Good-naturedly the girl moved away from his hand. “Maybe we should see what Harriet wants first,” she suggested. And, sure enough, Harriet was standing at the entrance to the headquarters tent, a hundred meters away, evidently waiting for them to come to her.
As they straggled in, she looked them up and down with distaste. “A total failure, I see,” she said, nodding. “Of course, that was to be expected.”
“Harriet,” Jim Morrissey began dangerously.
She raised her hand. “It doesn’t matter. Perhaps you’ll be interested in what has happened while you were gone.”
“Harriet, we were only gone twenty or thirty minutes!” Morrissey exploded.
“Nevertheless. First there was a tactran signal. We’re being reinforced, and so are the Peeps. Second—” She stepped aside to let them pass through into the tent. The others who had stayed behind were clustered inside, looking, Dalehouse thought, curiously self-satisfied. “I believe you wanted a specimen of those underground creatures? We found one trying to steal some of our supplies. Of course, it would have been easier if so many of you hadn’t been wasting your time on foolishness, so you could have helped when we needed you—”
Kappelyushnikov bellowed, “Gasha! Get to point, right now. You caught specimen for us?”
“Of course,” she said. “We put him in one of Morrissey’s cages. I was quite severely scratched doing it, but that’s about what you can expect when—”
They didn’t let her finish; they were all inside and staring.
The stale mouse-cage smell was a thousand times stronger, almost choking Danny Dalehouse, but there it was. It was nearly two meters long, tiny eyes set close together above its snout, squeezed tight in anguish. It was squealing softly — Danny would almost have said brokenheartedly — to itself. It was gnawing at the metal bars of the cage and simultaneously scrabbling at the plastic flooring with duckfoot-shaped claws. It was covered with a sort of dun-colored down or short fur; it seemed to have at least six pairs of limbs, all stubby, all clawed, and all incredibly strong.
Whatever its teeth were made of, they were hard; one of the bars of the cage was almost gnawed through. And its squeals of pain never stopped.
NINE
THE SWARM WAS half fledglings now, tiny balloonets that had just cast off their parachuting threads of silk and now struggled bravely to keep up with the great two-meter adult spheres. In the constant chorus of the swarm, the fledglings’ voices were as tiny as their gasbags. Their shrill peepings used the least possible amount of hydrogen, to preserve their precarious lift balance against the few drops in their ballast bladders.
Charlie patrolled majestically through the swarm, driving the bulk of his body reprovingly against a cluster of infant balloonets who were singing against the swarm melody, rotating his eye patches to scan the skies for ha’aye’i, listening to the countersongs of praise and complaint from the other adults of the swarm, and always, always, leading them as they sang. There was much praise, and much complaint. The praise he took for granted. To the complaint he attended with more care, ready either to remedy or rebuke. Three females sang despairingly of little ones who dropped their flying tails too soon, or who could not hold their hydrogen and so drifted helplessly down to the voracious world below. Another pealed a dirge of anger and sorrow, blaming the deformed fledglings on the Persons of the Middle Sun.
This was just; and Charlie led the swarm in a concurrence of sympathy and advice. “Never” — (Never, never, never, sang the chorus) — “never again must we breed near the New Suns.”
The females chorused agreement, but some of the males sang in counterpoint, “But how can we know which is real Heaven-Danger and which is not? And where may we breed at all? The Persons of the Three Suns are under all our air!”
Charlie’s answering song was serene. “I will ask my friend of the Middle Sun. He will know.” (He will know, he will know, chorused the swarm.) But a male sang a dire question. “And when the swarming rapture is on us, will we remember?”
“Yes,” sang Charlie. “We will remember because we must.” (We must, we must.)
That should have settled it. And yet, the song of the swarm was not at peace. Undertones buzzed and discorded against the dominant themes. Even Charlie’s own song faltered how and then, and repeated itself when it should have burst into triumphant new themes. Currents were stirring under the surface of his mind. They never reached consciousness; if they had, no power could have kept him from expressing them in song. But they were there. Worries. Doubts. Puzzles. Who were these Persons of the Three Suns? Where had they come from? They seemed the same, as like as any swarms of balloonists. Yet Charlie’s friend ’Anny ’Alehouse had explained that they were not the same.
First there had been the Persons of the Small Sun. They had seemed no more than another species of devouring Earth-Danger creatures in the beginning, although they had created a tiny sun almost at once. But their camp was almost at the limit of Charlie’s range, and the swarm had not troubled themselves about those Persons.
Then there was the group of Charlie’s friend; and almost at once, the third group, the Persons of the Big Sun. They were worrisome! Their sun was always shining brightly, brighter than the Heaven-Danger at its brightest. Since it was almost the deepest of Charlie’s instincts to swarm in the direction of a bright light, it was actual pain to turn and swim away from the Big Sun. They had almost been trapped when the Persons first arrived — when all three of the parties of Persons of the Suns arrived — because each of them came roaring down through the air on a pillar of Sun-Flame. But none had been close enough to cause them to swarm. By the time the flock had maneuvered near, the flames were gone and the lights were darkened. Then the Persons of the Big Sun had sent one of themselves up into the air in the great queer thing that fluttered and rattled; it was harder than the ha’aye’i Sky-Danger, and even more deadly. Something about it drew balloonists into its swinging claws, and more than a dozen of Charlie’s swarm had been ripped open and gone fluttering down to ground, helpless, despairing, and silent. Now they avoided it in fear and sorrow. Two out of three of the groups of New Persons, and both to be avoided! The one because they killed, the other because they did not fly at all, were no more than any other Ground-Danger, would not have been thought to be Persons at all -
Except for ’Anny ’Alehouse.
Charlie sang of his friend, who redeemed his whole race. ’Anny ’Alehouse and his sometimes companion, ’Appy — they were Persons! They flew as Persons flew, by the majesty and the grace of the air itself. It was a sad thing that even their Middle Sun had flared like a true Heaven-Danger and caused the flock to breed poorly. But it did not occur to Charlie to blame Morrissey’s flare on Dalehouse or Kappelyushnikov; it did not occur to him to think of blame at all. When Kung flared, the balloonists bred. They could not help it. They did not try. They had never developed defenses against a false flare, one lacking in the actinic radiation that helped them make their hydrogen and triggered their fertility. They had never needed any — until now. And they had no way to learn a defense.
The swarm was drifting toward a swelling cumulus cloud; Charlie swelled his singing sac and boomed out, “Hive up, my brothers!” (Hive up, hive up, came the answering chorus.) “Hive up, sisters and mates! Hive up, young and old! Watch for ha’aye’i in the wet shadows! Huddle the little ones close!”
Every member of the swarm was singing full-throatedly now as the swarm compacted, swimming into the ruddy-pink, cottony edges of the cloud. They could see each other only as ghosts, except for the oldest and biggest males, whose luminous markings gave them more visibility. But they could hear the songs, and Charlie and the other senior males patrolled the periphery of the swarm. If ha’aye’i were there, the males could not defend the swarm — could not even defend themselves to any purpose. But they could sing warning, and then the swarm would scatter in all directions, so that only the slowest and weakest would be caught.