Oomphel in the Sky Read online

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  OOMPHEL ...... IN THE SKY

  By H. BEAM PIPER

  +--------------------------------------------------------------+| || Transcriber's Note || || This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact--Science || Fiction, November 1960. Extensive research did not uncover || any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was || renewed. || |+--------------------------------------------------------------+

  _Since Logic derives from postulates, it never has, and never will, change a postulate. And a religious belief is a system of postulates ... so how can a man fight a native superstition with logic? Or anything else...?_

  Illustrated by Bernklau

  Miles Gilbert watched the landscape slide away below him, its quilt ofrounded treetops mottled red and orange in the double sunlight and, inshaded places, with the natural yellow of the vegetation of Kwannon. Theaircar began a slow swing to the left, and Gettler Alpha came into view,a monstrous smear of red incandescence with an optical diameter of twofeet at arm's length, slightly flattened on the bottom by the westernhorizon. In another couple of hours it would be completely set, but bythat time Beta, the planet's G-class primary, would be at itsmidafternoon hottest. He glanced at his watch. It was 1005, but that wasGalactic Standard Time, and had no relevance to anything that washappening in the local sky. It did mean, though, that it was fiveminutes short of two hours to 'cast-time.

  He snapped on the communication screen in front of him, and Harry Walsh,the news editor, looked out of it at him from the office in Bluelake,halfway across the continent. He wanted to know how things were going.

  "Just about finished. I'm going to look in at a couple more nativevillages, and then I'm going to Sanders' plantation to see Gonzales. Ihope I'll have a personal statement from him, and the finalsituation-progress map, in time for the 'cast. I take it Maith's stillagreeable to releasing the story at twelve-hundred?"

  "Sure; he was always agreeable. The Army wants publicity; it wasGovernment House that wanted to sit on it, and they've given that upnow. The story's all over the place here, native city and all."

  "What's the situation in town, now?"

  "Oh, it's still going on. Some disorders, mostly just unrest. Lot ofstreet meetings that could have turned into frenzies if the policehadn't broken them up in time. A couple of shootings, somesleep-gassing, and a lot of arrests. Nothing to worry about--at least,not immediately."

  That was about what he thought. "Maybe it's not bad to have a littletrouble in Bluelake," he considered. "What happens out here in theplantation country the Government House crowd can't see, and it doesn'tworry them. Well, I'll call you from Sanders'."

  He blanked the screen. In the seat in front, the native pilot said:"Some contragravity up ahead, boss." It sounded like two voices speakingin unison, which was just what it was. "I'll have a look."

  The pilot's hand, long and thin, like a squirrel's, reached up andpulled down the fifty-power binoculars on their swinging arm. Mileslooked at the screen-map and saw a native village just ahead of the dotof light that marked the position of the aircar. He spoke the nativename of the village aloud, and added:

  "Let down there, Heshto. I'll see what's going on."

  The native, still looking through the glasses, said, "Right, boss." Thenhe turned.

  His skin was blue-gray and looked like sponge rubber. He was humanoid,to the extent of being an upright biped, with two arms, a head on top ofshoulders, and a torso that housed, among other oddities, four lungs.His face wasn't even vaguely human. He had two eyes in front, closeenough for stereoscopic vision, but that was a common characteristic ofsapient life forms everywhere. His mouth was strictly for eating; hebreathed through separate intakes and outlets, one of each on eitherside of his neck; he talked through the outlets and had his scent andhearing organs in the intakes. The car was air-conditioned, which was amercy; an overheated Kwann exhaled through his skin, and surroundedhimself with stenches like an organic chemistry lab. But then, Kwannsdidn't come any closer to him than they could help when he was hot andsweated, which, lately, had been most of the time.

  "A V and a half of air cavalry, circling around," Heshto said. "Makingsure nobody got away. And a combat car at a couple of hundred feet andanother one just at treetop level."

  He rose and went to the seat next to the pilot, pulling down thebinoculars that were focused for his own eyes. With them, he could seethe air cavalry--egg-shaped things just big enough for a seated man,with jets and contragravity field generators below and a bristle ofmachine gun muzzles in front. A couple of them jetted up for a look athim and then went slanting down again, having recognized the KwannonPlanetwide News Service car.

  The village was typical enough to have been an illustration in asociography textbook--fields in a belt for a couple of hundred yardsaround it, dome-thatched mud-and-wattle huts inside a pole stockade withlog storehouses built against it, their flat roofs high enough toprovide platforms for defending archers, the open oval gathering-placein the middle. There was a big hut at one end of this, the khamdoo, thesanctum of the adult males, off limits for women and children. A smallcrowd was gathered in front of it; fifteen or twenty Terran aircavalrymen, a couple of enlisted men from the Second Kwannon NativeInfantry, a Terran second lieutenant, and half a dozen natives. The restof the village population, about two hundred, of both sexes and allages, were lined up on the shadier side of the gathering-place, most ofthem looking up apprehensively at the two combat cars which werecovering them with their guns.

  Miles got to his feet as the car lurched off contragravity and thesprings of the landing-feet took up the weight. A blast of furnacelikeair struck him when he opened the door; he got out quickly and closed itbehind him. The second lieutenant had come over to meet him; he extendedhis hand.

  "Good day, Mr. Gilbert. We all owe you our thanks for the warning. Thiswould have been a real baddie if we hadn't caught it when we did."

  He didn't even try to make any modest disclaimer; that was nothing morethan the exact truth.

  "Well, lieutenant, I see you have things in hand here." He glanced atthe line-up along the side of the oval plaza, and then at the selectedgroup in front of the khamdoo. The patriarchal village chieftain in aloose slashed shirt; the shoonoo, wearing a multiplicity of amulets andnothing else; four or five of the village elders. "I take it the word ofthe swarming didn't get this far?"

  "No, this crowd still don't know what the flap's about, and I couldn'tthink of anything to tell them that wouldn't be worse than noexplanation at all."

  He had noticed hoes and spades flying in the fields, and the cylindricalplastic containers the natives bought from traders, dropped when thetroops had surprised the women at work. And the shoonoo didn't have afire-dance cloak or any other special regalia on. If he'd heard aboutthe swarming, he'd have been dressed to make magic for it.

  "What time did you get here, lieutenant?"

  "Oh-nine-forty. I just called in and reported the village occupied, andthey told me I was the last one in, so the operation's finished."

  That had been smart work. He got the lieutenant's name and unit andmentioned it into his memophone. That had been a little under five hourssince he had convinced General Maith, in Bluelake, that the masslabor-desertion from the Sanders plantation had been the beginning of aswarming. Some division commanders wouldn't have been able to get abrigade off the ground in that time, let alon
e landed on objective. Hesaid as much to the young officer.

  "The way the Army responded, today, can make the people of the Colonyfeel a lot more comfortable for the future."

  "Why, thank you, Mr. Gilbert." The Army, on Kwannon, was rather moreused to obloquy than praise. "How did you spot what was going on soquickly?"

  This was the hundredth time, at least, that he had been asked thattoday.

  "Well, Paul Sanders' labor all comes from neighboring villages. Ifthey'd just wanted to go home and spend the end of the world with theirfamilies, they'd have been dribbling away in small batches for the lastcouple of hundred hours. Instead, they all bugged out in a bunch, theytook all the food they could carry and