Chapter 21

Our assault on the fourth planet orbiting Alpha Centauri was planned to overawe the resident Utorians instead of shooting them. That way, we could preserve the chemical plants and would have enough trained plant operators to keep the place going after we took over. We were going to try to duplicate our operation used on Utor itself.

Therefore, we approached the planet with eight of our battleships spaced out into an arc for safety to them and moved in at a leisurely pace. The idea was to give the boss on the ground the opportunity to see exactly what he was facing. The Utorians used certain standard radio frequencies for each kind of job, so it was easy to know what frequency we should use to insure contact. As a psychological ploy, I used the standard emergency frequency to call the boss.

When we were acknowledged, I demanded to speak to the boss. I threatened utter destruction of the facilities if he did not show up within 15 minutes. To emphasize my point, I had battleship B-4 swoop in and vaporize the ground near one of the main buildings by means of the ray gun quad-mounts that the ship carried. They fired from outside the atmosphere and still came very close to the buildings. The resulting cloud of smoke and dust appeared to get their attention on the ground.

The boss showed up within the specified 15 minutes and answered when I called him. I had gotten his name from the records on Utor, so he was impressed that I knew who I was talking to. Anyway, I told him that we were from Earth, and were the ones who had interfered with the delivery of ethyl alcohol to his facility. I also reminded him that we were just back from a trip to Utor so he could not expect any backing from there.

This was his introduction to the advantages of the Lurie Drive and the fact that we could flit around the galaxy with so little time wasted in transit. That alone was impressive enough, but what really awed him was that we could travel to Utor more quickly than he could reach them with his FTL radio. He had received word from Utor of the change in government, but it had taken sixteen days for the message to get to him.

In any case, he surrendered when I pointed out that he had no way to fight us off, and we could reduce his empire to dust in only a few minutes with the eight spaceships that were now hanging over his head. All I had to do to emphasize my point was to remind him of the trench that one of the battleships had dug. I did say that the beams from the ray guns had missed the buildings on purpose, but our aim was fine enough that we could easily take out all of his buildings at our leisure.

It took about 40 minutes to make the arrangements for me to land with with my bodyguards and advisers. He specified the place where I could meet him and set a time. Just to be confrontational, I told him that the time was not acceptable. I would be there in 30 minutes, and I expected him to be there waiting on me. We were ready to go, so I walked to the flying box that was going to take me down.

I was five minutes late, on purpose, but all of my entourage landed and was waiting when I stepped out of my craft. I used the same mental image of the tune Pomp and Circumstance to time my steps, and I walked up to him. One of my aides handed him one of the universal translator boxes so that he could understand English. It was important that I established the conditions of the meeting.

It turned out that the plant was highly automated so that there were only 51 Utorian workers who worked in a three-shift schedule. He had another 17 Utorians who were his staff and routine office workers, and they ran the whole production system. Their primary product was a kind of plastic that had never been used on Earth.

Under normal circumstances, it was a thermoplastic with many of the attributes of polycarbonate, but it could be converted into a thermoset by spraying it with a second chemical and subjecting the sprayed item to ultra-violet light of a certain wave-length.

I grunted in all of the right places and pretended to understand what he was saying. Not being a chemist nor knowing much on the subject beyond what I was forced to learn in my freshman year of college, I really had virtually no idea of what he was talking about. That didn't really matter, I had several high grade chemists with me, and I could see out of the corner of my eye that they were bursting at the seams to get details of the polymer and its production procedures.

This plastic was very popular around the galaxy and generally paid for the operation of the Utor government and society in general. That was why he was so upset when his supply of ethyl alcohol raw material was cut off. His head would have rolled if he had not been able to keep up with his production quota. I promised to resume the production of ethyl alcohol as soon as possible. Earth could afford to supply the alcohol if the trees were harvested in a sane and orderly manner.

Further discussion revealed that there were six other such plants scattered around the galaxy, and the amount of money generated by them was just plain unbelievable. It was obvious to me that we could tap some of this revenue to rebuild Earth without doing any harm to Utor, so that was an item very high on my agenda.

I planned to get the locations of these other plants from Utor and to pay them a visit as soon as possible. It they had moved in on other planets the way that they had done to Earth, I could see that there needed to be an adjustment of attitude very soon. The Utorians also had done similar things to other planets by establishing production facilities around the galaxy for other products. Jake and Al knew nothing about this economic banditry, and they would want to take care of it as soon as they got the word. I could see the need for a larger space fleet to handle this new business.

The more I thought about this economic banditry, the more upset I got. If this were the way business in the galaxy was usually done, I could see a long fight on my hands to do something about it. I wasn't sure how the other people of Earth would feel about it, but my altruistic streak was really troubled by what I suspected. I now knew that there were millions of populated planets in the galaxy, and I hoped that I was not the only person who wanted to help those who were preyed upon by unscrupulous profiteers. Dammit, I was going to try to turn Earth into the conscience of the galaxy if there were no one else to do the job.

Sure, there were some people who liked to be told what to think and what to do, but I wanted to be sure that it was only those people who had this kind of life thrust upon them. I hated bullies, and I could not idly stand by and let them push other people around. Well, I would start campaigning on that tack as soon as I got back to Earth. Meanwhile, I had to get this operation organized to everyone's satisfaction. The current boss seemed to be amenable to reason, so he would be left in charge. However, monitors would be left to keep an eye on him to make sure that he continued to follow the new way of doing things.

We spent a week at Horsey, as the humans started to call the fourth planet of Alpha Centauri. That seemed to be enough time to get us established as the new Boss of Bosses as far as the locals were concerned, so we returned to Earth. The human chemists and their staff were left behind to study the chemical processes going on. Perhaps they could adapt the processes to make other useful items.

Back on Earth, I sent a report to Jake and Al telling them of what we had done at Horsey, and relating what I had discovered about other Utorian operations around the galaxy. I asked them to have the records searched to determine just what the former government had been doing off-planet. This turned out to be a lengthy paper, and not ready for public dissemination.

I appointed airmobile A-15 as a regular courier ship between Utor and Earth for transporting confidential reports and other information that could not wait for the normal FTL radio. A-15 had been fitted with the Lurie Drive, so it could travel from one system to another in less than 24 hours. This report was the first one to use the new courier service.

Meanwhile, I launched my campaign to get the public behind me in my plan to reform the galaxy. The first thing was to resume the ethyl alcohol shipments to Horsey. At first, I met with a lot of opposition, but that melted away when I gave out the estimated income generated by selling ethyl alcohol to the facility at Horsey.