But he refused to give them any help. When a robot reached an appendage in, he knocked it aside. It was a futile gesture, but one that had to be made.
The robot swung its appendage back toward Jack, but slowly. Now he saw that it was encrusted with furry growths. The fungus!
Jack avoided the appendage, and it was unable to catch him, even in this confined region, because the fungus interfered with its mechanism. Now he saw that the other robots were similarly overgrown. They might be able to ignore fungus on their exteriors, but it probably was growing in the joints, too, and inside. Wherever it could reach. The same thing would be happening all over the ship.
Now he realized that the dirt on the bubble was also fungus. It was on the walls and floor, too. It was doing its job of spreading. How long would it be before it interfered with the major systems of the ship, bringing it down?
Then another robot came. This one was spraying something. A fungicide! It sprayed the other robots, and they then resumed faster motion. Maybe there wasn't enough of the stuff to douse the whole ship, but that wouldn't help Jack.
Then the motion slowed again. The fungus was growing even faster; he could see it appearing as a thickening film on all the sprayed surfaces. The fungus was now feeding on the fungicide!
But Jack was not yet out of trouble. Human minions came Fungus was growing on them, too, or at least on their clothing, but they were functioning. They spoke to Jack in the highly accented English that seemed to be the class-taught second or third language here. "Come out! Or we drag you out!"
Jack was about ready to come out anyway. He climbed through the hole in the bubble. "Now what?" He noticed that there was no fungus on him, not even his inanimate portions, such as hair and nails. It seemed that the same paint that had protected him from the gas was effective against the fungus. The honkers were not about to be hoist in their own petard.
But coated or not, these human minions meant business. One brought out what looked like a set of electric probes. Jack felt a chill, that could be exactly what they were. He knew that electric shock could make a lot of pain that didn't show. He didn't know whether he could handle it.
So he made a break for it. He shoved the man with the probes against the one beside him, and charged through the gap in their circle this made. He had no idea where he was going. Just so long as it was anywhere but here.
There was a faint flash. Then he lost his volition. The honker paint did not protect against that device! But why hadn't they used it before?
Jack had stopped where he was, not losing his balance, just having no power to go anywhere on his own initiative. He stood facing away from the other men.
"Turn," a voice said from a hidden speaker
Jack turned to face the others— and saw that all of them were turning away from him. What was going on?
"The intruding human being only will respond," the voice said.
Then Jack understood the flash had nulled the willpower of all of them. That was why they hadn't wanted to use it. It did not differentiate; it affected any human being in the vicinity, making them almost useless. He had forced them to use it, and that had been a reasonably good move.
"Walk. Follow the blue line." A line appeared before him.
Jack walked. The line wound a devious course through the ship. Soon Jack was lost, he would never be able to find his way out on his own, even with the good chart of the ship the honkers had provided. Not that he was likely to be given the chance. There was a lot of walking, in a mile-diameter ship! But if he did get his will back, then he could follow the line back to his starting point.
Was there any way to break the hold of the null-volition? Before, Tappy had been immune, because of the Imaget egg, and then she had gotten him free of it by writing Malva's name as a Gaol symbol on a piece of paper and having him eat it. He still wasn't sure how that worked. But he couldn't do that now. No pencil. No paper. No Tappy.
But wait! Tappy had been free because of the Imaget egg she earned. Surely the Imaget itself had the same power? So why wasn't he free?
Because the Imaget was otherwise occupied at the moment. But when it finished that job, it would revert its attention to Jack, and then he should be free. Probably he could get its attention with a strong thought, if he had to. So he had a secret weapon. Maybe.
Meanwhile, he followed the blue line. At one point it spiraled up a curving ramp, and he happened to see behind him. The line had disappeared. It faded out as he moved along it, being clear only ahead. So much for following it back! However, he also saw his footprints in the furry gray coating of fungus on the floor. Maybe he could follow them instead, if they didn't disappear too rapidly under new growth.
Finally he reached a region he judged to be somewhere in the center of the ship. There was a huge bubble, opaque because of its coating, with an enormous number of connections. It was as if this were the central cell of a living entity, to which all others reported.
And of course it was, he realized. This was the abode of the Gaol captain' He was about to face his reckoning.
"Wipe a section clear," a loudspeaker said.
Jack realized that he was still carrying his bundled clothing. He used this to rub on the available surface of the sphere. It was like scraping snow off a windshield. Now a window of clarity appeared.
Inside the bubble was the Gaol captain. For the first time Jack saw such a creature with his own eyes, from up close, instead of by telepathic projection through other eyes.
The thing was horrible. All the details were as he had been shown before, but now they were in sharp ugly focus. The great external rib cage, as if it had once been fleshed but now was a carcass. The sacful of body organs, as if the guts had been wrapped in membrane and hung inside the stripped rib cage to cure. The legs and neck projecting from the general region of that internal mass, emerging from the cage. What a monster!
Yet perhaps it was in keeping with the spaceship the Gaol used. For this huge ship had riblike projections reaching up to join at the top. It was surely the kind of structure the Gaol would feel comfortable with, because of their own skeletal structure. Just as human beings felt comfortable with devices that had their controls at the top and their propulsion at the bottom, emulating the human head and feet. Maybe the nature of the originating species could be derived by inspecting their spaceships, if one knew how to interpret the signals.
"I did not know that the Imago could strike at this range," the speaker said. It was obviously translating for the Gaol inside the sphere.
Jack did not reply, because he had not been directed to. But he felt a thrill of excitement. Had the Gaol been converted?
"What is the mechanism?"
Now Jack could speak. But he did not have to speak, because the null effect did not extend to his mind. Would he be better off to refuse to, so that the Gaol would not learn what was going on? The null did not allow him to lie; he had either to tell the truth or say nothing.
He decided to respond with limited candor. "The Imago's power extends beyond its host. This enabled the minions of the Imago to take charge of the other Gaol ship."
"This one, too. But our tracers show the host of the Imago to be on the surface of the planet, and our experience of prior millennia indicates that the direct range of the Imago does not extend to interplanetary distances, and that of the Imago's converts does not extend beyond immediate personal contact. How has the Imago reached me?"
Had the Imago reached it— Jack assumed the creature was neuter for convenience— or was it merely saying so to fool Jack into betraying critical information? If he told of the Imaget, and the Gaol had not been converted, it could take the Imaget from him and destroy it, thereby achieving victory. But if the Gaol had been converted, the Imaget would be an even more useful tool for the conversion of other key entities aboard this craft, giving Jack the victory.