When they arrived in the tachyon receiver chamber, they immediately took command. They were not specialists in tachyar gear. They were generalists. The skills required to assemble and install the crated instruments were built into their collective intelligence. What they lacked was operating organs, but the T’Worlie, his octopoidal assistant, Ben James Pertin and every other being who came nearby were conscripted to be their hands and legs. It was slow work that would have been impossible in a gravity field for the T’Worlie, or even for Pertin himself; but in free fall they were able to tug and guide the components into place, and the T’Worlie had mass enough to make the connections and calibrate the equipment. When they were nearly done Doc Chimp turned up, angry because he had been left behind, and his muscle finished the job quickly.
As they were finishing up, there was a blast of white sound from the tachyon receiving chamber and warning lights flashed.
Doc Chimp spun around, his wide jaw gaping. “Something important coming in?” he guessed.
“I don’t know, but Let’s go look.” They thrust themselves towards the chamber, got there just as the portal opened.
Three Sheliaks emerged.
They flashed out of the lock with a hollow hooting, long black shapes that rocketed towards the watching Terrestrials and bounced down on the green metal surface of the chamber. They clung in spite of the lack of gravity, and flowed abruptly into a new shape, black velvet globes, thigh high, three more emerged, and three more. When fifteen had come to rest on the floor of the chamber the transmission stopped. Without a detectable sign, all of them moved in synchronization. From flattened spheres, like baker’s buns set in a tray, they suddenly turned luminous, flowing with patterns of soft colour, then elongated themselves and stretched up tapered necks that rose as tall as a man.
The tallest of them, the first through the chamber and the nearest to Ben James Pertin, made a noise like escaping gas from a compressed-air cylinder. In Pertin’s ear his Pmal unit translated for him: Take notice! We are under the direction of the collective council of Sun One. We are to take command of this vessel, and all other beings aboard are to follow our orders!”
Pertin’s curiosity was suddenly transmuted into anger, a radiant rage that flooded his mind and over-ruled his inhibitions. “The hell you say!” he shouted. “I’ve had no such instructions from the Earth representatives, and I deny your authority!”
The Sheliak paused, the long neck swaying back and forth, “Your wishes are immaterial,” it stated at last. “We can destroy you.”
Doc Chimp chattered nervously. “Don’t make him mad, Ben James. You know how Sheliaks are.” Pertin did; they were among the few races which had built-in weaponry. On the infrequent occasions when the Galaxy found itself troubled by unruly barbarians, it was usually Sheliaks who were employed to quiet the opposition; they were the Foreign Legion of the Galaxy.
The long neck swayed towards the mutated chimpanzee. From the narrow orifice at its tip the sound exploded again, and the translators shouted at the chimp: “Your name! Your function! Reply at once!”
“I am Napier Chimski, technician,” the chimp replied bravely.
The vase shape swung towards Pertin. “Your name and function!”
“Oh, Ben James Pertin,” he said, distracted by hearing Doc Chimp’s real name for the first time. “I’m an engineer. But don’t go so fast! I’ve just come from Sun One myself, and I know There’s no authority for one race to impose its will on another. I will certainly report this at once!”
The Sheliak swayed silently for a moment, towards him then away. At last it said, “No orders for you at present. Go about your business.”
Pertin drew himself up, holding to a wall brace. “You’re my business!” he shouted. “There are murdering beings aboard this If you’re here by order of Sun One, as you say, why don’t you go find them and leave us alone?”
The Sheliak did not reply. All fifteen of them were swaying silently now. Perhaps they were conferring with each other, Pertin thought; Sheliaks had learned vocal sound only to talk to other races of the Galaxy, and the riddle of how they communicated among themselves was still unsolved.
“I certainly will report this,” Pertin added.
There was still no response. The pointless confrontation might have gone on, but it was interrupted by the bright thrice-repeated flash of white light that meant the thrusters were about to go into operation again.
“Oh, hell,” groaned Pertin. “Doc, we’d better get back to our cocoons.”
“Never too soon for me, Ben James,” agreed the chimp fervently, staring at the Sheliaks. “Let’s go!”
They raced for the cocoons. The warning had caught others short; the corridors were full of low-G beings hurrying back to safety before the fusion rockets began again. The Boaty-Bits arrowed past them at top velocity, like a cartoon drawing of a swarm of wasps. The octopoidal creature launched itself from a wall at the end of the corridor with a multiple thrust of its legs and spun, tentacles waving crazily, past them. There was a thundering roar, and three Sheliaks raced past them, then another three and another, in Vees. A being like a six-legged spider monkey bounced back and forth, scratching and clawing for footholds, whining irritably to itself in a high-pitched tone.
And abruptly: “Ben James! Look!”
Doc Chimp was staring down a broad transverse corridor as they soared by it. Pertin looked, saw a creature like an enormous blue eye, at least a foot across. It swerved as he looked, revealing the body behind it, a tapered torpedo shape, glittering with patterned scales like blue glass. A stubby wing spread on each side, the leading edge thick and scaled, flowing smoothly into the body, the thin trailing edge a flutter of blue. And beyond it was something bright, metallic and angular.
“It’s the Sirian, Ben James! The one that tried to kill us all. And wasn’t that the Scorpian robot with him?”
Pertin reached out, grabbed a handhold and checked himself.
The chimpanzee reacted a moment later and also stopped himself, a yard or two farther down. “What are you doing, Ben James?” he chattered.
“I’m going after them!” Pertin snapped. “The Sirian’s one of the murderers. And the robot’s up to something, too.”
“No, Ben James! You can’t take the G-force. Let’s let the Sheliaks take care of them, that’s what they’re here for.”
The featureless green light of the corridor faded and changed to a dull crimson glow. That was the short-term warning; they had less than thirty seconds now before the rockets began.
Pertin cursed. The chimp was right, of course, and he knew it; it didn’t make it any more enjoyable, though. “Oh, hell,” he groaned. “All right, Let’s go!”
They made it - not with any time to spare. They rolled into their cocoons just as the first giant thrust struck, and a moment later the regular repeated sound of the rockets reached them. The webbing spread itself over Pertin; he fell into the warm, receiving shape of the cocoon, but he resisted its comfort. While it was still adjusting to his shape, he was already stabbing at the controls of the stereo stage, trying to summon all the cocoon-bound beings on the ship into a conference call. The automatic dialling circuits were equal to the job; it was not something that was often done, but the physical capacity for it existed.
But not this time. All lines were busy. Every being on the ship, it appeared, was already using his stereo stage for purposes of his own - most likely for trying to transmit a tachyon message to his own people at Sun One, Pertin knew.