Lone Star Planet
"Yes, sir. Task Force Red-Blue-Green, Fifth Space Fleet. Fleet Admiral
Sir Rodney Tregaskis."
"Can we get hold of a fast space-boat, with hyperdrive engines, in a
hurry?"
"Eight or ten of them always around New Austin spaceport, available for
charter."
"All right; charter one and get out to that fleet. Tell Admiral
Tregaskis that the Ambassador at New Austin feels in need of protection;
possibility of z'Srauff invasion. I'll give you written orders. I want
the Fleet within radio call. How far out would that be, with our
facilities?"
"The Embassy radio isn't reliable beyond about sixty light-minutes,
sir."
"Then tell Sir Rodney to bring his fleet in that close. The invasion, if
it comes, will probably not come from the direction of the z'Srauff
star-cluster; they'll probably jump past us and move in from the other
side. I hope you don't think I'm having nightmares, Commander. Danger of
a z'Srauff invasion was pointed out to me by persons on the very highest
level, on Luna."
Stonehenge nodded. "I'm always having the same kind of nightmares, sir.
Especially since this special envoy arrived here, ostensibly to
negotiate a meteor-mining treaty." He hesitated for a moment. "We don't
want the New Texans to know, of course, that you've sent for the fleet?"
"Naturally not."
"Well, if I can wait till about midnight before I leave, I can get a
boat owned, manned and operated by Solar League people. The boat's a
dreadful-looking old tub, but she's sound and fast. The gang who own her
are pretty notorious characters--suspected of smuggling, piracy, and
what not--but they'll keep their mouths shut if well paid."
"Then pay them well," I said. "And it's just as well you're not leaving
at once. When I get back from this clambake, I'll want to have a general
informal council, and I certainly want you in on it."
On the way to the Statehouse in the aircar, I kept wondering just how
smart I had been.
I was pretty sure that the z'Srauff was getting ready for a sneak attack
on New Texas, and, as Solar League Ambassador, I of course had the right
to call on the Space Navy for any amount of armed protection.
Sending Stonehenge off on what couldn't be less than an eighteen-hour
trip would delay anything he and Hoddy might be cooking up, too.
On the other hand, with the fleet so near, they might decide to have me
rubbed out in a hurry, to justify seizing the planet ahead of the
z'Srauff.
I was in that pleasant spot called, "Damned if you do and damned if you
don't...."
CHAPTER IV
The Statehouse appeared to cover about a square mile of ground and it
was an insane jumble of buildings piled beside and on top of one
another, as though it had been in continuous construction ever since the
planet was colonized, eighty-odd years before.
At what looked like one of the main entrances, the car stopped. I told
our Marine driver and auto-rifleman to park the car and take in the
barbecue, but to leave word with the doorman where they could be found.
Hoddy, Thrombley and I then went in, to be met by a couple of New Texas
Rangers, one of them the officer who had called at the Embassy. They
guided us to the office of the Secretary of State.
"We're dreadfully late," Thrombley was fretting. "I do hope we haven't
kept the Secretary waiting too long."
From the looks of him, I was afraid we had. He jumped up from his desk
and hurried across the room as soon as the receptionist opened the door
for us, his hand extended.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Thrombley," he burbled nervously. "And this is the
new Ambassador, I suppose. And this--" He caught sight of Hoddy Ringo,
bringing up the rear and stopped short, hand flying to open mouth. "Oh,
dear me!"
So far, I had been building myself a New Texas stereotype from Hoddy
Ringo and the Ranger officer who had chased us to the Embassy. But this
frightened little rabbit of a fellow simply didn't fit it. An alien
would be justified in assigning him to an entirely different species.
Thrombley introduced me. I introduced Hoddy as my confidential secretary
and advisor. We all shook hands, and Thrombley dug my credentials out of
his briefcase and handed them to me, and I handed them to the Secretary
of State, Mr. William A. Palme. He barely glanced at them, then shook my
hand again fervently and mumbled something about "inexpressible
pleasure" and "entirely acceptable to my government."
That made me the accredited and accepted Ambassador to New Texas.
Mr. Palme hoped, or said he hoped, that my stay in New Texas would be
long and pleasant. He seemed rather less than convinced that it would
be. His eyes kept returning in horrified fascination to my belt. Each
time they would focus on the butts of my Krupp-Tattas, he would pull
them resolutely away again.
"And now, we must take you to President Hutchinson; he is most anxious
to meet you, Mr. Silk. If you will please come with me ..."
Four or five Rangers who had been loitering the hall outside moved to
follow us as we went toward the elevator. Although we had come into the
building onto a floor only a few feet above street-level, we went down
three floors from the hallway outside the Secretary of State's office,
into a huge room, the concrete floor of which was oil-stained, as
though vehicles were continually being driven in and out. It was about a
hundred feet wide, and two or three hundred in length. Daylight was
visible through open doors at the end. As we approached them, the
Rangers fanning out on either side and in front of us, I could hear a
perfect bedlam of noise outside--shouting, singing, dance-band music,
interspersed with the banging of shots.
When we reached the doors at the end, we emerged into one end of a big
rectangular plaza, at least five hundred yards in length. Most of the
uproar was centered at the opposite end, where several thousand people,
in costumes colored through the whole spectrum, were milling about.
