas Cumshaw, and this was the first I'd heard about it.
I asked when it had happened.
"A couple of months ago. We just heard about it last evening, when the
news came in on a freighter from there. Which serves to point up
something you stressed in your article--the difficulties of trying to run a
centralized democratic government on a galactic scale. But we have
another interest, which may be even more urgent than our need for New
Texan meat. You've heard, of course, of the z'Srauff."
That was a statement, not a question; Natalenko wasn't trying to insult
me. I knew who the z'Srauff were; I'd run into them, here and there.
One of the extra-solar intelligent humanoid races, who seemed to have
been evolved from canine or canine-like ancestors, instead of primates.
Most of them could speak Basic English, but I never saw one who

would admit to understanding more of our language than the 850-word
Basic vocabulary. They occupied a half-dozen planets in a small
star-cluster about forty light-years beyond the Capella system. They
had developed normal-space reaction-drive ships before we came into
contact with them, and they had quickly picked up the hyperspace-drive
from us back in those days when the Solar League was still playing
Missionaries of Progress and trying to run a galaxy-wide Point-Four
program.
In the past century, it had become almost impossible for anybody to get
into their star-group, although z'Srauff ships were orbiting in on every
planet that the League had settled or controlled. There were z'Srauff
traders and small merchants all over the galaxy, and you almost never
saw one of them without a camera. Their little meteor-mining boats
were everywhere, and all of them carried more of the most modern
radar and astrogational equipment than a meteor-miner's lifetime
earnings would pay for.
I also knew that they were one of the chief causes of ulcers and
premature gray hair at the League capital on Luna. I'd done a little
reading on pre-spaceflight Terran history; I had been impressed by the
parallel between the present situation and one which had culminated,
two and a half centuries before, on the morning of 7 December, 1941.
"What," Natalenko inquired, "do you