Lord of Janissaries Read Free

off to attack the tank. Rick wondered if he were as shaky as the corporal, tried to straighten up and get control of his face. It wouldn’t do to let the troops see their officer shaken.
    His eyes adjusted to the bright light. There were—beings—in the compartment. Three of them, and they were not human.

2

    They were shaped like humans. They had two arms and two legs and two eyes, but the proportions were wrong. The shoulders were too high, almost as if they didn’t have necks, and their heads rose from too-thick bodies. They wore clothing, coveralls of a shining metallic appearance, one dull grey, the other two in brighter colors that shimmered when they moved.
    Their hands had only three fingers, but there were two thumbs—one on each side of a thick palm. They had no hair that Rick could see. Their lips were thin—far too thin to be human—and their mouths were too high on their strangely flat faces. Mouth too high, eyes too low, nose—not really a nose at all, Rick decided. Instead there was a fleshy snout-slit like a vertical second mouth. It rose until it almost reached the line joining the eyes.
    It took an effort to look away from them and inspect the compartment. The room was nearly bare. All around the upper parts of the compartment there were screens, like TV sets but very thin. Some showed images: Rick’s troops standing outside, Lieutenant Parsons and Sergeant Elliot talking and pointing, the machine-gun emplacements. The aliens seemed to have most of his defenses spotted, and their TV gave bright images although outside it was nearly pitch-dark.
    The creatures sat at a long table placed crosswise to the door he had entered. It was too high—at least a foot higher than a table for humans would have been—and was transparent, but without the shimmer of glass, so that it was almost invisible. A small box with lights and colored squares rested on the table.
    Rick had the impression of controls below some of the screens; at least there were flat plates about an inch square, some lit in bright colors, and others colored but dark. They might have been pushbuttons or touch-sensitive plates, but they might have been anything else. The room was as alien as the creatures.
    Despite a strong desire to curl up in a corner and gibber, Rick studied the room carefully, trying to categorize and file the new information. He kept trying to convince himself this was a dream, but he knew better. Finally he was able to speak. “Hello.”
    When the aliens spoke, both the mouth and nose slits moved. “You have very little time, Captain Galloway,” the grey-clad alien said. The voice was very matter-of-fact. It sounded masculine, but Rick reminded himself that he didn’t know the creature’s sex. Or, he thought, if they even had sexes. “Perhaps too little. We may have waited too long. We are here to rescue you and your men.”
    “Who the hell—”
    “Later. There is no time.”
    Sure, Rick thought. Later. But the alien was right. The Cubans were approaching rapidly. He tried to organize his thoughts, but it was difficult to accept what he was doing, that he was talking with—things. The spokesman—man? No. Not a man. Not a spokesman, either, his mind gibbered. He had no concepts to use. Finally he found his voice. “What do you want with us?”
    “For you to get your men aboard. Quickly, before you have none left.” The alien spread its hands, palms down, in a gesture that meant nothing to Rick. The tone of its voice had not changed, but it was not difficult to guess that the alien was impatient. “As we have said before and doubtless must say many times again, if we wished you harm, you would be dead. What can we do to you that the Cubans will not accomplish within a few hours?”
    The alien was obviously right, but that didn’t make Rick feel much better. The “rescue” was not very appealing. “How do you know my name?” he demanded.
    “From your radio. You have no more time for questions.” This