The Game of Stars and Comets by Andre Norton Page A

unnecessary to put into crass speech.
    "The sonic's failure had been reported to Cor," Abu remarked in the tone of one making an official statement.
    "Yes, it might almost seem that someone paid a high price for a bad bargain." Kade tried to needle some response from these three who certainly possessed more knowledge of Klorian affairs.
    Santoz looked baffled, Che'in amused. The reply was left to their commanding officer.
    "We will not go into that." The Commander's retort had the snap of an order. "The High-Lord-Pac will conduct the investigation. It is out of our hands, since the dead and missing are not post personnel."
    Proper investigation for which side, Kade wanted to ask and knew that would be fruitless. He got up.
    "That is exactly what happened." He caught a measuring glance from Abu, and was no longer so sure of himself.
    "The report has gone to Cor. Undoubtedly we shall hear more."
    Again Che'in giggled. "When one digs too deeply into the bottom of a still pond, one stirs up a quantity of mud," he observed. "And the High-Lord-Pac is not one to dirty his gloves of justice. Stalemate, commander?"
    "We may be glad for that. You," Abu regarded Kade straightly, this time with a critical and unsympathetic eye. "Walk softly, my friend. You will take over the com transmitter. I have a wish for you to be at hand if your testimony should suddenly be needed."
    To tend the transmitter, in a station where off-world messages were few, might have meant a period of unrelieved boredom. But Kade brought with him the tape which had been Steel's record, and sitting where he could see the alarm light above the relay board, plugged in an ear-reader to hear the words of a man who had been killed somewhere on Klor—just as he might have been killed four days ago.
    The expressionless words which spun long sentences of trade detail, descriptions of the country and the natives into his ears were monotonous, and he had to guess what should have been in the gaps. This tape had not been edited for a stranger's use, a man's record was for his own advantage, a reminder of details pertinent to his particular post job. Kade had not expected a concise listing, just a leading hint or two.
    He judged by the abundance of notes on flora and fauna that Steel had had a keen interest in the biology of the planet, narrowing eventually to observations concerning the plains vegetation, the kwitu herds, and the mountain valleys.
    When those two unusual words were mentioned, Kade did not at first realize their significance. Then he straightened, his swift movement jerking loose the reader cord. Had he really heard that? The Terran thumped the small plug back into his ear, waited tensely for a repeat of that unbelievable phrase. Unbelievable because it had been uttered in another tongue, one perhaps twenty men in the Service, and those men scattered on like number of planets, could have translated.
    " Peji equals sunkakan! "
    So he had been right! Those two words in Lakota Sioux had cropped up in the middle of a description of a mountain valley Steel had surveyed, planted there perhaps to conceal their importance from any future user of the tape, save one of his own tribe. But had Steel then been expecting trouble, or personal danger? And how could the other have foreseen he would be replaced on Klor by a fellow tribesman. No, Steel must have used that phrase because the words themselves had a strong meaning for him, a meaning connected with his own racial past.
    Peji: grass, the grass of the North American plains where Sioux warriors had ruled. Sunkakan: horses, the horses which the white man had brought, but which turned drifting primitive hunters into the finest irregular cavalry his home world had ever seen, aided them to hold back an encroaching mechanical civilization for a surprising number of years. Hold back conquerors! Kade pulled the plug from his ear, stared at the com board without seeing one of its buttons or levers.
    That was history, and history