There seemed to be at least two square-dances going on, to the music of
competing bands. At the distant end of the plaza, over the heads of the
crowd, I could see the piles and tracks of an overhead crane, towering
above what looked like an open-hearth furnace. Between us and the bulk
of the crowd, in a cleared space, two medium tanks, heavily padded with
mats, were ramming and trying to overturn each other, the mob of
spectators crowding as close to them as they dared. The din was
positively deafening, though we were at least two hundred yards from the
center of the crowd.
"Oh, dear, I always dread these things!" Palme was saying.
"Yes, absolutely anything could happen," Thrombley twittered.
"Man, this is a real barbecue!" Hoddy gloated. "Now I really feel at
home!"
"Over this way, Mr. Silk," Palme said, guiding me toward the short end
of the plaza, on our left. "We will see the President and then ..."
He gulped.
"... then we will all go to the barbecue."
In the center of the short end of the plaza, dwarfed by the monster
bulks of steel and concrete and glass around it, stood a little old
building of warm-tinted adobe. I had never seen it before, but somehow
it was familiar-looking. And then I remembered. Although I had never
seen it before, I had seen it pictured many times; pictured under
attack, with gunsmoke spouting from windows and parapets.
I plucked Thrombley's sleeve.
"Isn't that a replica of the Alamo?"
He was shocked. "Oh, dear, Mr. Ambassador, don't let anybody hear you
ask that. That's no replica. It _is_ the Alamo. _The_ Alamo."
I stood there a moment, looking at it. I was remembering, and finally
understanding, what my psycho-history lessons about the "Romantic
Freeze" had meant.
_They had taken this little mission-fort down, brick by adobe brick,
loaded it carefully into a spaceship, brought it here, forty two
light-years away from Terra, and reverently set it up again. Then they
had built a whole world and a whole social philosophy around it_.
It had been the dissatisfied, of course, the discontented, the dreamers,
who had led the vanguard of man's explosion into space following the
discovery of the hyperspace-drive. They had gone from Terra cherishing
dreams of things that had been dumped into the dust bin of history,
carrying with them pictures of ways of life that had passed away, or
that had never really been. Then, in their new life, on new planets,
they had set to work making those dreams and those pictures live.
And, many times, they had come close to succeeding.
These Texans, now: they had left behind the cold fact that it had been
their state's great industrial complex that had made their migration
possible. They ignored the fact that their life here on Capella IV was
possible only by application of modern industrial technology. That rodeo
down the plaza--tank-tilting instead of bronco-busting. Here they were,
living frozen in a romantic dream, a world of roving cowboys and ranch
kingdoms.
No wonder Hoddy hadn't liked the books I had been reading on the ship.
They shook the fabric of that dream.
There were people moving about, at this relatively quiet end of the
plaza, mostly in the direction of the barbecue. Ten or twelve Rangers
loitered at the front of the Alamo, and with them I saw the dress blues
of my two Marines. There was a little three-wheeled motorcart among
them, from which they were helping themselves to food and drink. When
they saw us coming, the two Marines shoved their sandwiches into the
hands of a couple of Rangers and tried to come to attention.
"At ease, at ease," I told them. "Have a good time, boys. Hoddy, you
better get in on some of this grub; I may be inside for quite a while."
As soon as the Rangers saw Hoddy, they hastily got things out of their
right hands. Hoddy grinned at them.
"Take it easy, boys," he said. "I'm protected by the game laws. I'm a
diplomat, I am."
There were a couple of Rangers lounging outside the door of the
President's office and both of them carried autorifles, implying things
I didn't like.
I had seen the President of the Solar League wandering around the
dome-city of Artemis unattended, looking for all the world like a
professor in his academic halls. Since then, maybe before then, I had
always had a healthy suspicion of governments whose chiefs had to
surround themselves with bodyguards.
But the President of New Texas, John Hutchinson, was alone in his office
when we were shown in. He got up and came around his desk to greet us, a
slender, stoop-shouldered man in a black-and-gold laced jacket. He had a
narrow compressed mouth and eyes that seemed to be watching every corner
of the room at once. He wore a pair of small pistols in cross-body
holsters under his coat, and he always kept one hand or the other close
to his abdomen.
He was like, and yet unlike, the Secretary of State. Both had the look
of hunted animals; but where Palme was a rabbit, twitching to take
flight at the first whiff of danger, Hutchinson was a cat who hears
hounds baying--ready to run if he could, or claw if he must.
"Good day, Mr. Silk," he said, shaking hands with me after the
introductions. "I see you're heeled; you're smart. You wouldn't be here
today if poor Silas Cumshaw'd been as smart as you are. Great man,
though; a wise and farseeing statesman. He and I were real friends."
"You know who Mr. Silk brought with him as bodyguard?" Palme asked.
"Hoddy Ringo!"
"Oh, my God! I thought this planet was rid of him!" The President turned
to me. "You got a good trigger-man, though, Mr. Ambassador. Good man to
watch your back for you. But lot of folks here won't thank you for
bringing him back to New Texas."
He looked at his watch. "We have time for a little drink, before we go
outside, Mr. Silk," he said. "Care to join me?"