Ketch came to Howell. He said abruptly, “Since the Marintha’s wrecked, you’ve made a deal for us to be taken aboard a globe-ship, haven’t you?”
“Not yet,” said Howell. “I’m not sure I can. They’re already pretty crowded. Maybe there’s no room for us. Maybe no air.”
Ketch said feverishly, “But we’ve got to go with them! And we’ve got to take all the technical data the Marintha carries!”
Howell shrugged.
“I’m trying to arrange the Marintha’s destruction. Maybe I can’t even make that absolutely certain.”
“But we have to go with them!” insisted Ketch. His tone was suddenly urgent. “Presently they’ll gather together—all the globe-ships at one place! We’ll have weapons worked out! We’ll demonstrate them! I’ll take a crew of the little men and we’ll go hunting slug-ships! We’ll blast them! We’ll smash them! We’ll curl their hair! And then we’ll begin to make a fleet and we’ll move on the worlds the slug-ships come from—”
“We?” asked Howell politely.
“I’ll need you,” said Ketch, “But if I have to I can make out! But I think you’ll join me! When Karen hears—”
“You have my blessings,” said Howell with irony. “But right now our first impossible task is to keep the slug-creatures from coming back here and learning that there are two human races, not one, and that they’ve made contact. Because if they find that out, they’ll make an all-out attack on the race that’s not used to fighting them and won’t be prepared: Our race! You’ve my blessing on what you want to do, but first things come first!”
He turned aside and drearily helped display the yacht and its equipment to the raptly admiring small-folk, He gathered the impression that they were astonished at so large a spacecraft built for the use of so few. The globe-ships were crowded with tiny men and women and children. Howell morosely realized that they were crowded because at their infrequent gatherings, they couldn’t build new ships fast enough. They did everything practically by hand, and what machinery they used was itself handmade. Their civilization laboured under the tremendous pressure of constant danger, constant need to move on, to avoid slug-ships, and it need never to stay aground longer than could be helped. Under such a handicap, they’d reach the point of diminishing returns. The small-race of human beings was headed for extinction.
Then a question arose in Howell’s mind. How did they survive at all? Their weapons were pitiful against the slug-ships’. They must have either more sensitive detection devices than their enemies, so they’d always have adequate warning to flee, or else they’d found some way to avoid detection by the slug-ships under some circumstances they could bring about. One or the other they must have.
With all hope for personal escape abandoned, Howell considered the most important thing in the galaxy just now, the prevention of the slug-creatures from examining the Marintha, intact or wrecked, crippled or in perfect shape.
There were noises outside, a small-sized tumult. Howell could imagine nothing positive or good as an explanation. In his present frame of mind, he could anticipate only disasters. So before he went to the entrance-port he snatched up one of Ketch’s weapons.
When he reached the port, there was a cheerful soprano babbling outside. Small folk jumped out of the port, eeling past him. They ran toward a certain spot in the jungle. There were thrashings and movements there. Howell thought instantly of a possible still-surviving slug-ship creature. But the noise didn’t match such an event.
Then, abruptly, there appeared what should have been a heartening though perhaps bewildering sight. A straggling, heaving group of small-men were making their way toward the Marintha with something heavy and burdensome in their midst. They were bringing it to the space-yacht. They had cut down saplings to make poles to hang it from, and they’d ripped fabric strips from somewhere—probably inside the slug-ship’s wreck—to hang it by. They came into view with an entirely unidentifiable object which by its swaying and evident weight caused much staggering and hilarity.
They brought it to the Marintha’s port with a vast amount of chattering and orders given by everybody to everybody else. They got the object up into the yacht. There the gray-whiskered small-man took firm command. Somebody—several somebodies—came out of the engine room with parts of the yacht’s disassembled capacitor. They carried their loads outside, dumping the swollen and punctured plates on the ground. The whiskered small-man judgmentally estimated the space left by the removal of the original capacitor. He turned and briskly began to chip the irregular block of solid plastic his companions had brought. His lips worked, pursing and unpursing, in a fashion peculiar to skilled workmen who have absorbed the knowledge of their trade so they need not take particular thought once they have identified their problem. There are never but so many such men, and all of them do things with their mouths as they work. This one pursed his lips and made small noises to himself.
Howell picked up the sheared-away bits of plastic and dropped them into the garbage-disposal device. As they touched its bottom, they naturally disintegrated. Without fuss, they became an utterly impalpable powder which immediately flowed out of a refuse-vent to the ground, because the space-yacht was in atmosphere.
All activity stopped instantly. Small-men stared, There was an abrupt and violent babble of voices. There was excitement of unprecedented intensity. Small folk came from all over the Marintha, asking questions. Others crowded in from outside, and a hubbub of voices and a flurry of gesticulations followed.
Then silence fell once more. Small-men, crowded together, looked from Howell to the garbage-disposal unit and back again. Some peered over the shoulders of nearer ones. Some had climbed up on the yacht’s built-in furnishings to be able to see. There were gestures, asking Howell to do the same thing once more.
He frowned. This was not sightseeing. There was no more cheerful chatter. Every member of the small-man race had suddenly ceased to be interested in anything at all except the device that took the organic refuse of the space-yacht, and by loosening the valence-bonds of the carbon atoms it contained, caused it to fall apart to powder-particles finer than the smoothest of talc or graphite. The powder was like a fourth state of matter, being neither solid nor liquid nor a gas. It was a powder. The tilting of the yacht caused the powder to flow to the lower side of its container. If blown upon, it would swirl away in tendrils like smoke. But it would become solid again only by the adhesion of its ultra-microscopic particles, one by one, to other matter outside.
The gray-whiskered man spoke. It should have been gruffly. But he was astounded. He was incredulous. He was deeply and agitatedly absorbed in what he’d just seen. He made gestures which were only partly dignified. They tended to be imploring. He begged Howell to do it again.
Puzzled, Howell dropped more scraps of plastic into the garbage-disposal unit. They turned to powder. More scraps. They did the same, And more.
There was an incredible tumult. Some of the miniature human faces were aglow with excitement. Their owners shouted shrilly. Some seemed awed, dazed by the remarkable thing they’d seen. There were small-men who pounded each other on the back, howling in apparent glee. There were some who clasped hands in overwhelming emotion. Howell saw a man in rose-pink garments, making his way forcefully through the crowd. He reached a certain small-race woman. He embraced her, pointing to the garbage-disposal unit and practically babbling to her. She wept quietly.