Uller Uprising | Page 8

"No, it's their version of modesty," the girl replied. "Like some of our

sex-inhibitions, which they can't even begin to understand.... But you
were speaking to him in Lingua Terra; I didn't know any of them
understood it."
"Gorkrink does," Murillo said, uncorking the bottle and pouring into
the plastic cups. "None of them can speak it, of course, because of the
structure of their vocal organs, any more than we can speak their
languages without artificial aids. But I can talk to him in Lingua Terra
without having to put one of those damn gags in my mouth, and he can
pass my instructions on to the others. He's been a big help; I'll be sorry
to lose him."
"Lose him?"
"Yes, his year's up; he's going back to Uller on the Canberra. You
know, it's impossible to keep some trace of fluorine from the air in the
handling-machines, or even out on the orbiters, and it plays the devil
with their lungs. He wanted to stay on another three months, to help
with the next shot, but the medics wouldn't hear of it.... He's from
Keegark, wherever on Uller that is; claims to be a prince, or something.
I know all the other geeks kowtow to him. But he's a damn good
worker. Very smart; picks things up the first time you tell him. I'll
recommend him unqualifiedly for any kind of work with contragravity
or mechanized equipment."
They all had drinks, now, except the chief engineer, who wanted a
rain-check on his.
"Well, here's to us," Murillo said. "The first A-bomb miners in
history...."

I.
Commander-in-Chief Front and Center
General Carlos von Schlichten threw his cigarette away, flexed his
hands in his gloves, and set his monocle more firmly in his eye,

stepping forward as the footsteps on the stairway behind him ceased
and the other officers emerged from the squat flint keep--Captain
Cazabielle, the post CO; big, chocolate-brown Brigadier-General
Themistocles M'zangwe; little Colonel Hideyoshi O'Leary. Far in front
of him, to the left, the horizon was lost in the cloudbank over Takkad
Sea; directly in front, and to the right, the brown and gray and black
flint mountains sawed into the sky until they vanished in the distance.
Unseen below, the old caravan-trail climbed one side of the pass and
slid down the other, a sheer five hundred feet below the parapet and the
two corner catapult-platforms which now mounted 90-mm guns. On the
little hundred-foot-square parade ground in front of the keep, his aircar
was parked, and the soldiers were assembled.
Ten or twelve of them were Terrans--a couple of lieutenants, sergeants,
gunners, technicians, the sergeant-driver and corporal-gunner of his
own car. The other fifty-odd were Ulleran natives. They stood erect on
stumpy legs and broad, six-toed feet. They had four arms apiece, one
pair from true shoulders and the other connected to a pseudo-pelvis
midway down the torso. Their skins were slate-gray and rubbery,
speckled with pinhead-sized bits of quartz that had been formed from
perspiration, for their body-tissues were silicone instead of
carbon-hydrogen. Their narrow heads were unpleasantly saurian; they
had small, double-lidded red eyes, and slit-like nostrils, and wide
mouths filled with opalescent teeth. Except for their belts and
equipment, they were completely naked; the uniform consisted of the
emblem of the Chartered Uller Company stencil-painted on chests and
backs. Clothing, to them, was unnecessary, either for warmth or
modesty. As to the former, they were cold-blooded and could stand a
temperature-range of from a hundred and twenty to minus one hundred
Centigrade. Von Schlichten had seen them sleeping in the open with
their bodies covered with frost or freezing rain; he had also seen them
wade through boiling water. As to the second, they had practically no
sex-inhibitions; they were all of the same gender, true, functional,
hermaphrodites. Any individual among them could bear young, or
fertilize the ova of any other individual. Fifteen years ago, when he had
come to Uller as a former Terran Federation captain newly
commissioned colonel in the army of the Uller Company, it had taken

some time before he had become accustomed to the detailing of a
non-com and a couple of privates out of each platoon for baby-sitting
duty. At least, though, they didn't have the squaw-trouble around army
posts on Uller that they had on Thor, where he had last been stationed.
An airjeep, coming in out of the sun, circled the crag-top fort and let
down onto the terrace next to von Schlichten's command-car. It carried
a bristle of 15-mm machine-guns, and two of the eight 50-mm
rocket-tubes on either side were empty and freshly smoke-stained. The
duraglass canopy slid back, and the two-man crew--lieutenant-driver
and sergeant-gunner--jumped out. Von Schlichten knew them both.
"Lieutenant Kendall; Sergeant Garcia," he greeted. "Good afternoon,
gentlemen."
Both saluted,