Lone Star Planet
chilled my blood.
"Yes, I believe so," Ghopal Singh said. "Now, Mr. Ambassador, there's a
liner in orbit two thousand miles off Luna, which has been held from
blasting off for the last eight hours, waiting for you. Don't bother
packing more than a few things; you can get everything you'll need
aboard, or at New Austin, the planetary capital. We have a man whom
Cooerdinator Natalenko has secured for us, a native New Texan, Hoddy
Ringo by name. He'll act as your personal secretary. He's aboard the
ship now. You'll have to hurry, I'm afraid.... Well, _bon voyage_, Mr.
Ambassador."
CHAPTER II
The death-watch outside had grown to about fifteen or twenty. They were
all waiting in happy anticipation as I came out of the Secretary's
office.
"What did he do to you, Silk?" Courtlant Staynes asked, amusedly.
"Demoted me. Kicked me off the Hooligan Diplomats," I said glumly.
"Demoted you from the Consular Service?" Staynes asked scornfully.
"Impossible!"
"Yes. He demoted me to the Cookie Pushers. Clear down to Ambassador."
They got a terrific laugh. I went out, wondering what sort of noises
they'd make, the next morning, when the appointments sheet was posted.
I gathered a few things together, mostly small personal items, and all
the microfilms that I could find on New Texas, then got aboard the Space
Navy cutter that was waiting to take me to the ship. It was a four-hour
trip and I put in the time going over my hastily-assembled microfilm
library and using a stenophone to dictate a reading list for the
spacetrip.
As I rolled up the stenophone-tape, I wondered what sort of secretary
they had given me; and, in passing, why Natalenko's department had
furnished him.
Hoddy Ringo....
Queer name, but in a galactic civilization, you find all sorts of names
and all sorts of people bearing them, so I was prepared for anything.
And I found it.
I found him standing with the ship's captain, inside the airlock, when I
boarded the big, spherical space-liner. A tubby little man, with
shoulders and arms he had never developed doing secretarial work, and a
good-natured, not particularly intelligent face.
_See the happy moron, he doesn't give a damn_, I thought.
Then I took a second look at him. He might be happy, but he wasn't a
moron. He just looked like one. Natalenko's people often did, as one of
their professional assets.
I also noticed that he had a bulge under his left armpit the size of an
eleven-mm army automatic.
He was, I'd been told, a native of New Texas. I gathered, after talking
with him for a while, that he had been away from his home planet for
over five years, was glad to be going back, and especially glad that he
was going back under the protection of Solar League diplomatic immunity.
In fact, I rather got the impression that, without such protection, he
wouldn't have been going back at all.
I made another discovery. My personal secretary, it seemed, couldn't
read stenotype. I found that out when I gave him the tape I'd dictated
aboard the cutter, to transcribe for me.
"Gosh, boss. I can't make anything out of this stuff," he confessed,
looking at the combination shorthand-Braille that my voice had put onto
the tape.
"Well, then, put it in a player and transcribe it by ear," I told him.
He didn't seem to realize that that could be done.
"How did you come to be sent as my secretary, if you can't do
secretarial work?" I wanted to know.
He got out a bag of tobacco and a book of papers and began rolling a
cigarette, with one hand.
"Why, shucks, boss, nobody seemed to think I'd have to do this kinda
work," he said. "I was just sent along to show you the way around New
Texas, and see you don't get inta no trouble."
He got his handmade cigarette drawing, and hitched the strap that went
across his back and looped under his right arm. "A guy that don't know
the way around can get inta a lotta trouble on New Texas. If you call
gettin' killed trouble."
So he was a bodyguard ... and I wondered what else he was. One thing, it
would take him forty-two years to send a radio message back to Luna, and
I could keep track of any other messages he sent, in letters or on tape,
by ships. In the end, I transcribed my own tape, and settled down to
laying out my three weeks' study-course on my new post.
I found, however, that the whole thing could be learned in a few hours.
The rest of what I had was duplication, some of it contradictory, and it
all boiled down to this:
Capella IV had been settled during the first wave of extrasolar
colonization, after the Fourth World--or First Interplanetary--War.
Some time around 2100. The settlers had come from a place in North
America called Texas, one of the old United States. They had a lengthy
history--independent republic, admission to the United States, secession
from the United States, reconquest by the United States, and general
intransigence under the United States, the United Nations and the Solar
League. When the laws of non-Einsteinian physics were discovered and the
hyperspace-drive was developed, practically the entire population of
Texas had taken to space to find a new home and independence from
everybody.
They had found Capella IV, a Terra-type planet, with a slightly higher
mean temperature, a lower mass and lower gravitational field, about
one-quarter water and three-quarters land-surface, at a stage of
evolutionary development approximately that of Terra during the late
Pliocene. They also found supercow, a big mammal looking like the
unsuccessful attempt of a hippopotamus to impersonate a dachshund and
about the size of a nuclear-steam locomotive. On New Texas' plains,
there were billions of them; their meat was fit for the gods of Olympus.
So New Texas had become the meat-supplier to the galaxy.
There was very little in any of the microfilm-books about the politics
of New Texas and such as it was, it was very scornful. There were such
expressions as 'anarchy tempered by assassination,' and 'grotesque
parody of democracy.'
