Reward for Retief Read Online Free PDF

all—"
     
                "That's enough out of
you, fellow!" the cop told Hy, and handed over a citation. "I know
you fast-talking types; think you can pull the blaff-shag over a fellow's
oculars with a little sweet-talk. Well, yer dealing with Chief Smeer of the
Zanny-du National Secret Police— that's 'ZNSP', for anybody wants to try to
pronounce it—which I'm taking the lot of youse in."
     
                "Chief!" Shortfall
cut in sharply. "I must remind you that my staff and I enjoy diplomatic
immunity!"
     
                "Whatta I care what yer
personal tastes is?" Chief Smeer inquired indifferently, with a yawn which
exposed rows of curved yellow fangs. "Me, I like a good girlie show."
     
                "Most unusual dentition
for a harmless herbivore," young Marvin Lacklustre commented. "Like
it said in the Post Report they were," he added.
     
                "To perdition with the
Post Report, Marvin!" His Ex yelled. "That's not all it left out! I
shall personally lay the matter before the Deputy Undersecretary upon my
return!"
     
                "You ain't hardly here,
yet, pal," the chief reminded him. "So yakking about yer 'return' is
a little previous, which you might not make it."
     
                "Do you imply,
Chief," Shortfall yelled, "that some doubt exists as to our return
home, in due course?"
     
                "I can't say about
that, Cap'n," Smeer told him. "Depends on what kinda impression you
make on our Diety and Chief of State, the great Worm."
     
                "Did you say
'worm'?" Hy jeered. "You take orders from a worm?"
     
                "You got something
against beings which they're lucky to be kinda long and narrow and ambulate
close to the ground-like?" the chief demanded in a tone like a
trimming-knife paring away fat.
     
                "Gracious, no!"
Clyde Shortfall arrived in time to reject the suggestion. "Why, when I was
out on Furthuron, I grew to love both Hither and Nether Furthuronians,
affectionately known as Creepies and Crawlies, respectively."
     
                "It was the other way
around, Mr. Ambassador," Hy Felix corrected, a provocation which his chief
ignored for the present, though in response to his lifted eyebrow, Miss Furkle,
in a lull in her onslaught, confirmed the remark had been duly recorded in the
record, signalling this intelligence by forming an O with her thumb and
forefinger, and making a flicking motion toward her chief.
     
                "Looky there!" the
porter with the improvised neck-torc rasped. "They're giving the signal
for the massacres," a pronouncement which netted a renewed surge of
fist-shaking and "Terry-go-home's" from the throng.
     
                "Holy Moses, Ben,"
Hy Felix blurted. "Didja hear that? Now they're talking mass murder. Oh,
boy," he muttered as he groped among the slung camera-bags he considered
essential to the image of a newshawk. "Where's my mini-swift?" he
inquired in a tone of One Aggrieved by Treachery in the Ranks (1241-m).
"Ben, do you suppose one of these light-tentacled baggage-smashers has
purloined my sender, which it's Agency property?"
     
                "There it is, right
next to your first-aid kit, Hy," Magnan told him. Hy grabbed the prodigal
unit and began transmitting in his best classic Ed Murrow style:
     
                "This is
Zanny-du! Disaster is about to overtake the Terran Mission, dispatched here to
cement relations with the putative inhabitants of this mystery world, never
officially explored since reported two centuries ago by the redoubtable Captain
Goldblatt, which we're surrounded by a blood-thirsty throng." Hy paused to
glance at his Chief for approval of his tactful choice of collective nouns,
then hurried on. "Not to say 'merry mob,' which His Ex, Ambassador Shortfall
is taking this like a trouper. Faced with the imminent demise of his