listen."

There was a pause and a click, which Samson identified as the sound of Harlow's teeth gripping his ever-present pipe. Then, "Here's the call I got from Jackson, the Kenilworth deputy. That was three days ago. I don't think there's anything in it that I missed, but I'll let you decide that. It came in at three-oh-five hours G.T."

A younger voice said excitedly, "Jackson, Kenilworth IV, calling Harlow, Slice 103 H.Q. Urgent. Harlow, hold onto your hair. The Kassids are back. Over to you."

Harlow's recorded voice, sounding sleepy, answered: "Better hold onto yours. Who are the Kassids, and what if they're back? I didn't even know they were gone. Over."

"Who are the Kassids! Just the big medicine men of Slices 42, 43, 102 and 103, is all! See your manual, page 9581 et seq. They landed on KenilFour ten days ago; I just got the message. It seems the local boys told them about me as soon as they got past the language difficulty, and they're anxious to meet me. I'm going over there now—call you back in about six hours. Over."

"Give them a big, juicy kiss for me," said Harlow. "Clearing."

His voice began again immediately: "You can look up the Kassids in the manual; I had to. They're a legend, a group of legends, fifteen thousand years old. At that point, my opinion was either that a gang of backwoods Messiahs were passing themselves off as 'Kassids' in hopes of gain and glory, or else that some of Jackson's charges were playing a big fat joke on him. So I rolled over and went back to sleep. The only thing is, Jackson never called back.

"I waited twenty-four hours and then alerted you. It still didn't look big. Jackson might have crash-landed somewhere and broken his leg. Or he might have got hold of some local antiquities and forgotten to eat, sleep, breathe or say his prayers. Nothing else happened until several hours ago. Then this came in, from an experimental organics outfit on Loblich VII."

The Samsons listened to a high, exasperated voice complaining that a maniac named Jackson had landed at the station, 'preached a kind of a sermon,' and taken off again with seventeen of the group's twenty-two members. The group was now hopelessly undermanned; eight years' work would be ruined unless H.Q. sent them trained replacements sooner than immediately.

Harlow demanded more information. What had Jackson's 'sermon' 

 Prev. P 3/14 next