“In command of what?” 12-Upjohn said dryly.
“Not very much,” the Marine admitted. “I’ve got five men surviving, one of them with a broken hip, and a section of the ship with two drive units in it. It would lift, more or less, if we could jury-rig some controls, but I don’t know where we’d go in it without supplies or a navigatoror an overdrive, for that matter.” He looked about speculatively.
“There was a Standing Wave transceiver in this section, I think, but ifd be a miracle if it still functioned.”
“Would you know how to test it?” Robin asked.
“No. Anyhow we’ve got more immediate business than that. We’ve picked up a native. What’s more, he speaks Englishmust have picked it up from the Assam Dragon. We started to ask him questions, but it turns out he’s some sort of top official, so we brought him over here on the off chance that one of you was alive.”
“What a break!” Robin One said explosively.
“A whole series of them,” 12-Upjohn agreed, none too happily. He had long ago learned to be at his most suspicious when the breaks seemed to be coming his way. “Well, better bring him in.”
“Can’t,” Oberholzer said. “Apologies, Your Excellency, but he wouldn’t fit. You’ll have to come to him.”
3
It was impossible to imagine what sort of stock the Callean had evolved from. He seemed to be a thoroughgoing mixture of several different phyla. Most of him was a brown, segmented tube about the diameter of a barrel and perhaps twenty-five feet long, rather like a cross between a python and a worm. The front segments were carried upright, raising the head a good ten feet off the ground.