Read Online Retief at Large by Keith Laumer - Free Book Online Page B

be landing in a matter of minutes!"
     
                "I
fear I'll have no time to devote to tourism this week, Magnan," Rilikuk
said. "They'll just have to manage alone. After all, Voom Festival comes
but once in ninety-four standard years."
     
                Magnan
rang off with a snort. "We'll receive scant help from that quarter."
He swiveled to gaze out the unglazed window across the gay tiles of the plaza,
lined with squat, one-story shops of embossed and colored ceramic brick, to the
glittering minarets of the mile-distant temple complex.
     
                "If
these idlers invested less energy in shard-sorting and more in foreign affairs,
I wouldn't be faced with this contretemps."
     
                "If
the CDT would talk Groac into selling them a few thousand tons of sand, they
wouldn't have to sort shards."
     
                "There
are better uses for CDT bottoms than hauling sand, Retief ... though I notice
the local scrap pile is about depleted. Possibly now they'll turn to more
profitable pursuits then lavishing the artistry of generations on tenantless
shrines." He indicated the cluster of glass towers sparkling in the sun.
"They might even consent to export a reasonable volume of glassware in
place of the present token amounts."
     
                "Rarity
keeps the price up; and they say they can't afford to let much glass off-world.
It all goes back in the scrap piles when it's broken, for reuse."
     
                Magnan
stared across the plain, where the white plumes of small geysers puffed into
brief life, while the pale smoke rising from the fumaroles rose straight up in
the still air. Far above, a point of blue light twinkled.
     
                "Odd,"
Magnan said, frowning. "I've never seen one of the moons in broad daylight
before."
     
                Retief
came to the window.
     
                "You
still haven't. Apparently our Groaci friends are ahead of schedule. That's an
ion drive, and it's not over twenty miles out."
     
     
II
     
                Magnan
bounded to his feet. "Get your hat, Retief! We'll confront these
interlopers the moment they set foot on Yalcan soil! The Corps isn't letting
this sort of thing pass without comment!"
     
                "The
Corps is always a fast group with a comment." Retief said. "I'll give
it that,"
     
                Outside,
the plaza was a-bustle with shopkeepers glittering in holiday glass jewelry,
busily closing up their stalls, erecting intricate decorations resembling
inverted chandeliers before the shuttered shops, and exchanging shouted
greetings. A long-bodied pink-and-red-faced Yalcan in a white apron leaning in
the open door of a shop waved a jointed forearm.
     
                "Retief-Tic!
Do me honor of to drop in for last Voom cup before I lock up. Your friend,
too!"
     
                "Sorry,
Oo-Plif; duty calls."
     
                "I
see you've established your usual contacts among the undesirable element,"
Magnan muttered, signaling a boat-shaped taxi edging through the press on fat
pneumatic wheels. "Look at these lackwits! Completely engrossed in their
frivolity, while disaster descends scarcely a mile away."
     
                Retief
eyed the descending ship as it settled in behind the glittering spires of the
temple-city.
     
                "I
wonder why they're landing there, instead of at the port," Retief
wondered.
     
                "They've
probably mistaken the shrine for the town," Magnan snapped. "One must
admit that it makes a far more impressive display than this collection of mud
huts!"
     
                "Not
the Groaci. They do their homework carefully before they start anything."
     
                The
cab pulled up and Magnan barked directions at the driver, who waved his
forearms in the Yalcan equivalent of a