"Krakar . . . Krakar . . . now where did I hear that before?"
Lord Prrsi muttered to himself, trying to place the transient memory that rattled around inside the chitin of his head. This was at the meeting of the top executives of the Galaxy Rangers, and they were having this first historical meeting in the first-class lounge of the Pleasantville Eagle. Sally, who had been made president of the Ladies' Auxiliary and given a gold brooch with a miniature star on it, was serving drinks while the Rangers discussed the fateful final words spoken by Baksheesh. Sally passed around cigars, and most of the Earthmen lit up, though Jerry was enjoying a joint, and the aliens present either ate theirs or threw them under the chairs when no one was looking.
"I have it!" Lord Prrsi shouted and snapped his claws in excitement, cutting a solid steel lounge chair in half without noticing it. "Somewhere in the transcript from one of the Hagg-Loos prisoners we took when we raided their secret laboratory. Just hold on, chaps, I'll send a mental command to the computer to dig it out and beam it back to me. Won't take long."
John rapped for attention with his whiskey glass, then held it up to Sally for a refill.
"While we're waiting for that thought to come through, let's hear that security report that old squid-head SlugTogath put together on the Lortonoi. You have the floor, Sluggy."
The Garnishee prime minister rose and coughed with two or three of his mouths, then picked up the report with the tentacles on his head and held it before a couple of his close-reading eyes. He coughed again and began.
"This is an amalgamation of all information that could be obtained about our traditional and mentally repulsive enemy, the brain-sucking Lortonoi. Evidence was taken from every race that has fought the Lortonoi, and more evidence tortured out of those who have fought cheek by jowl with these disgusting creatures. The first fact we have uncovered is that no one, not even their allies, has ever seen a Lortonoi. They arrive in their own spaceship and hardly ever leave it, since all instructions and commands are given by mental telepathy. On certain occasions, as in the secret laboratory of the Hagg-Loos, they have made an appearance, but since they arrived in a great armored tank and never left it, this isn't much help either."
"So you've told us what we don't know," John said.
"What do we know?"
"I'm just getting to that part. We know that they have fantastic mental powers which they use only for evil. They appear at many places through the galaxy and aid any race they can either mentally control or which is nasty enough to go along with them. In their travels they seem to have picked up a knowledge of all the weapons and science that are around, so that any race they aid immediately goes to war with any other race nearby. Very nasty. Their goal seems to be complete control of the galaxy for their own evil ends."
"And ours is to crush them for free enterprise, a rigid class system and all the other forms of democracy we love," John shouted, and all present cheered. "Now what about it, Lord Prrsi, you old red-hot scorpion, any word yet from your molasses-clogged computer? Seems pretty slow."
"Really quite fast, Number One. The answer came back within three nanoseconds, but I didn't want to interrupt the pep talk. It seems that while we were questioning one of the technicians, he shouted something like 'The Krakar will get you, ha-ha' before he lapsed into acoma."
"Coma?"
"Understandable. Our questioning can be rather severe at times, but after all, they are only Hagg-Loos, and working class at that."
"Can you get any more out of him?" Jerry asked.
"Maybe even a spot of torture if you have to."
"My dear boy! What on Haggis do you think our normal questioning is? Short of stripping off his chitin and boiling him like a lobster, there is little else we can do. He is still recovering from the last round of questioning, and I sincerely doubt that more of the same will reveal any more than this. Very strong-willed, these blighters, and insane to boot."
"Why don't you try curing his madness?" Sally asked, refilling the glasses, but they went on talking, ignoring her completely. Jerry was holding forth in great detail on Earthly torture methods to see if the Hagg-Inder had missed any when she raised the glass martini jug and dropped it onto his head. Well, this caught their attention a bit, and while she had it, she repeated her question.
"Why don't you try curing the prisoner's insanity and perhaps he will cooperate voluntarily?"
"Bourgeois sentimentality!" Lord Prrsi snorted.
"Did you have to do that?" Jerry said aggrievedly, picking a pickled onion out of his ear.
"I think you might have an idea there, Sally." John rapped again for order. "What about it, Prrsi you old sting-tail monster? Why don't you have your shrinks try to cure this guy, put a metal box around his brain so he doesn't have a relapse, read to him from the Bible, the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence. . . ."
"Fill his head with that subversive rot!"
"Sure, you can always kill him afterward so the word doesn't spread, but it might work."
"I say, it might indeed. I'll issue an order by thought mail . . . there, it's gone. Work will begin at once."
"All right, then to new business," John said. "Work on our secret Ranger base on Planet X, tenth planet of this sun Sirius, has been completed and we can move our volunteers there so the Hagg-Inder can turn off their air conditioning."
"Well, thank Great Cacodyl!" Lord Prrsi breathed. "I swear I am turning blue-black from the cold and feel galloping pneumonia coming on. Anything below the boiling point of water gives me a positive chill on my liver."
