Chapter 20

Captain George Hanlon jumped from the big tricycle and ran into the residence. None of the guards or servants tried to stop him, so dumb-founded were they by all that had been happening. Knowing the way from his controlling of the bird that had found Amir’s rooms, Hanlon was soon there. He did not stop to see what was happening to the others, but ran across the bedroom to that far door, and rapped on it to attract the attention of the Ruler, hiding behind it.

“Everything is safe now, k’nyer,” he called through the badly charred panels. “The assassin is dead. You can come out now.”

“Is this some new trick?” a voice came thinly.

“No, sire, it is no trick, but the truth. You are safe now.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m...” Hanlon started to give his name, then remembered that the Ruler did not know anything about him. He quickly changed it to, “I’m Ergo Lona, the groom with whom you talked on the ride the other morning.”

“Lona? Where did you disappear to--and why?” suspiciously.

“Endar discharged me, but I have been watching over you, just the same. On my honor, k’nyer, you may believe me.”

After some further hesitation there was the sound of the padding being removed from the keyhole, the insertion and turning of the key. As the door opened a mere crack, Elus Amir peered cautiously out. But instead of the clothing of a groom or a countryman, he saw the brilliant space-blue and silver of an Inter-Stellar Corps uniform.

He started to pull shut the door, but Hanlon had stuck the toe of his boot in it.

“It’s all right, k’nyer. I am Lona, the groom. I am also George Hanlon, a captain in the Terran Inter-Stellar Corps. We discovered that another attempt was being made on your life, and were lucky enough to get here in time to block it.”

He took hold of the edge of the door and pulled it open, for the Ruler was so surprised by this revelation that he made no real effort to hold it shut. Amir came slowly, surprisedly into the bedroom, staring keenly at Hanlon.

“You don’t look like Lona ... but the voice does seem to be the same. How does it happen the Federation has men here? Were you spying on me?”

“Not on you, sire, but on your enemies,” Hanlon said earnestly. “Let me introduce you to Admiral New...”

He had half-turned back as he spoke, and now for the first time saw his father on the floor, a hand clutching his shoulder, from which a great stain of blood was drenching the uniform sleeve.

“Ring for your physician,” Hanlon turned and commanded the Ruler. Then, realizing this was no way for him to be addressing a planetary head, he quickly but entreatingly added, “please, k’nyer.”

Elus Amir called in one of the servants clustered outside, and commanded curtly, “Get the doctor here, immediately.” Then he went over to the two on the floor. “Let me look,” he half-pushed Hanlon aside, and stooped to peer closely at that wounded shoulder.

“Help me get him onto the bed,” he said after a quick inspection. “I don’t think any of the bone is gone--it’s just a bad flesh burn.”

Tenderly the two men raised the admiral, who protested weakly that he could get up by himself, and lifted him onto the bed. Amir himself began pulling off the admiral’s tunic, while Hanlon helped.

By the time the doctor came running in, and took over the dressing of the wound, they had the arm and shoulder bared. But the elder Newton, in spite of his protestations, had fainted from the loss of blood and shock.

Amir sent the assembled servants away, retaining only his dresser, who helped him on with his day clothes.

The doctor worked swiftly, as Hanlon watched anxiously, applying ointments to the burn, and finally bandaging it.

“He’s weak from all the blood he lost, and doesn’t seem to have been in too good condition anyway,” the doctor said at last. “I hope the man is strong enough to pull through.”

“Then give him some plasma,” Hanlon said frantically. “He needs it.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” the doctor was bewildered by the word, for Hanlon had had to use the Terran word “plasma”, not knowing any translation for it.

“A blood transfusion, then, or at least some glucose.”

“I don’t know anything about those, either ... say, you’re not an Estrellan, are you?”

“No, we’re Terrans. You mean you folks don’t know anything about giving one person’s blood to another?”

“Sorry, but I’ve never heard of such a thing. How is it done?” The doctor was apparently more interested in this new idea than in the admiral’s desperate condition.

