Empire of Two Worlds

They were slightly taller than us, but also more slender. Their musculature was a little different, too: their faces were finely moulded and smooth-knit, firmer and more curved than our own faces. There was something delicate and sensitive about them.

Their clothes were highly coloured and flowed loosely when they walked. They glanced at the sloop, then back at us, then spoke in fluid tones.

“Pretty talk, eh, Klein?” Bec muttered out of the corner of his mouth, “A pity we can’t follow it.” He shook his head at the others.

They listened closely to his words, frowning. One of them pointed at him, then up at the big yellow planet in the sky. His face held a question.

“Whaddya think of that?” Bec said wonderingly. “They think we’re from that big planet up there.” Again he shook his head.

The Earthmen looked puzzled and confused. Bec, however, was satisfied.

“I think we hold the whip hand here for the moment,” he said. “Let’s install ourselves while we find out what goes on. One of these buildings should do — I don’t know about you, but I’m getting pretty sick of the sloop.”

Bec picked out a house and, using gestures, got the villagers to understand that he wanted to occupy it. With surprisingly little resistance they complied. The doors opened; more green-skinned people filed out, looking at us wide-eyed and curious.

There were kids among them, too. It didn’t bother me too much that we might have killed some of those green-skinned children. I had a heady feeling knowing that we’d won the first round and that we could take anything we wanted.

Needless to say, the first thing we wanted was Earth protein.

Reeth moved up the sloop to cover the doorway of the building we had appropriated. We cased it inside. Bec kept one of the villagers with us (he turned out to be their head man) and sent the other with orders — if he had understood us right — to bring food.

I had to admit that the house was a very pleasant place. These people had a flair for design and colour. The house had five rooms, two of them above the others; the walls were of brick, stained in various pastel hues to create random patterns, and hung with drapes. Some of the walls were also padded with velvet.

Windows opened on to a garden at the back. We covered them up with the drapes so we could discard the goggles we were still wearing. We hung a lot of drapes in front of the door, too, so that we could get in and out without letting in too much light.

While we waited for the food to arrive I examined the furniture, which was hand-carved from a dark brown substance that had a good dry feel to it. All this was luxury such as I had never envisaged before. It even took a stretch of the imagination to realise that it was luxury. I’m sure Grale and Hassmann, Bec too, maybe, never even noticed it. I wondered briefly if the magnates and council members living up the pile in Klittmann had surroundings like this, but I quickly dismissed the idea. Their sensibilities, like mine, had been trained since birth to accept what was grey and leaden.

“Somebody’s coming,” Grale warned.

The drapes moved. I drew my gun. It had to be all right, though, because Reeth was still outside keeping guard in the sloop.

Three females entered and stood uncertainly in the dimmed room.

I knew straight away they were female. Their bodies swelled out in the right places. Their faces, too … they were even more sensitive-looking than the men, and alive in the way some women’s faces are; softer, and fuller.

They were carrying bowls. The head man spoke to them and beckoned them to the table. They set the bowls down, making one place for each of us. He dismissed them, sat down, indicated our places for us, and began eating.

The smells coming from those bowls nearly knocked me out. I’d never smelled anything like it before: Killibol food doesn’t give off any odour to speak of. Those smells were something so rich, so thick and overpowering, that they filled your nostrils and seemed to go right down into your inner being.

We sat down with the bowls before us. “Hey,” hissed Reeth. “What if they’re poisoning us? You know how easy it is to do — to turn out a batch of poison protein.”

“Have no fear,” rumbled the alk, holding the bowl in his hands. “Natural tissues cannot be processed in that way.” He took a deep breath, drawing in the fumes. “This indeed is alchemy!”

“Anyhow, he’s eating it,” I observed, looking at the Earthman.

We watched him to see what you were supposed to do. The food was hot and consisted of pieces of protein floating in a thick liquid. By the side were additional slabs of some fluffy stuff that in texture was a little like some of the protein slabs we were used to. He was picking up the solid pieces out of the bowl with his fingers and mopping up the liquid with the fluffy slabs.