Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 93: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

EARTHMAN, “You can see what I’m holding up there. I can and will drop one or both of them if I’m shot. I may drop them anyhow. I’m tired of your back- cluster ghost town.” Heldon snorted. “Explosives? Gas? Ridiculous; nothing so small could contain enough energy to destroy the city; and you have no masks. Do you take me for a fool?” “Events prove you one,” Amalfi said steadily. “The possibility was quite large that you would try to am- bush me, once you had me in the city. I could have forestalled that by bring- ing a guard with me. You haven’t met my perimeter police; they’re tough. boys, and they’ve been off duty so long that they’d love the chance to tangle with your palace crew. Didn’t it occur to you that I left my city without a bodyguard only because I had less cumbersome ways of protect- ing myself?” “*Eges,”’ Heldon said scornfully. “As a matter of fact, they are eggs; the black color is an annaline stain, put on the shells as a warning. They contain chick embryos inocu- lated with a two-hour alveolytic mu- tated Terrestrial rickettsialpox—a new air-borne strain developed in our own BW lab. Free space makes a wonder- ful laboratory for that kind of trick; an Okie town specializing in agronomy taught us the techniques a couple of centuries back. Just a couple of eggs— but if I were to drop them, you would have to crawl on your belly behind me all the way back to my city to get the antibiotic shot that’s specific for the disease; we developed that our- selves, too.” There was a brief silence, made all the more empty by the hoarse breath- ing of the Proctor. The armed men eyed the black eggs uneasily, and the muzzles of their rifles wavered out of line. Amalfi had chosen his weapon with great care; static feudal societies COME HOME 91 classically are terrified by the threat of plague—they have seen so much of it. “Tmpasse,” Heldon said at last. “All right, Mayor Amalfi. You and your slave have safe-conduct from this chamber—” “From the building. If I hear: the slightest sound of pursuit up the stairs, P’ll chuck these down on you. They burst hard, by the way—the virus generates a lot of gas in chick- embryo medium.” “Very well,” Heldon said, through his teeth. “From the building, then. But you have won nothing, Mayor Amalfi. If you get back to your city, you'll be just in time to be an eyewitness of the victory of IMIT— the victory you helped make possible. I think you'll be surprised at how thorough we can be.” “No, I won't,” Amalfi said, in a flat, cold, and quite merciless voice. “J know all about IMT, Heldon. This is the end of the line for the Mad Dogs. When you die, you and your whole crew of Interstellar Master Traders, remember Thor V.”’ Heldon turned the color of unsized paper, and so, surprisingly, did at least four of his riflemen. Then the blood began to rise in the Proctor’s plump, fungoid cheeks. “Get out,” he croaked, almost inaudibly. - Then, suddenly, at the top of his voice: “Get out! Get out!” Juggling the eggs casually, Amalfi walked toward the lead radiation- lock. Karst shambled after him, cring- ing as he passed Heldon. Amalfi thought that the serf might be over- doing it, but Heldon did not notice; Karst might as well have been—a horse. The lead plug swung to, blocking out Heldon’s furious, frightened face and the glint of the fluorescents.on the ancient spindizzies. Amalfi plunged EComichooks.co im