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"Our
new orders, Commander." The communications officer on duty
handed a print-out to his commander - Ned Blake. "It just
arrived from BETA, Sir. Prime order of Cmdr. Walsh
himself."
Ned Blake took
the transparency, broke the seal and murmured before reading it:
"He won't do it again, will he? It'd be too obvious..."
Then his glance reached the central line and his face turned a
deep red color before he exploded in an unbelievably loud shout:
"NO!!!" He whirled round to his comm-officers: "Get
me a connection to BETA, Walsh himself! Immediately!"
The
communications officer turned to his colleague beside him and
whispered: "I wonder what we have to transport this time. I
bet it's–" He signaled the established
connection.
"CHICKEN FOR
KIRWIN!!!" Blake bellowed through the bridge and into the
Comm. "Last time it was the congress of poultry farmers on
Granna. The time before that I had to carry turkey eggs to
Nebraska. Before that it was genetically engineered geese for
this low gravity planet at the ass-end of the universe. And now –
CHICKEN FOR KIRWIN! That's enough! If you want my resignation,
just say so!"
"Commander
Blake. Would you please remember correct military behaviour
between commanding officers." Walsh said in a soft tone.
"Yours is the nearest vessel for the job and the ambassadors
want chicken for their reception. – And your application to
resign is turned down. Transmission ends."
Walsh
leaned back in his seat, pressed his fingertips together and
allowed himself a grin full of black humor when he remembered the
visual tape included in the report the S5's had made after their
mission to establish contact with the Traash: The chicken-like
"Iron Falcon" stuck with its "head" in the
side of Blake's ship...
Next
week the farmers on Ozark want to deliver 5,800 living ducks to
Texarcota...
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