Freedom’s Choice by Anne McCaffrey Page A

and grins widened.
    â€œMight we get filled in on the details?” asked a silver-haired man—one of the generals, Kris thought. His eyes traveled from Zainal to Kris to Mitford and then Easley. “The implications of such a capture are staggering. Rastancil, Major General,” and he added with a rueful expression, “retired.”
    â€œAs I said,” Mitford began, “I was going to send for you as soon as I could report that Phase One was successful.” He gestured toward the ship, frowned brieflyas there was a scuffle at the hatch. Cupping his hands over his mouth, he let out his parade-ground voice. “EASY DOWN THERE! OR NO ONE GOES IN! LATORE, DOYLE, MAKE ’EM FORM A PROPER LINE. Sorry about that,” and he turned back to the brass. “It is successful and I think it’s time I turned the matter over to Tactics or Strategy or whatever you want to call an appropriate body.”
    â€œSergeant, if you got this much done,” Rastancil said, “you’ve more than earned the right to sit in on a Phase Two, if you mean what I think you do.”
    Mitford nodded sharply. “A Phase Two and a Phase Three.” He gestured to Zainal again. “Yeah, we do need to talk.” More sharp yells of protest from the spaceship. “Lemme handle this first,” he said, and slipping back into the runabout, his expression ominous, he circled down to the crowd around the hatch.
    â€œJust what had you in mind for Phase Two, Emassi Zainal?” one of the naval men asked. He had a definite British accent, so Kris placed him as Geoffrey Ainger.
    â€œI am Zainal, no more Emassi,” he said. “I will tell you about Phase One.”
    â€œThen do it up at Narrow, why don’t you?” Kris suggested as yet more people swarmed across the field to set eyes on the space vehicle. “I’ll wait here for the sergeant.”
    â€œWe will all wait for the sergeant,” Easley said, but he gestured to a point farther up the field, well out of the traffic from camp to the parked ship, where there was a slope up to the hedgerow, providing seating.
    If there were one or two men who cleared their throats or raised eyebrows in surprise at that firmly delivered suggestion, Easley was so deft at easing them the way he wanted them to go that they all complied. When they got to the spot, Zainal crossed his ankles and sank gracefully to the ground. Kris sat beside him and Easley on Zainal’s other side, facing the others as they made themselvescomfortable. He gave a concise report of Phase One, from the first report by Coo to the moment it landed. Kris was particularly proud of his English, maybe not perfectly grammatical, but concise.
    When he was finished, a balding, stockily built man with a weather-beaten face and a fine scar from jaw to temple, held up his hand. “Why would you have been the object of such a concerted kidnap attempt, Zainal?”
    â€œHow much do you know of Eosi?”
    â€œMore than I like but not enough to understand why they’d hunt out one man,” was the reply.
    â€œYou are the American general, Bull Fetterman?” A nod answered Zainal’s question and Kris gave him full marks for having sorted out names and ranks. Zainal kept himself informed of what sort of people had been dropped, and knew, from Mitford’s report, of the presence of military and naval officers. “Then you will know that Eosi command Catteni maneuvers.” Fetterman wasn’t the only one who nodded. “They pick Emassi to make longer their lives.”
    â€œSay what?” Bull Fetterman assumed a posture and an expression that had undoubtedly given him his nickname.
    â€œThey subsume the Catteni totally,” Kris said. “Zainal would have become a zombie…or worse…. He wouldn’t be dead but he wouldn’t have any personality left. Like Heinlein’s Puppet Masters’ yarn.”
    â€œAnd the first