The Project Gutenberg EBook of Watch the Sky, by James H. Schmitz

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Title: Watch the Sky

Author: James H. Schmitz

Illustrator: Hortens

Release Date: February 9, 2008 [EBook #24558]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Watch The Sky

It's one thing to try to get away with what you
believe to be a lie and be caught at it--
and something different, and far worse
sometimes, to find it isn't a lie ...

by James H. Schmitz

Illustrated by Hortens

[Illustration]

Uncle William Boles' war-battered old Geest gun gave the impression that
at some stage of its construction it had been pulled out of shape and
then hardened in that form. What remained of it was all of one piece.
The scarred and pitted twin barrels were stubby and thick, and the
vacant oblong in the frame behind them might have contained standard
energy magazines. It was the stock which gave the alien weapon its
curious appearance. Almost eighteen inches long, it curved abruptly to
the right and was too thin, knobbed and indented to fit comfortably at
any point in a human hand. Over half a century had passed since, with
the webbed, boneless fingers of its original owner closed about it, it
last spat deadly radiation at human foemen. Now it hung among Uncle
William's other collected oddities on the wall above the living room
fireplace.

And today, Phil Boles thought, squinting at the gun with reflectively
narrowed eyes, some eight years after Uncle William's death, the old war
souvenir would quietly become a key factor in the solution of a colonial
planet's problems. He ran a finger over the dull, roughened frame, bent
closer to study the neatly lettered inscription: GUNDERLAND BATTLE
TROPHY, ANNO 2172, SGT. WILLIAM G. BOLES. Then, catching a familiar
series of clicking noises from the hall, he straightened quickly and
turned away. When Aunt Beulah's go-chair came rolling back into the
room, Phil was sitting at the low tea table, his back to the fireplace.

The go-chair's wide flexi