The Return of Retief Read Online Free

March!"
     
                Goop,
looking dazed, withdrew.
     
                Fump
eyed the capacious bag and sighed. "You ain't never gonna get me in that,"
he said with finality.
     
                "How's
your furb-ache feeling?" Retief asked kindly.
     
                "It's
holding up good," Fump replied. "You don't need to freshen it up
none."
     
                "That
won't be necessary," Retief reassured the discouraged fellow. "Now, I
could just order you outside, or shoot you here, if you prefer."
     
                "Probably
go off and leave me here to freeze up solid," Fump predicted. "That
ain't fatal, but it smarts some; I shoulda filled up on Prestone like the
troops. SOP for surface ops on these here ice-hells," he explained.
     
                "It's
just as well," Retief said. "You won't need it."
     
                "You
mean—you're really gonna kill me—in cold blood?" Fump inquired in a
faltering tone. "Looky, fella, I never figgered on this, as I'd of never
let you inside my vehicle."
     
                "I
don't intend to plug unless I see you outside that bag four seconds from
now," Retief reassured the Ree. "OK?"
     
                "That's
not hardly OK," Fump came back. "But I got no choice, I guess. You
gonna keep me inside this here poke now?"
     
                "Soon,
Cap," Retief informed his captive. "It's a lot of work, but it's the
only alternative to shooting you, and I need you alive, up to a point."
     
                "Oh,"
Fump replied glumly. "I was kind of hoping you'd accept my parole or
something, and leave me have a chance to use my firepower. But you outsmarted
me. OK, let's get to it." He submitted meekly as Retief pulled the sack
over him and secured the top.
     
                "They
can't say I abandoned my command," Fump boasted muffledly. "Even if I am kinda cramped up in this here specimen sack. How's about you let me
out now, and I'll put in a good word for you when the relief expedition
arrives. The one I'm gonna send out a call for as soon as I get a chance, I
mean."
     
                "Actually,
Captain," Retief replied. "I think for the present you'd best remain
where you are; later I'll put you in the aft lazaret. But no distress signals.
Anyway, we won't be here long."
     
                "Whattya
mean we won't be here long?"
     
                "I
have to be back at Sector for some sort of a tribal pow-wow," Retief told
the Ree. "So just get busy estivating, and I'll see how good your lift
gear is."
     
                "You
don't mean yer gonna try and lift my vehicle without my say-so?" Fump
demanded indignantly.
     
                "I
thought I might," Retief conceded.
     
                "Don't
try it, Terry," Fump warned. "You activate all that machinery wrong
and she'll blow sky-high."
     
                "Don't
worry," Retief soothed the excited Ree. "I'll read the Owner's
Manual."
     
    -
     

Chapter One
     
1
     
                Sector
Headquarters of the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne at Aldo Cerise was
a hundred-story slab of glass and blackish-gold eka-bronze, rising from a
velvet-green lawn ornamented with the picturesque ruins of an angel fountain
which had adorned a formal garden built on the site twenty-three thousand years
before. The remainder of the ancient tiled street was essentially intact, lined
with the vari-colored ceramic-faced palaces of the long-dead aristocrats of the
deserted world.
     
                A
group of five Terrans disembarked from the CDT spinner which had transported
them from the port which lay well beyond the limits of this long-dead city, on
a deserted world of an alien star.
     
                "This
place always gives me the, ah, 'creeps' is the appropriate term, I
believe," said Ben Magnan, currently serving as First Economic