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The company headquarters runner sought him out and awakened him-by standing well clear and giving
the hammock rope a sharp tap. Don came instantly awake, a knife in his hand. "Easy!" cautioned the
runner. "The Old Man wants to see you."
Don made a rhetorical and most ungracious suggestion as to what the Captain could do about it and slid
silently to his feet. He stopped to roll up the hammock and stuff it into his pocket-it weighed only four
ounces and had cost the Federation a nice piece of change on cost-plus contract. Don was very careful
of it; its former owner had not been careful and now had no further need for it. He gathered up his
weapons as well.
The company commander was sitting at a field desk under a screen of boughs. Don slid into his
presence and waited. Marsten looked up and said, "Got a special job for you, Harvey. You move out at
once."
"Change in the plan?"
"No, you won't be on tonight's raid. A high mugamug among the dragons wants palaver. You're to go to
see him. At once."
Don thought it over. "Cripes, Skipper, I was looking forward to tonight's scramble. I'll go
tomorrow those people don't care about time; they're patient."
"That'll do, soldier. I'm putting you on leave status; according to the despatch from HQ, you may be
gone quite a while."
Don looked up sharply. "If I'm ordered to go, it's not leave; it's detached duty."
"You're a mess hall lawyer at heart, Harvey."
"Yes, sir."
"Turn in your weapons and take off your insignia; you'll make the first leg of the trip as a jolly farmer
boy. Pick up some props from stores. Larsen will boat you. That's all."
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"Yes sir." Don turned to go, adding, "Good hunting tonight, Skipper."
Marsten smiled for the first time. "Thanks, Don."
The first part of the trip was made through channels so narrow and devious that electronic seeing devices
could reach no further than could the bare eye. Don slept through most of it, his head pillowed on a sack
of sour-corn seed.
He did not worry about the job ahead no doubt the officer he was to interpret for, whoever he was,
would rendezvous and let him know what he was to do.
Early in the next afternoon they reached the brink of the Great South Sea and Don was transferred to a
crazy wagon, a designation which applied to both boat and crew a flat, jet-propelled saucer fifteen feet
across manned by two young extroverts who feared neither man nor mud. The upper works of the boat
were covered by a low, polished cone of sheet metal intended to reflect horizontal radar waves upward,
or vice versa. It could not protect against that locus in the sky, cone-shaped like the reflector itself, where
reflections would bounce straight back to originating stations but the main dependence was on speed in
any case.
Don lay flat on the bottom of the boat, clinging to hand holds and reflecting on the superior advantages
of rocket flight, while the crazy wagon skipped and slid over the surface of the sea. He tried not to think
about what would happen if the speeding boat struck a floating log or one of the larger denizens of the
water. They covered nearly three hundred kilometers in somewhat less than two hours, then the boat
skidded and slewed to a stop. "End of the line", called out the downy-cheeked skipper. "Have your
baggage checks ready. Women and children use the center escalator." The anti-radar lid lifted.
Don stood up on wobbly legs. "Where are we?"
"Dragonville-by-the-Mud. There's your welcoming committee. Mind your step."
Don peered through the mist. There seemed to be several dragons on the shore. He stepped over the
side, went into mud to his boot tops, scrambled up to firmer soil. Behind him, the crazy wagon lowered
its cover and gunned away at once, going out of sight while still gathering speed. "They might at least have
waved," Don muttered and turned back to the dragons. He was feeling considerably perplexed; there
seemed to be no men around and he had been given no instructions. He wondered if the officer he had
expected to find surely by this time! had failed to run the gauntlet safely.
There were seven of the dragons, now moving toward him. He looked them over and whistled a polite
greeting, while thinking how much one dragon looks like another. Then the center one of the seven spoke
to him in an accent richly reminiscent of fish-and-chips. "Donald, my dear boy! How very happy I am to
see you! Shucks!"
XIV - "Let's Have It, Then."
DON gulped and stared and almost lost track of his manners. "Sir Isaac! Sir Isaac!" He stumbled
toward him.
It is not practical to shake hands with a dragon, kiss it, nor hug it. Don contented himself with beating Sir
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Isaac's armored sides with his fists while trying to regain control of himself. Long-suppressed emotions
shook him, spoiling voice and vision. Sir Isaac waited patiently, then said, "Now, Donald, if I may
present my family.
Don pulled himself together, cleared his throat, and wet his whistle. None of the others had a voder; it
was possible that they did not even understand Basic.
"May they all die beautifully!"
"We thank you."
A daughter, a son, a granddaughter, a grandson, a great granddaughter, a great grandson counting Sir
Isaac himself, a four generation welcome, only one short of maximum dragon protocol; Don was
overwhelmed. He knew that Sir Isaac was friendly to him, but he decided that this degree of ceremony
must be a compliment to his parents.
"My Father and my Mother thank you all for the kindness you do to their egg."
"As the first egg, so the last. We are very happy to have you here, Donald."
A dragon visitor, honored by an escort, would have made a leisurely progress to the family seat flanked
by the family members. But a dragon's leisurely progress is about twice as fast as a brisk walk for a man.
Sir Isaac settled himself down and said, "Suppose you borrow my legs, dear boy; we have considerable
distance to go."
"Oh, I can walk"
"Please I insist."
"Well... "
" 'Upsy-daisy'! then if I recall the idiom correctly."
Don climbed aboard and settled himself just abaft the last pair of eyestalks; they turned around and
surveyed him. He found that Sir Isaac had thoughtfully had two rings riveted to his neck plates to let him
hold on. "All set?"
"Yes, indeed."
The dragon reared himself up again and they set out, with Don feeling like Toomai-of-the-Elephants.
They went up a crowded dragon path so old that it was impossible to tell whether it was an engineering
feat or a natural conformation. The path paralleled the shore for a mile or so; they passed dragons at
work in their watery fields, then the path swung inland. Shortly, in the dry uplands, his party turned out of
the traffic into a tunnel. This was definitely art not nature; it was one of the sort the floor of which slides
quietly and rapidly away in the direction one walks (provided the walker is a dragon or weighs as much
as a dragon); their ambling gait was multiplied by a considerable factor. Don could not judge the true
speed nor the distance covered.
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