DOWN PAST TAU POINT ONE NOW… FIELD LINES CONVERGING AHEAD… INSTRUMENTS
SAY THERE’S A HERD THERE JUST LIKE HELENE SAID… ABOUT A HUNDRED… CLOSING NOW…
Then Jeffrey’s simian voice came on, gruff, abrupt, over a loudspeaker.
“Wait ’til I tell em inna trees, boys! First solo onna Sun! Eat yer heart out, Tarzan!” one of the controllers started to laugh, then cut it off. It finished sounding like a sob.
Jacob started. “You mean he was all alone down there?”
“I thought you knew!” deSilva looked surprised. “The dives are pretty well automatic nowadays. Only a computer can adjust the stasis fields fast enough to keep the turbulence from pounding a passenger to jelly. Jeff had two: one onboard and also a laser remote from the big machine here on Mercury. What can a man do anyway, besides add a touch here or there?”
“But why add any risk?”
“It was Dr. Kepler’s idea,” she answered, a little defensively. “He wanted to see if it was only human psi patterns that were causing the Ghosts to run away or make threatening gestures.”
“We never got to that part of the briefing.”
She brushed a lock of blonde hair back.
“Yes, well in our first few encounters with the magnetovores, we never saw any of the herdsmen. Then when we did, we watched from a distance to determine their relationship to the other creatures.
“When we finally approached, the herdsmen just ran away at first. Then their behavior changed radically. While most of them fled, one or two would arc up over the ship, out of the plane of the instrument platform, and come down close to the ship!”
Jacob shook his head, “I’m not sure I understand…”
DeSilva glanced at the nearest console but there was no change… The only reports from Jeff’s ship were solonomic data — routine reports of solar conditions.
“Well, Jacob, the ship is a flat deck inside an almost perfectly reflecting shell. The Gravity Engines, Stasis Field Generators and the Refrigerator Laser are all in the smaller sphere that” sits in the middle of the deck. The recording instruments line the rim of the deck on the “bottom” side, and the people occupy the “top” side, so both will have an unobstructed view to anything looked at edge on. But we hadn’t counted on anything purposely dodging our cameras!”
“If the Ghost went out of view of your instruments by coming up overhead, why didn’t you just turn the ship? You have complete gravity control.”
“We tried. They just disappeared! Or worse; they stayed overhead however fast we’d turn. They’d just hover I That’s when some of the crew started seeing some of the most damnable anthropoid shapes!”
Suddenly Jeffrey’s raspy voice filled the room again.
“Hey! There’s a whole pack of sheep dogs pushin’ those toroids around! Coin’ in to give em a pet! Nice Doggies!”
Helene shrugged.
“Jeff was always a skeptic. He never saw any shapes-in-the-ceiling and he always called the herdsmen ‘sheep dogs’ because he saw nothing in their behavior to imply intelligence.”
Jacob smiled wryly. The condescension of super-chimp toward the canine race was one of the more humorous aspects of their me-too obsession. Also perhaps it diluted their sensitivity over the special relationship, of dog with human being, that antedated their own. Many chimps kept dogs as pets.
“He called the magnetovores toroids?”
“Yes, they’re shaped like huge doughnuts. You would have seen that if the briefing hadn’t… been interrupted.” She shook her head sadly and looked down.
Jacob shifted his feet. “I’m sure there’s nothing anyone could have done…” he began. Then he realized that he was sounding foolish. DeSilva nodded once and turned back to the console; busy, or pretending to be, with technical readouts.
Bubbacub lay sprawled on a cushion to the left, near the barrier. He had a book play-back in his hands and had been reading, in total absorption, the alien characters that flashed from top to bottom on the tiny screen. The Pil had raised his head and listened when Jeffrey’s voice came on, and then gazed enigmatically at Pierre LaRoque.
LaRoque’s eyes flashed as he recorded an “historic moment.” Occasionally he spoke In a low excited voice into the microphone of his borrowed steno-camera.
“Three minutes,” deSilva said thickly.
For a minute, nothing happened. Then, the big letters came on the screen again.
THE BIG BOYS ARE HEADING TOWARD ME FOR ONCE! OR AT LEAST A COUPLE OF ’EM ARE. I JUST TURNED ON THE CLOSEUP CAMERAS… HEY! I’M GETTIN A T-T-TILT IN HERE! TIME-COMPRESSION JAMMED!!
“Gonna abort!” came the deep, croaking voice, suddenly. “Ridin’ up fast… More tilt! ’S’ falling!… The Eatees! They…”
There came a very brief burst of static, then silence followed by a loud hiss as the console operator turned up his gain. Then, nothing.
For a long moment nobody said a word. Then one of the console operators rose from his station.
“Implosion confirmed,” he said.
She nodded once. “Thank you. Please prepare a summary of the data for transmission to Earth.”
Strangely, the strongest emotion Jacob felt was a poignant pride. As a staff member of the Center for Uplift, he’d noticed that Jeffrey spurned his keyboard in the last moments of his life. Instead of retreating before fear, he made a proud, difficult gesture. Jeff the Earthman spoke aloud.
Jacob wanted to mention this to somebody. If anyone could, Fagin would understand… He started over to where the Kanten stood, but Pierre LaRoque hissed sharply before he got there.
“Fools I” The journalist stared about with an expression of disbelief.
“And I am the biggest fool of all! Of any here I should have seen the danger in sending a chimpanzee down to the Sun alone!”
The room was silent. Blank expressions of surprise turned to LaRoque, who waved his arms in an expansive gesture.
“Can you not see? Are you all blind? If the Solarians are our Ancestrals, and there can be little doubt of that, then they have obviously gone to great pains to avoid us for millennia. Yet perhaps some distant affection for us has kept them from destroying us so far!
“They have tried to warn you and your Sunships off ( in ways that you could not ignore, and yet you persist in trespassing. How are these mighty beings to react, then, if they are burst upon by a Client race of the race they have abandoned? What is it you expect them to do when they are invaded by a monkey… !”
Several crewmen rose to their feet in anger. DeSilva had to raise her voice to get them to subside. She faced LaRoque, an expression of iron control on her features.
“Sir, if you will please put your interesting hypothesis down on paper, with a minimum of invective, the staff will be only too happy to consider it.”
“But…”
“And that will be enough on the subject now! We’ll have plenty of time to talk about it later!”
“No, we don’t have any time at all.”
Everyone turned. Dr. Martine stood at the back of the Gallery, in the doorway. “I think we’d better discuss this right now,” she said.
“Is Dr. Kepler all right?” Jacob asked.
She nodded. “I’ve just come from his bedside. I managed to break him out of his shock and he’s sleeping now. But before he fell asleep he spoke rather urgently about making another dive right away.”
“Right away? Why? Shouldn’t we wait until we know for certain what happened to Jeffrey’s ship?”
“We know what happened to Jeff’s ship!” she answered sharply. “I overheard what Mr. LaRoque said just as I came in, and I’m not at all happy with the way you all received his idea! You’re all so hidebound and sure of yourselves that you can’t listen to a fresh approach!”