"Save the medical chitchat for later," John said. "Let's get on with this so we can get down to some heavy drinking, and listen, Jerry, that is the third joint in a quarter hour, and your eyes are getting glassy. Can you kindly hold off a bit, huh? So, more business. We sent a spy team in a fast battle cruiser to scout out the star cluster where the Lortonoi headed when they escaped last time. Just for a change we shouldn't go off half-cocked racing around the stars without a bit of look-see first. While we are waiting for their report, we are consolidating our position, building our base, getting more volunteers by capturing slave ships and that kind of thing. It also gives us some time to look into this Krakar thing, which has a very nasty sound to it, before we get involved in more fighting, that is, and it turns out that the Lortonoi are going to give us the Krakar, right in the old you-know-where."
"I'll second that motion," Chuck said. "Krakar must be solved."
The medical teams went to work. Utilizing their great mental skills, as well as some Earthling techniques like aversion therapy, prefrontal lobotomy, shock treatment, dianetic auditing, and the psychoanalytic couch, they did a quick cure on the laboratory technician. As soon as he was sane, he saw the error of his ways and voluntarily told everything he knew. Everything turned out to be something, but not very much: the spatial coordinates of the place where Krakar was supposed to be and the interesting information that whoever controlled Krakar controlled the galaxy.
"Let's go," Jerry shouted, rubbing his hands together. Blast in, full force, take 'em by surprise, atomize the enemy, grab Krakar, and the galaxy is ours!"
"Best not to go off half-cocked," Chuck mused. "Whatever that means."
"I know," Sally said. "A historical expression relating to the early weapons that had a flint and steel and were cocked-"
"Shut up," Jerry hinted. "If you have a better idea, Chuck old man – why, let us hear it."
"I think we ought to have a quick scout first to see what we are getting into and to find out maybe what Krakar is. If it could be grabbed by force that easily, you can bet the Lortonoi would have done it long before this. Just us Earthmen, and Sally along for cooking, and we shouldn't be away more than a day or two."
"Great, Chuck," John agreed. "Sort of a holiday, and we deserve it."
"And I deserve permanent KP?" Sally asked, but no one was listening.
Soon the faithful Pleasantville Eagle was ready and rarin' to go. Fuel tanks filled, oxygen brimming over, guns loaded, bar restocked. With Jerry at the controls they made great ten-light-year leaps toward their destination. There was a newly mounted electronic superscope in the ship's nose that threw a highly magnified picture onto a screen, and Chuck was at the controls.
"Nothing," he mused. "Yet we are almost to the center of the star cluster where Krakar is supposed to be. Are you sure we haven't got the wrong figures or something?"
"Negative," John said, going through the tech reports.
"We have carefully plotted the spatial directions eight ways from Sunday and to one hundred and thirteen decimal places. Krakar has to be near here somewheres. I tell you what, make another jump, a teensy jump, maybe just a couple of light-years this time, no more than 1,671,321,600,000 nautical miles, which is two lightyears."
"Here we go."
They jumped – and instantly every alarm in the ship blasted an earsplitting cacophony as they appeared almost in the shadow of a fantastically huge space battleship that was at least a mile long. Widemouthed gunports were ranged the length of its deadly gray metal hide, and it reeked of an overpowering air of efficient destruction. Jerry jabbed at the button that would jump them out of there, but before his thumb could touch it, mighty magnet beams locked onto the great form of the 747, a mosquito compared to an eagle now, and instantly whisked it up against the pocked metal skin of the ship. Paralyzer rays flooded the ship, and they could not move. At the same moment a jointed metal tube shot out from the battleship, and a device on the end, very much resembling an electric can opener, buzzed noisily in a circle, and a section of hull fell clanging inside the plane. Zombie rays must have been operating as well because they all stood, despite their every effort to resist, and they marched slowly into the cabin to stand ranked before the ragged opening. Heavy footsteps clumped down the tube toward them, and their hands all flashed up to their temples in a snappy salute.
"At ease," said the creature who entered, and their arms dropped. "Name of ship, planet of origin, defensive armament, passports of crew, VD rate. Report."
They could only gape. The alien was tremendous, standing over eight feet tall and glowering down at them. It had short, solid legs and a long, thick body, which it needed since it had four arms on each side, or eight in all. It wore a neatly cut uniform of dark black – what a tailor he must have had! – and a black helmet on its head. The head! Eight red eyes gleamed in a row below the helmet's lip, while below them was a nose shaped like a vacuum cleaner hose. To complete this singularly repulsive picture, his wide mouth was filled to overflowing with black teeth, most of which protruded like tusks at interesting angles.
"Report!" it shouted, waving a clipboard it carried in one hand, a short sword, a pistol, a club, and lots of other things in its other hands, and it still had a couple of hands free to shake fists at them.
Jerry reported. Listing everything they had, though he did manage to forget the cheddite projector, their only big secret.
