He didn't like
it, though, any more than the beginning of cannibalism among the wild
Jeel tribesmen. Or the visit of Paula Quinton on Ullr as field-agent
for the Extraterrestrials' Rights Association; now was no time to stir
up trouble among the natives, unless his hunch was wrong.
He shrugged it aside and climbed into the command-car, followed by
M'zangwe and O'Leary. Sergeant Harry Quong and Corporal Hassan
Bogdanoff took their places in the front seat; the car lifted, turned
to nose into the wind, and rose in a slow spiral.
"Where now, sir?" Quong asked.
"Back to Konkrook; to the island."
* * * * *
The nose of the car swung east by south; the cold-jet rotors began
humming, and the hot-jets were cut in. The car turned from the fort
and the mountains and shot away over the foothills toward the coastal
plains. Below were forests, yellow-green with new foliage of the
second growing-season of the equatorial year, veined with narrow dirt
roads and spotted with occasional clearings. Farther east, the dirty
gray woodsmoke of Ullr marked the progress of the charcoal-burnings.
That was the only natural fuel on Ullr; there was too much silica on
Ullr and not enough of anything else; what would be coal-seams on
Terra were strata of silicified wood. And, of course, there was no
petroleum. There was less charcoal being burned now than formerly; the
Ullr Company had been bringing in great quantities of synthetic
thermoconcentrate-fuel, and had been setting up nuclear furnaces and
nuclear-electric power-plants, wherever they gained a foothold on the
planet.
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