"This is
Kormork. He and I have borne young to each other. Kormork, you watch
over Paula Quinton." He managed, on the second try, to make it more or
less recognizable. "Bring her back safe. Or else find yourself a good
place to hide."
Kankad introduced the rest of his people, and von Schlichten
introduced the Terrans from the telecast-station. Then Kankad looked
at the watch he was wearing on his lower left wrist.
"We will have plenty of time, before the ship comes, to show Paula the
town," he suggested. "Von, you know better than I do what she would
like to see."
* * * * *
He led the way past a pair of long 90-mm. guns to a stone stairway.
Von Schlichten explained, as they went down, that the guns of King
Kankad's town were the only artillery above 75-mm. on Ullr in
non-Terran hands. They climbed into an open machine-gun carrier and
strapped themselves to their seats, and for two hours King Kankad
showed her the sights of the town. They visited the school, where
young Kragans were being taught to read Lingua Terra and studied from
textbooks printed in Johannesburg and Sydney and Buenos Aires. Kankad
showed her the repair-shops, where two-score descendants of Kragan
river-chieftains were working on contragravity equipment, under the
supervision of a Scottish-Afrikaner and his Malay-Portuguese wife;
the small-arms factory, where very respectable copies of Terran rifles
and pistols and auto-weapons were being turned out; the machine-shop;
the physics and chemistry labs; the hospital; the ammunition-loading
plant; the battery of 155-mm.
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