Read 04. The Return of Nathan Brazil for Free Online Page B

have an alarm out all over the place."
    "How'd you manage it?"
    Marquoz gave a throaty chuckle. "One advantage to being a strange alien organism. They don't know much about how or where I go to the bathroom, so they take my word for it."
    Van Chu cleared his throat. "I see. Well, all I can tell you is that for quite a while they all insisted that they were ordinary humans and that they protested all the foul treatment. Bateen even claimed he thought the Gypsy was going to rob him and so just defended himself."
    "Good story," the dragon admitted. "But no go."
    The scientist shrugged. "He—they all—could talk their way out of anywhere but here. They didn't change their tune until we took the blood samples—remotely, of course—and started running the tests. Only then did Bateen admit—no, he proclaimed —himself a Dreel, as he called them. He's incredibly arrogant. We're just so many animals to him; all we're good for is being hosts for the Dreel. He claims that they aren't even from this galaxy, and that they have been at this takeover bit so long that nobody can remember when it didn't happen. Holy mission stuff, as fanatical as this Fellowship business at the spaceports."
    Marquoz sighed. "I hope he's just bluffing. I don't like the implications."
    Van Chu looked down at him worriedly. "What do you mean?"
    "Well, if I can smell 'em out other races probably can, too. A fair percentage, anyway, if they're inter-galactic. That brings up the point that what they can't take by stealth they take by force—and an inter-galactic flight is beyond any technology of ours I ever heard of."
    The scientist looked a little frightened now. "You mean a war? A real interstellar war?"
    "To the death," Marquoz agreed, "with the other side holding the cards. I think we'd better shut these folks down, if we can, as quickly as possible—and then make a deal if we can, which I doubt. When you make those detectors of yours, which you will, the Dreel will know their cover is blown, know we're onto them. I think we better know what we're up against fast."
    The Chugach turned to go, but Van Chu called after him. "Ah . . . Marquoz?"
    The dragon stopped and his large head turned slightly, fixing a single reptilian eye on the scientist. "Yeah?"
    "How'd you happen to stumble onto all this? I know, you smelled them out—but how'd you, the one person able to smell that stink, happen to be on that particular backwater planet, in just the right place, to smell it?"
    "It's simple," Marquoz responded dryly, heading for the door. "I'm an accident-prone."
     
     
    Kwangsi, the Council Chambers of the Com
     
     
    THEY WERE THERE, ALL THE COUNCILLORS OF THE Community of Worlds except those indisposed by accident or illness. Still, counting the human and nonhu-man worlds, it represented 2160 planets and 2144 Councillors were there, an unprecedented number.
    A Council meeting was always impressive: there were the representatives of all the human worlds except those on the frontier too little developed for self-government, also the huge centauroid forms of the Rhone worlds, almost as numerous as mankind's; the dozen or so Kafski in a special amphibious section for comfort's sake, their starfish-like bodies undulating with tension, also the Tarak who resembled great beavers, the Milikud, forms who seemed like tiny whirlwinds; and all the others, even the one lone representative of the Chugach. They all knew why they were there; they just didn't like it.
    The President was human this term, a giant of a man who looked the part with dark skin and snow-white hair. His equally gleaming white Councillor's robes gave him a commanding presence even in so large a hall. His name was Marijido Varga. His one failing was his thin, reedy voice, but this didn't matter in so great a chamber which spoke so many languages that all would be translated automatically by communications computers whose technicians tended to alter the voice to fit the position, anyway.
    The opening