Free Retief-Ambassador to Space by Keith Laumer Page B

outside, I don't imagine we could stage a suitable ceremony in
any case. I suppose I could accept your parole; you seem like an honest chap,
for a foreigner. But be back by lunchtime, remember. I hate these last-minute
noose adjustments." His hand came up suddenly; there was a sharp zopp! and
a glowing light bulb across the room pooled and died.
    "All the same, it's a good thing you asked," the
old curator blew across the end of his pistol barrel and tucked the weapon
away.
    "I'll be here," Retief assured the elder.
"Now if you'd just show me the closest exit, I'd better be getting
started."
    The Gloian tottered along a narrow passage, opened a plank
door letting onto the side garden. "Nice night," he opined, looking
at the sky where the glowing vapor trails of fighter planes looped across the
constellations. "You couldn't ask for a better one for—say, what are these
errands you've got to run?"
    "Cultural secrets," Retief laid a finger across
his lips and stepped out into the night.
    It was a brisk ten-minute walk to the Embassy garages,
where the small official fleet of high-powered CDT vehicles were stored. Retief
selected a fast-moving one-man courier boat; a moment later the lift deposited
the tiny craft on the roof. He checked over the instruments, took a minute to
tune the tight-beam finder to the personal code of the Gloian Chief of State,
and lifted off.
     
5
    Rocketing along at fifteen hundred feet, Retief had a
superb view of the fireworks below. The Blortian beachhead north of town had
been expanded into a wide curve of armored units poised ready for the dawn assault
that was to sweep the capital clear. To the west, Gloian columns were massing
for the counterstrike. At the point of juncture of the proposed assault lines,
the lights of the Terran Embassy glowed forlornly.
    Retief corrected course a degree and a half, still
climbing rapidly, watching the quivering needles of the seek-and-find beam. The
emerald and ruby glow of a set of navigation lights appeared a mile ahead,
moving erratically at an angle to his course. He boosted the small flier to
match altitudes, swung in on the other craft's tail. Close now, he could
discern the bright-doped fabric-covered wings, the taut rigging wires, the
brilliant orange blazon of the Gloian national colors on the fuselage, above
the ornate personal emblem of Marshal Lib Glip. He could even make out the
goggled features of the warrior Premier gleaming faintly in the greenish light
from the instrument faces, his satsuma-toned scarf streaming bravely behind
him.
    Retief maneuvered until he was directly above the
unsuspecting craft, then peeled off and hurtled past it on the left close
enough to rock the light airplane violently in the buffeting slip stream. He
came around in a hairpin turn, shot above the biplane as it banked right, did
an abrupt left to pass under it, and saw a row of stars appear across the
plastic canopy beside his head as the Gloian ace turned inside him, catching
him with a burst from his machine guns.
    Retief put the nose of the flier down, dived clear of the
stream of lead, swung back and up in a tight curve, rolled out on the
airplane's tail. Lib Glip, no mean pilot, put his ship through a series of
vertical eights, snaprolls, immelmans, and falling leaves, to no avail. Retief
held the courier boat glued to his tail almost close enough to brush the wildly
wig-wagging control surfaces.
    After fifteen minutes of frantic evasive tactics, the
Gloian ship settled down to a straight speed run. Retief loafed alongside,
pacing the desperate flier. When Lib Glip looked across at him, Retief made a
downward motion of his hand and pointed at the ground. Then he eased over,
placed himself directly above the bright-painted plane, and edged downward.
    Below, he could see Lib Glip's face, staring upward. He
lowered the boat another foot. The embattled Premier angled his plane downward.
Retief stayed with him, forcing him down until the craft was racing along
barely