Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Space Science Fiction, February and March, 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
ULLR UPRISING
A STORY IN TWO PARTS
BY H. BEAM PIPER
ILLUSTRATED BY ORBAN
"The heathen geeks, they wear no breeks," the Terrans
sang. But on a crazy world like Ullr, clothes didn't
make the fighting man. There both red and yellow
meant danger—and blood!
I
The big armor-tender vibrated, gently and not unpleasantly, as thecontragravity field alternated on and off. Sometimes it rockedslightly, like a boat on the water, and, in the big screen whichserved in lieu of a window at the front of the control-cabin, thedingy-yellow landscape would seem to tilt a little. The air wasfaintly yellow, the sky was yellow with a greenish cast, and theclouds were green-gray.
No human had ever set foot on the surface, or breathed the air, ofNiflheim. To have done so would have been instant death; the air was amixture of free fluorine and fluoride gasses, the soil was metallicfluorides, damp with acid rains, and the river was pure hydrofluoricacid. Even the ordinary spacesuit would have been no protection; theglass and rubber and plastic would have disintegrated in a matter ofminutes. People came to Niflheim, and worked the mines and uraniumrefineries and chemical plants, but they did so inside power-drivenand contragravity-lifted armor, and they lived on artificialsatellites two thousand miles off-planet. Niflheim was worse thanairless; much worse.
The chief engineer sat at his controls, making the minor lateraladjustments in the vehicle's position which were not possible to theautomatic controls. At his own panel of instruments, a small man withgrizzled black hair around a bald crown, and a grizzled beard, chewednervously at the stump of a dead cigar and listened intently. A large,plump-faced, young man in soiled khaki shirt and shorts, withextremely hairy legs, was doodling on his notepad and eating candy outof a bag. And a black-haired girl in a suit of coveralls three sizestoo big for her, and, apparently, not much of anything else, loungedwith one knee hooked over her chair-arm, staring into the screen atthe distant horizon.
"I can see them," the girl said, lifting a hand in front of her. "Attwo o'clock, about one of my hand's-breaths above the horizon. Butonly four of them."
The man with the grizzled beard put his face into the fur around theeyepiece of the telescopic-'visor and twisted a dial. "You have goodeyes, Miss Quinton," he complimented. "The fifth's inside the handlingmachine. One of the Ullrans. Gorkrink."
The largest of the specks that had appeared on the horizon resolveditself into a handling-machine, a thing like an oversizedcontragravity-tank, with a bull-dozer-blade, a stubby derri