Sergeant Madden blinked slowly to himself. When humans first took to
space a lot of them were after glamour, which is the seeming of
importance. His son Timmy was on the cops because he thought it
glamorous. Patrolman Willis was probably the same way. Glamour is the
offer of importance. An offer of importance is glamour.
The sergeant grunted to himself. A possible course of action came into
his mind. He and Patrolman Willis were on the way to the solar system
Sirene 1432, where Krishnamurti's Law said there ought to be something
very close to a terran-type planet in either the third or fourth orbit
out from the sun. That planet would be inhabited by Huks, who were very
much like humans. They knew of the defeat and forced emigration of their
fellow-Huks in other solar systems. They'd hidden from humans--and it
must have outraged their pride. So they must be ready to put up a
desperate and fanatical fight if they were ever discovered.
* * * * *
A squad ship with two cops in it, and a dumpy salvage ship with fifteen
more, did not make an impressive force to try to deal with a planetary
population which bitterly hated humans. But the cops did not plan
conquest. They were neither a fighting rescue expedition nor a punitive
one. They were simply cops on assignment to get the semi-freighter
_Cerberus_ back in shape to travel on her lawful occasions among the
stars, and to see that she and her passengers and crew got to the
destination for which they'd started. The cop's purpose was essentially
routine. And the Huks couldn't possibly imagine it.
Sergeant Madden settled some things in his mind and dozed off again.
When the squad ship came out of overdrive and he was awakened by the
unpleasantness of breakout, he yawned. He looked on without comment as
Patrolman Willis matter-of-factly performed the tricky task of
determining the ecliptic while a solar system's sun was little more than
a first-magnitude star. It was wholly improbable that anything like Huk
patrol ships would be out so far. It was even more improbable that any
kind of detection devices would be in operation. Any approaching ship
could travel several times as fast as any signal.
Patrolman Willis searched painstakingly. He found a planet which was a
mere frozen lump of matter in vastness. It was white from a layer of
frozen gases piled upon its more solid core. He made observations.
"I can find it again, sir, to meet the _Aldeb_. Orders, sir?"
"Orders?" demanded Sergeant Madden. "What? Oh. Head in toward the sun.
The Huks'll be on Planet Three or Four, most likely. And that's where
they'll have the _Cerberus_."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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