"Haven't you forgot something?" Sally said brightly,
"The ched-" She wasn't sure who had given her the knee from behind so efficiently, but it stopped her. The ugly alien turned a couple of eyes her way.
"She means the cheddar cheese in the galley, the bagels, the baked beans and other food supplies, but you don't want to hear about that, no!" John said brightly. For an instant of time that seemed to stretch to eternity the alien glared down at them, his eyes seeming to probe their innermost thoughts. Finally, it spoke, in a deep nasty rumble.
"Split. If you aren't moving out of here at top speed within two seconds after we release the magnetic rays, you will be blasted into infinitesimal fragments."
"Wait a minute!" Jerry shouted angrily. "You can't talk to us like that. . . ."
"Oh, yes, I can."
"Well, you can talk to us like that if you want to. But can't you at least explain what is happening?"
"What is happening, as if you didn't know, ugly toofew-eyes, too-few-arms alien, is that you are in the outer shell of the attacking forces that have been attacking the Chachkas for the past two hundred and eighty-five years. We always welcome recruits to the fighting forces since a certain amount of fighting equipment is used up, and volunteers are accepted, and in proportion to their contribution of arms a similar percentage will be given in the occupied galaxy, which we will control as soon as we have Krakar-"
"What is Krakar?"
"Who knows? Except we know that it is written that he who controls it controls the galaxy, and that is what we aim to do. Your aim too, but you missed. Your strength is too slight to get even an infinitesimal cut of the galaxy, so now beat it. Your time has run out."
The alien spun about on one thick heel and started for the exit.
"Do you take bribes?" Chuck called after it.
It spun about, weapons raised, and Sally fainted. For one eternal moment it stood there rattling its prominent teeth and death hovered low in the air.
"Of course I take bribes," it gnashed. "Doesn't everybody? Make me an offer."
"What do you want? Diamonds, gold, greenbacks, vodka, dirty books, jet fuel, oxygen, Hershey bars? You name it, we got it."
"I spit on your dirty books, not enough arms for fun, but a cupful of diamonds will see me through until payday. What do you want in exchange?"
"Just a chance to get into the fighting zone and let fly with all our weapons at the enemy; then we will head for home."
"Won't do any harm – and I can use the loot. Pour them into this pocket," he said to Chuck who had gone to the safe and returned with a measuring cup full of bluewhites. The alien scratched quickly on the clipboard and tore off a chit and handed it to them. "Here's your clearance and coordinates. Get in there, fire your load, and be out within ten minutes or you have had it, buddy. That's as far as this tiny bribe goes."
"Eternally at your service, sir," Jerry called after the retreating back as they lifted the ragged disk of metal into position and welded it back into place before they lost all of their atmosphere. The tube was sucked back into the battleship and they floated free.
"I'm using the space warper drive to get us into position," Chuck said, spinning the controls. "We'll save the cheddite projector for an emergency, for if they have any clue to its existence, they will tear the ship apart upon the instant. Hold tight, folks, here we go."
Space warped and was penetrated, and they appeared suddenly notched into position in a great globe of ships in space. As far as they could see in every direction, spaceships of every size and shape floated in this hollow globe formation and released a storm of weaponry at the object floating at the mathematical center of this sphere in space. It was hard to see just what was down there because of the fury of attack, the scintillating rays, the destructive vibrating beams, the explosive filled torpedoes and highpowered shells that were continuously rained down upon the target. They put on dark glasses and finally made out a golden sphere at the heart of all the activity. It could not have been more than a mile in diameter, yet it withstood the ravening might of the greatest engines of destruction ever assembled in the lenticular galaxy. And it fought back. Occasionally a thin red beam of light would lash up from the golden surface, and anything it touched instantly exploded with terrible effect. Entire ships went up this way, and one five-mile-long battleship bought it while they watched, blowing up so efficiently that it took four other ships with it in the explosion. Yet instantly, ships waiting in the second sphere filled the gaps, and the battle went on.
"Whoever is down there sure has plenty on the ball," John breathed, speaking for them all.
"Just two minutes left," Jerry said, eying the chronometer.
"I'll bet you have the same idea I have." Chuck laughed
"And me too," agreed John.
"Right on! We set our coordinates exactly and appear inside that sphere with our trusty old bird here. All their weapons are pointed away from the golden sphere. If we get inside, the place will be ours, and we'll have Krakar!"
"No!" Sally begged. "It is sure suicide. How can we weak Earthlings accomplish what the combined might of this alien space armada cannot?"
"That's just the point," Jerry answered, and the others nodded agreement. "It just goes to show you that we are a lot better than them with their big battleships and extra arms and teeth and things. Give me a good old Earthman any day! Right, gang'!"
Sally was brushed aside, and to enthusiastic cheers, the suicidally inclined men set the cheddite projector, calibrating it exactly at the center of the sphere, then pressed the actuating button just as their time was up.