“Go ahead,” Percy said gently. “Record it.” Evidently he knew that she wore a microminiaturized tape recorder disguised as a wristwatch. “Take it with you when you go back. It doesn’t matter after all.” He, too, seemed moved by the music. “If those worms finally manage to finish us off, at least our song will still be around to make you wiks uncomfortable, to remind you what a man sounds like.” With tenderness he ran his hands through her hair and froze. He had come across something small, round and metallic, something in her hair.
“Ouch,” she cried as he jerked it loose.
Quickly, expertly, he examined it by matchlight. “A radio,” he muttered, then threw it as far as he could into the darkness. Jumping to his feet he shouted to his men, “Move out! Move out! Scatter! This damn wik girl was bugged! They may be closing in on us right this minute!”
Without a moment’s hesitation they scattered, guns at the ready. Joan ran also, after Percy’s retreating back. “Don’t leave me here,” she gasped, stumbling, almost falling in the mist-shrouded darkness.
A light appeared in the sky, small, like a falling star, yet it had to be closer than a falling star.
“Look out, Percy!” Joan shouted. It was a miniature tapered autonomic dart, descending at spectacular velocity, and seeking just one person, Percy X.
Lincoln raised his laser rifle and, with a skill that showed an almost automatic reflex, he shot the descending dart out of existence.
“Another,” Percy snapped. “To the right.” He did not sound frightened, but his voice had become speeded up and shrill. “A third. Too close, too close; we can’t get them all.” He said it factually, without the warmth even of despair: no time now for that meager emotion, no time even to give up. Percy X fired, almost as Lincoln did; the two Neegs fired again and again and still the rain of black, homotropic dots descended. A Gany weapon, Joan realized. From the war. The Shaft, it had been called. It had, alone, taken out on an individual basis, one by one, a vast number of highly-placed, essential Terran technicians and military leaders.
Kneeling, Percy swiftly unstrapped a small packet from his calf. With a violent scratching motion against the rough soil he ignited it; the mechanism flashed and flared and a cloud of noxious denseness flowered until the sky disappeared.
The Shafts themselves would be unaffected. But their tropism would be abolished; they would have no destination and would begin to strike at random. Unless one or more had already come too close, had passed the stage in which the tropism defined the direction of flight.
Too late for Lincoln; in the gloom Joan heard him cry out and fall. Then Percy, too, shouted one brief strangled cry before toppling to the weed-infested ground. No dart had been set for Joan’s particular cephalic index, so the weapons left her alone— assuming that none of the wild ones got her at random. Operating by the sense of touch alone she moved quickly to where she had heard Percy fall. It’s my fault, she said to herself bleakly.
No time existed, however, to brood about that.
Somehow, with a strength she never knew she had, she managed to half-drag, half-carry him a few yards; panting painfully, her knees wobbling, she stumbled through the invisible weeds, slid on shards of rock and dirt particles, down a slope, away, with no direction in mind, only the knowledge that she had to act rapidly. Blindly, without any real hope, she slithered and slid and hurried as best she could, dragging the inert but not dead—she knew the Shafts; they did not generally carry freights of toxins—to some other, vague, unknown place.
Ahead, a shape, upright, moved. A Neeg-part, she thought with relief. She said gaspingly. “They got Percy with a Shaft; I’m trying to get him out before the next step.” She panted for breath.
The upright, metal-encased figure, like some artificial chitinous reflex entity, said, “I am the next step.” It lifted a hand weapon and aimed it at Joan. “This does not stun,” it said in faultless but overly- precise English. “You are my prisoner, Terran. As is he.” It gestured with a manual extremity toward the inert figure lying before Joan. “Most especially he.” The slotted eyes glowed and projected a beam of illumination, assisting it in making its visual scan which would be transmitted to Gany military operation GHQ. The scan, already, was being relayed; she heard the hum.
Bending over Percy she snatched the hand gun from his belt; within the mass of metal confronting her dwelt a creech and she meant to kill the thing or be killed by it. At pointblank range she fired.
The bullet, ringingly, bounced off the creech’s polished armor. Harmlessly. The thing did not even appear to notice; it continued with its scan of Percy’s features.
Joan Hiashi emptied the gun futilely at the towering hulk before her, then threw the weapon at it. And then stood helpless, waiting, the still-inert Percy X in a tumbled, dead-doll heap before her.
VI
Marshal Koli’S private secretary crept toward him, stood on tip-tail and delivered a confidential message. “Sir, there is a person named Mekkis, a Ganymedian, who claims to be the civilian administrator who is to relieve you.”
Time, evidently, had run out—and sooner than he had expected. But perhaps with a little adroit stalling he could gain a few extra hours enough to complete Operation Cat Droppings. Koli slid his way across the office, opened the door to the waiting room—using the low-placed tongue switch that responded to no tongue but his—and surveyed his replacement.
Outside reposed a gray, somber-looking compatriot, a man of obvious and durable ability; much older, in fact, than the Marshal himself. He reposed welclass="underline" with dignity, and did not bother to notice the existence of the spools of FUN-E tapes available for the visitor; nor did he gaze at the several attractive, well-groomed secretaries at work. Beside him lay a thick briefcase with leather neck strap for carrying. And outdoors in the well-lit courtyard waited a team of flyers, their wings rising and falling rhythmically in a semi-doze.
Well-trained, Koli reflected. Their master is a good one; they don’t flap about causing a disturbance. Clearly a high genetic breed. Undoubtedly costing their owner a fortune. Therefore this indubitably was Koli’s civilian replacement. “Mr. Mekkis?” Marshal Koli inquired.
The head whipped; the tongue protruded, licking the air with intensity as the wide-set eyes flamed, a dismal and perplexing glance, as if Mekkis did not quite see him, saw instead beyond—and yet not spa- cially. It was, he realized, as if this man possessed the capacity to imagine one’s entire life-track, one’s full destiny; perhaps, he decided, age had something to do with it. Wisdom, he thought. There is wisdom, not sheer knowledge as on the memory spools of a computer, lying behind these green, faceted eyes. He felt uncomfortable.
“Do you intend to take possession of the desk immediately?” Koli inquired. He thought once more of Percy X’s rich, thick, virgin-fur pelt; it had now faded to the dimensions of a dream.
“Frankly,” Mekkis said, “I’d like to get the transfer of authority over right now, so I can get some rest. I didn’t sleep well on the ship.”
“Come into my office,” Koli said, leading the way. “A dish of authentic Spanish sherry.” As one of his batmen poured the two saucers full he explained, “From Puerto Santa Maria, Spain. A nina—light golden and medium dry.” He added, between laps, “I consume it at room temperature, but it can also—”
“Your hospitality,” Mekkis said after a few polite laps at the dish of sherry, “is singular. Now, as to the transfer of authority.”
“There are the fighter planes.”
Mekkis, astonished, said, “My briefing didn’t mention any fighter planes.”
“Well, they’re not real fighter planes: they’re models, you see. World War One.”