Hanlon felt faint. He staggered away from the bedside without answering, and went into the anteroom, where Hooper stood talking to Inver and some other officials, who had heard the commotion and had come to see what it was all about.

Hooper saw Hanlon’s haggard face, and knew something was wrong. “Were we too late?” he gasped.

“Oh, no, we got Irad and saved Amir, but dad was blasted--shoulder. The doctor has fixed him up as best he can, but dad’s in shock, and these backward fools never heard of plasma or blood transfusions.”

Hooper jumped forward. “I can give a transfusion. What’s your dad’s blood type?” he asked as they hurried to the bedside.

“Same as mine,” Hanlon was peeling off his coat as he spoke, his eyes lighting with relief.

Hooper rapped quick questions at the doctor, but the latter shook his head. More questions, and more negative answers, then Hooper turned disconsolately to Hanlon. “They don’t even have anything I could use to give a transfusion; no hollow needles; not even hypodermics.”

The doctor pulled on Hooper’s arm. “Please, tell me what you mean by blood transfusions, and plasma. How do you give them? What for? And what did the other man mean when he said he had the same blood type as the wounded man?”

Hanlon went to sit beside his father’s bedside, and sank into an apparent mood of despair.

Meanwhile, the Ruler had finished dressing, and with his son, Inver, went over to listen to what Major Hooper was telling the doctor.

“Will you please tell me what all is going on here?” Amir asked so plaintively that the S S man had trouble concealing a grin. But Hooper sobered instantly.

“The Federation’s Inter-Stellar Corps, sire,” he began his explanation, “found out about the fact that opposition to your desire to accept their invitation was becoming stronger--and dangerous to you and to the peace of your planet. They sent four of us here to study the situation and to protect you if possible. To do that it was necessary for us to disguise ourselves as natives of your world, so we could move about freely and unnoticed. That is why Captain Hanlon worked it so you would notice him, hire him as a servant of some sort here, and he would thus be able to watch over you and conditions in general from close at hand. We had found out that Adwal Irad was at the head of this opposition and crime wave, and that his plans included your death.”

“But now you’re all in uniform--and your disguises removed.”

“Yes, k’nyer. We were planning to come as ourselves tomorrow--or rather, this morning--and seek an audience with you. We knew about the attempt to assassinate you that was made on your daily ride, and so were watching you more carefully than ever. When we saw Irad trying to get into your room, and his men he had planted in your guards keeping back the servants who wished to come to your assistance, we hurried here to help protect you. It was so apparent Irad was determined to complete the killing he failed at the other time.”

Elus Amir, Ruler of Estrella, took that startling news with barely a tremor. He motioned them to a seat along the side of the bedroom, to continue his questioning.

The doctor was dismissed, although it was plain he wanted to stay and ask this Terran more about those strange and new methods of treating wounds.

So until dawn the Ruler and his son--now Second-In-Line following the death of Irad--sat talking to Major Hooper about the Federation of Planets, and the benefits Estrella would obtain from joining the other worlds.

“Such things as the advances in medicines in which your doctor is so interested, are but minor matters among the many we can and gladly will tell you if you wish,” Hooper said.

The Corpsman was able to convince Amir of the falsity of the rumors and arguments Irad had spread, about how Estrella would lose her sovereignty if she joined, and that Terra would make slaves of her people.

“That is such a damnable thing to say, k’nyer,” Hooper was almost angry, but very much in earnest. “You have only to send some trusted advisors to the various planets of the Federation--we will gladly furnish them transportation as we did before--and have them talk to the common people of any or all of our worlds. They will find that while we of Terra were the ones who developed space travel and sent people to colonize the first discovered and habitable planets, that the citizens of each world choose their own form of government, and that many of them are now even stronger than is Terra, the mother world. And there are peoples of several worlds who are natives and not Terrans or their descendants, whom we have not only not enslaved, but are helping to grow culturally so they may some day be advanced enough to join us as full-fledged equal members of the Federation, just as you, with your advanced civilization, were invited to do.”