"Oh?" Alonzo blinked. "I sure mair something, awr right. After Mr. Rockford correct it."
"Correct it?"
"Oh, sure. Mr. Rockford, he up rong before you this morning to find me and say you are writing a retter rast night and I must bring it by for him to make awr your mistakes over again."
So Rockford was watching all the time, pretending to be in a drunken sleep....
"Rootenant—" Alonzo shifted his big feet impatiently. "You stirr owe me six fig—"
Hunter swung around and strode away, afraid he might decide to choke the animal after all. A culture of twenty worlds was the same as already destroyed, and he was held in a maddening quagmire of helplessness by a crafty alcoholic and a dog with the mind of a small child.
"Ah ... my boy!" Rockford came out of the cabin, beaming as though nothing had ever happened. "Look to your left, among those ghost trees—Narf is demonstrating his quick-draw skill to Sonig. Narf is supposed to be a very dangerous man, you know."
Hunter looked, and saw Narf whipping up the blunt, ugly spread-beam blaster—known to soldiers as the Coward's Special, because at short range it could not miss and would always cripple and blind a man for life even though it would not always kill him. Sonig was standing by, nodding his weasel head and smiling in open admiration.
"Of course," Rockford said, "Sonig isn't mentioning the needle gun all Verdam envoys carry up their sleeve. He's flattering Narf's ego for a reason—he intends to have Vesta, as well as Jardeen, sewed up for the Verdam empire when he leaves here."
"And so far as I can see," Hunter said coldly, "Sonig never is going to have anything vaguely resembling intelligent resistance to his plans."