Retaliation by Bill McCay Page A

recruits need training. If they were formed into guard contingents for your caravans-“ “He must also recruit from my people,” Nakeer said.
    “We must also learn the Earthmen tongue- rather than picking up some few tattered words here and there.” “Since I run the English classes, I think I can speak for that,” Daniel said.
    “Send us your best and bright-est-men and women. My best student is my wife.” Nakeer looked from the Earthman to his father-in-law. A slow smile came to his villainous-looking face. “These are things that we can agree on. And I think the others will agree, too.”
    Maybe they never got out of the Bronze Age here, Daniel thought. But they still know that politics is the art of the possible.
    He could hardly wait to see the next round of wheeling and dealing. Barbara Shore released a long-pent-up breath as she stepped out of the lens of energy that marked the Star-Gate’s farther terminus. It seemed as though the real-ization of traversing all that distance hit her all at once-or maybe it was the aftereffect of that wild, bumpy ride. Her legs abruptly didn’t seem to want to support the rest of her shapely form.
    She tottered, and the young Marine lieutenant awaiting her stretched out an anxious hand. But Bar-bara evaded him, aiming for the strapping Marine gunnery sergeant at the lieutenant’s side.
    “Sorry, darlin’,” Barbara said in a broad Texas drawl, “but if I gotta fall into somebody’s arms, I’m gonna pick the handsomest guy in the room.” Muffled laughter from the rest of the guard detail was cut off by a lethal look from the red-faced young officer. The poor gunny was red-faced, too, almost standing at attention as he supported the female astro-physicist. Barbara just grinned and snuggled as she got her balance back. The noncom’s response was one she’d encountered often enough. Even extremely competent men-athletes, scholars ... and a few Marines-somehow had their gears unmesh when they got an arm around her.
    Barbara extricated herself from the man’s hold and took a couple of experimental steps. “Looks like I can make it by myself now, Gunny. But it was fun while it lasted.”
    She patted the noncom’s behind, then turned to the young officer. “Where to, Loot? Do I dump my stuff at my quarters first, or does that wait until Colonel O’Neil gives me the final okay?”
    “I’ve detailed a man to move your baggage, Dr. Shore,” the lieutenant said after clearing his throat only once. “The colonel is eager to see you.” “If you say so, sport,” Barbara replied as they set off down stone hallways still festooned with cables for temporary lighting. In the distance she heard the echo-ing racket of a gasoline generator.
    You’re nervous, she told herself as they walked down a colonnaded corridor in what seemed to be a larger empty space. You always mouth off when you’re nervous, and that’s all you’ve done since you arrived in this crazy place. Six months ago, if someone had told her that she’d actually step through the StarGate and land on an alien world, Barbara would have dismissed the idea as sheer fantasy-not even science fiction. In those dark days the StarGate had been an enigmatic portal that had steadily resisted all their efforts to open. Then cute, somewhat flaky Dr. Daniel Jackson had come along and produced the key. The StarGate had actually worked! They’d sent a ro-bot probe through what looked like a rippling pond of light and received information from another planet! Colonel O’Neil and his boss, General West, had promptly wrapped the project in top secrecy and fired all the civilian workers. Barbara had spent months exiled from the missile silo that housed the StarGate. Then one day the general’s shadowy minions had con-tacted her, and here Barbara was on the other side of the interstellar portal.
    It felt about as real as going to Oz.
    But the young lieutenant had promised that she’d be going to see O’Neil, and that was