Chapter 3

The small gray men could really eat.

Jonnie had been surprised at how well the chief had decorated the main room of the spare apartment. Colored paper lanterns– with mine lamps in them– had been hung about; two paintings, one of a tiger coming toward you in the snow, the other of a bird in flight, decorated the walls; side tables for serving had been set up; the large center table where they sat even had a cloth on it.

Mr. Tsung had insisted Jonnie don a gold brocade tunic– after Jonnie refused to wear a robe of green satin– and Jonnie looked quite nice.

Some very subdued but kind of squeaky music was coming from someplace. It and the click of dishes that Chief Chong-won kept hauling in and the jaws of the small gray men were the only sounds.

Jonnie had tried to invite Angus but he had said he had to keep an eye on that moon gyro. He had wanted Stormalong to come but the pilot was dead tired and catching naps in the ops room. He had asked Chief Chong-won and Mr. Tsung to also eat with them but they said no, they had to serve. So just Jonnie and the two small gray men had wound up as the diners. Jonnie felt that this was a pity for there was an awful lot of food. And Jonnie, so far, had no one to talk to. The small gray men just ate. And ate and ate!

The dinner had begun with appetizers– egg rolls, barbecued loin ribs, and paper-wrapped chicken; these had been served in mounds and had all been eaten up by the small gray men. Then various noodles had been served– pancake noodles, yat ga mein, mun yee noodles, war won ton, beeflo mein, yee fu noodles, and gorn lo won ton, tubs of them! And the small gray men had eaten them all up. Large platters of chicken had been served– almond chicken, cashew chicken, button mushroom chicken, and lichee chicken. And the small gray men had eaten all that up. Then there had been beef dishes– Mongolian beef, sauteed eggplant with beef, tomato beef, and chili pepper steak. And they had gotten around that! Massive platters of Peking duck, cooked in three ways, had, in its turn, disappeared down their gullets. They were working now on egg dishes-chicken egg foo yung, precious flower egg, and mushroom egg foo yung.

Jonnie wondered where Chief Chong-won had gotten all the ingredients until he recalled that game had been plentiful, including lots of fowl in the lake, and that the Chinese had had time to plant and harvest gardens, using an area protected by the dam armor cable to keep the wild beasts out of it.

He himself had not eaten very much. Mr. Tsung had had it relayed to him disparagingly that most of these dishes were southern Chinese cookery and that true cookery had evolved in the north during the Ch'ing Dynasty when his family took care of things. The Peking duck and Mongolian beef should get his main attention. Jonnie had complied. It was pretty good food.

Not as good, of course, as his Aunt Ellen's venison stew, but quite edible. The nurse had sent in word he was not to have any rice wine because of the sulfa but that was fine– Jonnie didn't much care for drinking anyway.

These small gray men were eating the entire banquet that had been planned for thirty people! Where did they put it all?

Jonnie took the time to study them.

Their skin was gray and kind of rough. Their eyes were a dull gray-blue, maybe like the sea, and had heavy lids. Their heads were round and hairless. Their noses took a sharp upturn just at the tip. The ears were a bit odd– reminded one more of gills than ears. They had four fingers and a thumb on each hand, though the nails were very pointed. They really looked quite like men. The main difference was their teeth: they had two rows of teeth, the second set just behind the first.

Watching them eat so voraciously and hugely, Jonnie tried to figure out what genetic lines such creatures might come from. They reminded him of something and he sought to place it. Then he recalled a fish that a pilot who was passing through Victoria had shown them. The pilot had been downed by fuel failure in the Indian Ocean and had ejected with a life raft. While waiting to be picked up he was attacked by these fish. When he was rescued, they had shot one of the fish with a cannon and picto-recorded it. It had been pretty big. What had he called it? Jonnie tried to think. They had looked it up in a man-book. Ah, a shark! That had been the name! Yes. These small gray men had a similar skin, similar teeth. Maybe they were evolved from sharks that had become sentient.

It finally came down to tea. It wasn't that the small gray men couldn't eat any more. It was that Chief Chong-won had run out of food! The tea was served, and the first small gray man asked with just a trace of worry whether this was "yarb tea.” He was reassured that it was just plain green tea, a fact that seemed to bring relief.

They sat back and smiled at Jonnie. They said that was the best dinner they had had in some time, maybe ever, and Chong-won slid out to tell and please the cook.

Under their gaze, Jonnie thought to himself that now they were finished with all the food in sight, they were going to try to eat him! But no, that was vaporing. They were quite pleasant, really. Now maybe he could find out what they were all about, what they really wanted.

“You know,” said the original small gray man, “about these hostile forces– your trouble here was really your defenses. Cheap trash. But that's the Psychlos for you. They never put their money in good defenses. Personnel were cheap. They'd rather buy half-a-dozen new females or a ton or two of kerbango than proper armaments.”

He looked at Jonnie as though about to apprise him of something utterly devastating. “You know how much those antiaircraft guns you use cost?

Less than five thousand credits. Cheap trash! They won't even shoot up to two hundred thousand feet. Bargain-basement, rummage-sale armaments. They probably bought them from some war surplus, used. And some executive put the new price on the books and pocketed the difference.”

“What should a proper antiaircraft gun cost?” said Jonnie to keep it going.

The newest small gray man thought a moment. Then he brought a small gray book out of his vest pocket and opened it. The page seemed to get bigger and he scanned down it with a little reader glass. “Ah, here's one. 'Surface/space combination repulsion, multicomputer firing defense cannon: maximum range 599 miles, 15,000 shots a minute, simultaneous tracking of 130 vessels or 2,300 bombs, destruction potential A– 13 (that's capital ship penetration), cost before discounts, C 123,475 plus freight and installation.' Now batteries of those located around your strong points would have handled that entire combined force or kept them so high up they could not have launched atmosphere crafts.”

The original small gray man agreed. “Yes, that was the main trouble. The Psychlos were both improvident and credit-pinching at the same time. I don't think they even kept up this planet's defenses.”

Jonnie could agree with that. He felt he was going to find out something about these fellows now that they were talking. Keep them talking! “Well, just at a guess,” said Jonnie, “what would you say proper defenses for this planet would cost?”

He had started something!

Both small gray men put their heads together. The original one started pulling all sorts of little things out of his pocket, looking into them and finding things. The newer arrival had a large ring on his left finger and at first Jonnie thought he was simply fiddling with it: not so; he was twisting and tapping it with sudden little jerks, and a long thread, so thin as to be nearly invisible, was coiling out of the ring.

They were very intense and their voices murmured and blended together. “...thirty space probes...maintained carrier wave probe warning beams...fifteen space drones, automatic firing at all nonsignal identified craft...cost of equipping terrestrial craft with identification beacons...2,000 atmosphere beacons...256 Mark 50 combat fighters...400 fly-away, antipersonnel tanks...7,000 antipersonnel road barricades...one hundred city cable defenses with rectractable gates...fifty heath/color search drones...fifty automatic target destroy surface drones....”