There would, I assumed, be more exact information in the material which
had been shoved into my hand just before boarding the cutter from Luna,
in a package labeled _TOP SECRET: TO BE OPENED ONLY IN SPACE, AFTER THE
FIRST HYPERJUMP._ There was also a big trunk that had been placed in my
suite, sealed and bearing the same instructions.
I got Hoddy out of the suite as soon as the ship had passed out of the
normal space-time continuum, locked the door of my cabin and opened the
parcel.
It contained only two loose-leaf notebooks, both labeled with the Solar
League and Department seals, both adorned with the customary
bloodthirsty threats against the unauthorized and the indiscreet. They
were numbered _ONE_ and _TWO_.
_ONE_ contained four pages. On the first, I read:
_FINAL MESSAGE
OF THE FIRST SOLAR LEAGUE AMBASSADOR
TO
NEW TEXAS
ANDREW JACKSON HICKOCK_
_I agree with none of the so-called information about this planet on
file with the State Department on Luna. The people of New Texas are
certainly not uncouth barbarians. Their manners and customs, while
lively and unconventional, are most charming. Their dress is graceful
and practical, not grotesque; their soft speech is pleasing to the ear.
Their flag is the original flag of the Republic of Texas; it is
definitely not a barbaric travesty of our own emblem. And the underlying
premises of their political system should, as far as possible, be
incorporated into the organization of the Solar League. Here politics is
an exciting and exacting game, in which only the true representative of
all the people can survive._
_DEPARTMENT ADDENDUM_
_After five years on New Texas, Andrew Jackson Hickock resigned, married
a daughter of a local rancher and became a naturalized citizen of that
planet. He is still active in politics there, often in opposition to
Solar League policies._
That didn't sound like too bad an advertisement for the planet. I was
even feeling cheerful when I turned to the next page, and:
_FINAL MESSAGE
OF THE SECOND SOLAR LEAGUE
AMBASSADOR TO
NEW TEXAS
CYRIL GODWINSON_
_Yes and no; perhaps and perhaps not; pardon me; I agree with everything
you say. Yes and no; perhaps and perhaps not; pardon me; I agree..._
_DEPARTMENT ADDENDUM_
_After seven years on New Texas, Ambassador Godwinson was recalled;
adjudged hopelessly insane._
And then:
_FINAL MESSAGE
OF THE THIRD SOLAR LEAGUE
AMBASSADOR TO NEW TEXAS
R. F. GULLIS_
_I find it very pleasant to inform you that when you are reading this, I
will be dead._
_DEPARTMENT ADDENDUM_
_Committed suicide after six months on New Texas._
I turned to the last page cautiously, found:
_FINAL MESSAGE
OF THE FOURTH SOLAR LEAGUE
AMBASSADOR TO NEW TEXAS
SILAS CUMSHAW_
_I came to this planet ten years ago as a man of pronounced and
outspoken convictions. I have managed to keep myself alive here by
becoming an inoffensive nonentity. If I continue in this course, it will
be only at the cost of my self-respect. Beginning tonight, I am going to
state and maintain positive opinions on the relation between this planet
and the Solar League._
_DEPARTMENT ADDENDUM_
_Murdered at the home of Andrew J. Hickcock. (see p. 1.)_
And that was the end of the first notebook. Nice, cheerful reading;
complete, solid briefing.
I was, frankly, almost afraid to open the second notebook. I hefted it
cautiously at first, saw that it contained only about as many pages as
the first and that those pages were sealed with a band around them.
I took a quick peek, read the words on the band:
_Before reading, open the sealed trunk which has been included with your
luggage._
So I laid aside the book and dragged out the sealed trunk, hesitated,
then opened it.
Nothing shocked me more than to find the trunk ... full of clothes.
There were four pairs of trousers, light blue, dark blue, gray and
black, with wide cuffs at the bottoms. There were six or eight shirts,
their colors running the entire spectrum in the most violent shades.
There were a couple of vests. There were two pairs of short boots with
high heels and fancy leather-working, and a couple of hats with
four-inch brims.
And there was a wide leather belt, practically a leather corset.
I stared at the belt, wondering if I was really seeing what was in front
of me.
Attached to the belt were a pair of pistols in right- and left-hand
holsters. The pistols were seven-mm Krupp-Tatta Ultraspeed automatics,
and the holsters were the spring-ejection, quick-draw holsters which
were the secret of the State Department Special Services.
_This must be a mistake_, I thought. _I'm an Ambassador now and
Ambassadors never carry weapons._
The sanctity of an Ambassador's person not only made the carrying of
weapons unnecessary, so that an armed Ambassador was a contradiction of
diplomatic terms, but it would be an outrageous insult to the nation to
which he had been accredited.
Like taking a poison-taster to a friendly dinner.
Maybe I was supposed to give the belt and the holsters to Hoddy
Ringo....
So I tore the sealed band off the second notebook and read through it.
I was to wear the local costume on New Texas. That was something
unusual; even in the Hooligan Diplomats, we leaned over backward in
wearing Terran costume to distinguish ourselves from the people among
whom we worked.
I was further advised to start wearing the high boots immediately, on
shipboard, to accustom myself to the heels. These, I was informed, were
traditional. They had served a useful purpose, in the early days on
Terran Texas, when all travel had been on horseback. On horseless and
mechanized New Texas, they were a useless but venerated part of the
cultural heritage.