Free Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III by A. Bertram Chandler Page B

the Shaara guards—or their reliefs—were still on duty, that the square was still crowded with citizens who must be prisoners as much as the two humans, although not as closely confined.
    Then the lights went out.
    Almost immediately a great oblong of bright illumination appeared on the wall of one of the tall buildings surrounding the square, down the facade of which a huge white sheet had been stretched. After a flickering second or so a picture appeared.
    Grimes had seen it before.
    Tamara had seen it before.
    Again they watched themselves writhing in naked abandon on the deck of Little Sister’s main cabin, again they listened to their wordless cries. But they were hearing more than the noises that they had made on that long ago occasion. The crowd was . . . growling. Its front ranks surged inwards, towards the cage, hesitated when the amplified artificial voice of a Shaara princess boomed out, when a drone machine gunner fired a noisy but harmless burst into the air.
    But their guards made no attempt to stop the natives from throwing things, may even have ordered them to do so. As one the Shaara buzzed aloft, above the trajectory of the missiles—the rotten fruit, the garbage, the ordure. They returned to earth when the barrage had spent its fury, fired more machine bursts into the air while the princess in command ordered the mob to disperse. A worker threw a couple of rough blankets into the cage, another one pushed in a fresh jug of water, another bowl of the pabulum.
    The princess said, “You will sleep.”
    Grimes and Tamara huddled together in their misery. Neither said anything. Neither slept.
    ***
    The sun was well up when the blimp came to carry the cage back to the ship. With first light the mob had turned out in force to stare at the prisoners, to make threatening gestures, held at bay only by the Shaara display of weaponry. Grimes and Tamara were almost happy when their swaying prison was lifted high above the hostile crowd, thankful when they were set down on the platform outside Baroom’s airlock. They submitted with near-cheerfulness to the ordeal of a hosing down before they were released from the cage and dragged inside the vessel.
    Their familiar cell was almost homelike.
    She asked in a frightened voice, “Grimes, what was all that about?”
    He replied, “I don’t know . . . But . . .” He ransacked his memory. “I have read reports on this planet—I think. I have seen films . . . Those blue-skinned people, with the odd horns . . . And, as I remember, odd ideas. It’s off all the trade routes, but the odd tramp calls here—Shaara, Hallicheki, as well as those from the human worlds . . .” The memories were coming back. “There was an incident—a Dog Star Line ship, and four of the officers, two men and two women, bathing naked in a lake. They were mobbed, stoned. Three of them died. The Dog Star Line screamed to the Admiralty. One of our—sorry, one of the Survey Service destroyers was sent here—not quite a punitive expedition, although it could have developed into one. But all that came of it was a directive to all Survey Service commanding officers and to all shipmasters that local prejudices, such as the nudity taboo, were to be respected. But there was, I believe, a show of force now that I come to think of it. The village near which the murders happened was razed to the ground, but with no loss of life . . .”
    A snore interrupted him.
    He saw that she was curled up on the padded deck, sleeping soundly.
    He sighed, tried to sleep himself.
    At last he did, but not before his memory had supplied him with more details about this unimportant planet, this world just waiting to be snapped up by one of the major powers but so poor, so far from anywhere that only a Shaara Rogue Queen would be tempted to seize the prize . . .
    Darijja . . .
    Dominant race, mammalian humanoids . . .
    Major religion, Darajjan, the worship of the god Darajja . . . Puritanical, condemning all sensual