Uller Uprising

pend on It

with its ring of mooring-pylons empty since the City of Pretoria had lifted out, two days before, for Ter

since, and I find that everybody who's been here any length of time seems to deride it, and it's full of the most surprising misstatements. I'm either going to make myself famous or get burned at the stake by the Extraterrestrial Sociograp

nto this, Miss Q

s-anthropologists whose subjects aren't anthropomorphic-and I majored in sociography at the University of Monte

ave guessed that, as sm

. "The family name's French. I'm also part Spanish, part Russian,

de Velasco. My family lived there for the past five centuri

of the Hit

a General von Schlichten, was what

. "The Quintons had to leave France about the same t

the Third and Fourth World Wars," he considered. "It was full of t

he asked. "I understand it's entirely differen

in them a predisposition to think of everything as the result of an action performed by an agent. And they have no definite parts of speech; any word can be used as any part of speech, depending on context. Tense is applied to words used as nouns, not words used as verbs; there a

ey haven't developed a

t I was explaining the Keene-Gonzales-Dillingham Theory and the older Einstein Theory to King Kanka

ps below blended into a level plain of yellow-green, pierced by glints of stagnant water u

m is fairly accurate. He spent a lot of time among them. He never seems to have realized, though, tha

the real aborigin

om five to fifteen tons, plated all over with silicate shell, till it looked like a six-legged pine-cone. Some were herbivores and some were carnivores. There are a few left, in remote places-quite a few in

lizing on mobility instead of armor and began excreting waste-matter instead of turning it to shell. Some of

shellosaurs. Some of them took to the swamps, where the shellosaurs would sink if they tried to follow. Those savages, down there, are still living in the same manner; they never progressed. Others encountered pro

e Jeels are the primitive, original example of that. Most of the North Uller civilizations de

Kragans?" Paula ask

pulled over a pair of fifty-power binoculars on a

been Kankad's Town. You might say, even the same Kankad. The Kragan kings have always provided their own heirs, by self-fertilization. That's a complicated process, involving simultaneous m

city on top of it. All the buildings were multi-storied, some piling upward from the top and some clinging to the sides. The high watchto

t rock, or they're mountaineers who came out that

enough, you can. That ought to be good for about eight to ten hono

e island over there?" she asked, shifting the glasses. "A clump

they also make TNT and catastrophite, and propellants. Learned that from us, of course. They also manufacture most of their own

at much stro

me-you're right about that being a term of derogation, because I don't believe I've ever knowingly spoken of a Kragan as a geek, and in fact they've picked up the word from us and apply it to all non-Kragans. But as I was saying, o

natives make th

or blasting and for bombs and mines, and they screw little capsules of it on the ends of their arrows. Most of their chemistry, such as it is, was learned in trying to prevent organic materials, like wood, from petrifying. Up

ere a dozen or so individuals waiting for them-the five Terrans, three men and two women, from the telecast station, and the rest Kragans. One of these, dark-s

tched over to the customary language of the Takkad Sea country.

n Schlichten replied, in Lingua Terra. He looked at his watch. "Two h

s, without the token-concealment of the handkerchief. Kankad took it as a matter of course. At some length, von Schlichten explained the nature of Pa

pproximation of her name. "I make you one of us," he told her. "You must come back, after the work stops at the mines; if you want to learn about my people, I'll show you what you want to see, and tell y

sent me here want me to learn for myself how the workers at the mines a

nsignia of a Company native-major and was freshly painted with the Company emblem. "This is Kormork. He and I have borne young to each other. Kormork, you wat

introduced the Terrans from the telecast-station. Then Kank

s, to show Paula the town," he suggested. "Von, yo

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 riever-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

own beer for Paula and von Schlichten, and a bowl of some boiling-hot black liquid for himself. Von Schlichten and Paula lit cigarettes; between sips of his bubbling hell-brew, Kankad gnawed on the stalk of s

en told her. "Here, or in the field when Terran and Kragan soldier

rom each other, my people more from yours than yours from mine. Before you came, my people were like children, shooting arrows at little animals on the beach, and climbing among the rocks at dare-me-and-I-do, an

d four arms and a rubbery, quartz-sp

von Schlichten said. "I was talking about it with Sid Harrington, only a shor

Kankad said. "And some of the other young ones. And when Little Me is old en

rra; I would like to have you make th

fore I die. It must be a wonderful place. A world is what its people make it, a

even be thought of on Uller. Our whole Northern Hemisphere, where our greatest nations were, was devastated; much of it is wasteland to this day. But we put an end to that folly in time; we made one nation out of all our

gs I would see meant...." Kankad was silent for a mome

e, but isn't Paula the kind

ver bore any, yet, but that

ho would stick a knife in her as soon as she turned her back on them, don't deserve it. But she wants to learn about us, just as I want to learn about Terra. Von, why don