The Spectre General

IV

At War Base Three nobody was happy. Ships that were supposed to be fight-months away carrying on the carefully planned search for General Carr’s hideout were fluttering down out of the sky like senile penguins, disabled by blown jets, jammed computers, and all the other natural ills that worn out and poorly serviced equipment is heir to. Technical maintenance was quietly going mad. Commander Krogson was being noisy about it.

“Schninkle!” he screamed. “Isn’t anything happening anyplace?”

“Nothing yet, sir,” said the little man.

“Well make something happen!” He hoisted his battered brogans onto the scarred top of the desk and chewed savagely on a frayed cigar. “How are the other sectors doing?”

“No better than we are,” said Schninkle. “Commander Snork of Sector Six tried to pull a fast one but he didn’t get away with it. He sent his STAP into a plantation planet out at the edge of the Belt and had them hypno the whole population. By the time they were through there were about fifteen million greenies running around yelling ‘Up with General Carr!’ ‘Down with the Lord Protector!’ ‘Long Live the People’s Revolution!’ and things like that. Snork even gave them a few medium vortex blasters to make it look more realistic. Then he sent in his whole fleet, tipped off the press at Prime Base, and waited. Guess what the Bureau of Essential Information finally sent him?”

“I’ll bite,” said Commander Krogson.

“One lousy cub reporter. Snork couldn’t back out then so he had to go ahead and blast the planet down to bedrock. This morning he got a three-line notice in Space and a citation as Third Rate Protector of the People’s Space Ways, Eighth Grade.”

“That’s better than the nothing we’ve got so far!” said the commander gloomily.

“Not when the press notice is buried on the next to last page right below the column on ‘Our Feathered Comrades’,” said Schninkle, “and when the citation is posthumous. They even misspelled his name; it came out Snark!”