The Big Cheep crawled over to his accustomed place atop the panel board.
“They licked us, boss,” Sevridge said wearily. “They stomped us ragged. But try to remember that it wasn’t my fault.”
Sevridge yawned. The Cheep watched him for a time, then crawled down the panel board, talked across Sevridge’s thigh, arms outspread for balance, used the buttons to climb up the front of his tunic, and sat on his shoulder.
“You’re going to be one unhappy little guy when you see it happen,” Sevridge said sleepily. He put his head back on the acceleration rest. The Cheep made a soft chittering sound in Sevridge’s ear. A small three-fingered hand reached around and the Cheep began to stroke Sevridge’s head, just over the right eye.
“Mmmm,” Sevridge said. “That’s right where it aches. How did you know?”
The Cheep chittered some more. “Mmmm,” Sevridge said. His chin dropped down onto his chest.
A sharp and painful yank on Sevridge’s ear brought him quickly out of sleep. The Cheep scrambled over onto the instrument panel, chittering shrilly. Sevridge gave one frightened glance at the planet looming up in the front screen. He slapped the gyro switch, spun the ship through a ninety degree arc and slammed on all the power he dared. The iron fist of acceleration clamped on him, sickening him. He felt his eyes drag back into his head. His hand dropped leadenly from the gyro switch and he felt it strike the master switch. Alarm bells rang in the back of his mind, but until the acceleration blow lightened, he could do nothing.
As soon as he could see and think again, he put on the slow brakes and set the screens with trembling fingers. The incredible thing he had suspected from that one glance at the planet became true in the screens.
The equipment train was dropping onto C-17. There was no time left in which to insinuate himself at the head of the line and pick up the train again. There were no relays to halt the inevitable drop, no switch to stop work in progress.
He heightened the magnification on the screen, dimly conscious of the dazed and battered Cheep pulling itself to its feet, just under the screen. Now the equipment was a string of dots merging with the planet. He focused on the Administration Tower.
Two BX pulverizers went into action at the base of it — dark beetles, thrashing and grinding and darting, their tail spouts alight with the unbearable flame of fission. The tower, with Blount’s offices on the top floor, toppled slowly down toward the flames. The patrol craft darted and lancets of flame scoured down at the busy, mindless equipment. Then the dust rose so that he could see no longer. The lights on his panel indicated the equipment that had ceased to operate. Eleven pieces, fifteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. For a long time no other lights appeared. Then the twenty-second. Not enough, he knew. Not nearly enough to halt progress. The crest of the western range was visible above the cloak of dust. Then, slowly, it began to settle down toward the planet floor as the dozers sheared away the base.
The Big Cheep had dug into his food parcel. He had a stalk of something purple and very brittle. It made crisp sounds as he chomped it.
Sevridge tried to determine how this horror had happened. The Cheep had disturbed the set of the instruments while crawling on the panel. Of course, on the long trip to C-17 the Cheep would have had a chance to observe how the panel worked...
But that was insane, of course. And that vague feeling of compulsion when his hand had struck the master switch... no, this was a tragic accident, compounded of coincidence.
The Big Cheep finished the purple stalk and licked his fingers. There was something ineffably jaunty about him. Jaunty and wise and satisfied, as he avidly watched the dust-screened planet.