PAGE 6
Oomphel In The Sky
by
Brigadier General Ramon Gonzales had taken over the first–counting down from the landing-stage–floor of the plantation house for his headquarters. His headquarters company had pulled out removable partitions and turned four rooms into one, and moved in enough screens and teleprinters and photoprint machines and computers to have outfitted the main newsroom of Planetwide News. The place had the feel of a newsroom–a newsroom after a big story has broken and the ‘cast has gone on the air and everybody–in this case about twenty Terran officers and non-coms, half women–standing about watching screens and smoking and thinking about getting a follow-up ready.
Gonzales himself was relaxing in Sanders’ business-room, with his belt off and his tunic open. He had black eyes and black hair and mustache, and a slightly equine face that went well with his Old Terran Spanish name. There was another officer with him, considerably younger–Captain Foxx Travis, Major General Maith’s aide.
“Well, is there anything we can do for you, Miles?” Gonzales asked, after they had exchanged greetings and sat down.
“Why, could I have your final situation-progress map? And would you be willing to make a statement on audio-visual.” He looked at his watch. “We have about twenty minutes before the ‘cast.”
“You have a map,” Gonzales said, as though he were walking tiptoe from one word to another. “It accurately represents the situation as of the moment, but I’m afraid some minor unavoidable inaccuracies may have crept in while marking the positions and times for the earlier phases of the operation. I teleprinted a copy to Planetwide along with the one I sent to Division Headquarters.”
He understood about that and nodded. Gonzales was zipping up his tunic and putting on his belt and sidearm. That told him, before the brigadier general spoke again, that he was agreeable to the audio-visual appearance and statement. He called the recording studio at Planetwide while Gonzales was inspecting himself in the mirror and told them to get set for a recording. It only ran a few minutes; Gonzales, speaking without notes, gave a brief description of the operation.
“At present,” he concluded, “we have every native village and every plantation and trading-post within two hundred miles of the Sanders plantation occupied. We feel that this swarming has been definitely stopped, but we will continue the occupation for at least the next hundred to two hundred hours. In the meantime, the natives in the occupied villages are being put to work building shelters for themselves against the anticipated storms.”
“I hadn’t heard about that,” Miles said, as the general returned to his chair and picked up his drink again.
“Yes. They’ll need something better than these thatched huts when the storms start, and working on them will keep them out of mischief. Standard megaton-kilometer field shelters, earth and log construction. I think they’ll be adequate for anything that happens at periastron.”
Anything designed to resist the heat, blast and radiation effects of a megaton thermonuclear bomb at a kilometer ought to stand up under what was coming. At least, the periastron effects; there was another angle to it.
“The Native Welfare Commission isn’t going to take kindly to that. That’s supposed to be their job.”
“Then why the devil haven’t they done it?” Gonzales demanded angrily. “I’ve viewed every native village in this area by screen, and I haven’t seen one that’s equipped with anything better than those log storage-bins against the stockades.”
“There was a project to provide shelters for the periastron storms set up ten years ago. They spent one year arguing about how the natives survived storms prior to the Terrans’ arrival here. According to the older natives, they got into those log storage-houses you were mentioning; only about one out of three in any village survived. I could have told them that. Did tell them, repeatedly, on the air. Then, after they decided that shelters were needed, they spent another year hassling over who would be responsible for designing them. Your predecessor here, General Nokami, offered the services of his engineer officers. He was frostily informed that this was a humanitarian and not a military project.”