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"Schleim!" said Jo
Mutters from the emissaries. Sit down, Schleim. Be quiet. This looks like it will be interesting. Hush, Schleim.
Jo
Roof Arsebogger's face was patched with the sores of disease. His fangs were black and one was broken. He was dressed in something that looked like it had been discarded from a slum. It was part of a long series of pictures shot by pilots flying air cover at the Purgatoire River. It had been taken with a radio telephoto camera. The shots had been left in Jo
Jo
Several emissaries tittered. The figure was so disgusting that if this were a member of the Tolnep government...well!
Schleim was stung. He looked at the picture. What a disgusting creature! Vomitous! Eyes still dazzling a little bit from the lights flashing off the devil, he pawed at his filter and stared again. Was there something vaguely familiar about that figure?
That he was peering so hard made it seem that maybe the Tolnep government was composed of such riffraff. Several emissaries laughed out loud.
That did it. Schleim lashed out, “Of course not! That filthy creature would be thrown out of any government department on Tolnep! You are insulting me. You are insulting Tolnep! You are ru
“Quiet,” said Jo
“Then,” said Jo
He pressed another button. The camera seemed to draw away. Motion occurred in the scene. The bridge of the Capture came into view, along with the diamond with a slash, the Tolnep insignia. And there was Quarter-Admiral Snowleter facing the horrible creature Roof Arsebogger.
Jo
“You must act independently, Snowleter! You must do whatever gives you the best chance of private profit! What I am telling you to do is rush on down to that base and grab it all for yourself! Once you have this planet under your personal control you can tell everybody else to buzz off and be damned. Smash the place. Seize the people and sell them for your own profit. I will cover you. And like it or not, that is what you must do! The power is mine! And we will split the profits! Understood?”
Snowleter was smiling. He touched his quarter-admiral's cap in a salute. “I am at your orders!”
Jo
“That is your admiral, that is the fleet.” Jo
The emissaries were enthralled. They had never seen atmosphere projection before. It was like looking at a totally live scene. Yes, that was the Tolnep fleet all right. That was the admiral. Schleim's attitude said clearly it was.
Suddenly Lord Schleim exploded. “Doctored pictures. Anyone can doctor recordings. This so-called evidence-”
“Oh come now, Schleim," said Jo
He turned to the emissaries. “So you see, your lordships, the Tolnep admiral was not acting under the orders of his government but under those of a private individual. He was acting for personal profit and not for his planet. Be quiet, Schleim; you can't cover up evidence with shockingly bad temper. My apologies for his conduct, my lords. One can sympathize with his position. This Quarter-Admiral Snowleter, by the way, is the uncle of Half-Captain Rogodeter Snowl and was brought into the venture by his nephew according to discs and traces we have available. It was a family matter and the piratical venture is obviously being continued by the nephew.”
Jo
“So the point of piracy,” said Jo
“You must be mad!” screamed Schleim. “Our fleet is in full command of your skies and you ask us-'
“To help end a pirate venture,” Jo
Yes, yes. By all means go ahead. We can take up the treaty later. They agreed. The combatant-planet emissaries were looking at one another, a bit frightened. What had they gotten themselves mixed up in?
The small gray men looked less hangdog.
But Sir Robert, studying Schleim, knew he was far from finished. He was using the moment to hiss into his radio. He was giving orders, something about making suicide crashes. He must be a bit rattled for he was speaking Psychlo.
Sir Robert excused himself and stepped quickly over to operations to tell their forces what was going on, to tell them to be alert, to double their efforts to fight back.
The first small gray man slipped out and passed an order to his ship to turn on two red lights and change the radio signal to “Alert! Alert! An interplanetary, intergalactic conference is taking place within this area. Any capital ship or vessel of any kind entering this zone will be branded an intergalactic outlaw and its government or owner subject to all penalties that can be imposed. Alert! Alert! An interplanetary, intergalactic conference is...”