Rynason entered and waved brusquely to him.

“Help me get this stuff unloaded, Lee.”

Rynason fished for his sheath-knife and started cutting open one of the crates. “Why are you unloading the arsenal?”

“Because we may need it. Couple of the boys were just out at the horse-pasture, and they say the friendly natives have disappeared.”

“Jules and Stoworth? I met them on the way in.”

“They were doing some follow-up work out there … or at least they were going to. There’s not a single one of them there, not a trace of them.”

Rynason frowned. “They were all there this morning.”

“They’re not there now!” Manning snapped. “I don’t like it, not after what you’ve told me. We’re going to look for them.”

“With stunners?”

“Yes. Right now Mara is out at the field clearing several of the fliers to use in scouting for them.”

Rynason stacked the boxes of weapons and power-packs on the floor where Manning indicated. There were about forty of them—blunt-barrelled guns with thick casing around the powerpacks, weighing about ten pounds each. They looked as statically blunt as anvils, but they could stun any animal at two hundred yards; within a two-foot range, they could shake a rock wall down.

“How many men are we taking with us?” Rynason asked, eying the stacks on the floor.

Manning looked up at him briefly. “As many as we can get. I’m calling a militia; Stoworth and Lessingham went into town to round up some men.”

So he was going ahead with the power-grab; Malhomme had been right. No danger had been proven yet, but that wouldn’t stop Manning—nor the drifters he’d been buying in the town. Killing was an everyday thing to them.

“How many of the Hirlaji do you think we’ll have to kill to make it look important to the Council?” Rynason asked after a moment, his voice deliberately inflectionless.

Manning looked up at him with a calculating eye. Rynason met his gaze directly, daring the man to take offense. He didn’t.

“All right, it’s a break for me,” Manning 

 Prev. P 48/80 next