“So you propose making plans for an assault on the beacon? Just on the chance that it may be of some disservice to us?” inquired Olyron.
“If it is now being used, as Ayyar believes, to pull the rest of the Settlers into the Waste, then it is already a menace,” Jarvas replied. “Yes, I believe that we must make that also an objective—for a third party.”
Olyron looked skeptical, as if he wondered just how Iftin without machines or tools was going to accomplish such a program. And Ayyar could agree with him. Jattu Nkoyo might be a master robot-tech, but more engineering knowledge than he ever possessed could well be needed to unseal that stairway—let alone down the beacon pillar.
But he detailed for them again his best observations of the plug. At last the one-time robot-tech leaned back and looked to the Ift who would carry what technical assistance he could supply.
“It may be impossible. If you had a cutter set on high beam, you could go for the edge around the plug. Or if the passage below paralleled those above, you could cut through some feet back and drop down. But without a cutter—” He shook his head doubtfully. “You say these space suits still wear their equipment belts, with tools in them?” he asked Ayyar. At the other’s nod, he continued. “Any plug put in that way would be too well set to burn out with hand tools—the way the sword energy handled the doors. Doors—” he repeated thoughtfully.
“What about them?” Jarvas wanted to know when Jeyken did not continue.
“This place, these burrows, as you call them, they must have been set up by space men. You had that impression, did you not—I mean, they seemed familiar?”
“Yes, they did!”
“And you came up a ladder, past how many levels?”
“Two.”
“Did the corridors on each radiate in the same pattern? And how far apart were the levels, how many steps between?”
Ayyar closed his eyes and tried to visualize the mound stairs. Could he be sure that the pattern had been the same on each level? Never had he flogged his memory harder.
“I think that the next level up had a like number of passages running in the same directions. Of the other I am not sure. There were—no, I cannot tell the number of steps—” Another failure to report, and this one he could have avoided. Why had he not taken greater care to be sure of such details?
“Then—I would advocate a break downward from one of the passages.”
“Through this metal lining and rock—using what—our fingernails?” Drangar snorted. “I have dug fields in my time, but that was earth and I had a plow—”
Jeyken did not answer him directly. He spread out his hands on the table top, framing the rude sketch Ayyar had made there of the passages and the stoppered stairway as he had seen them.
“Here is your weak point.” The former tech pointed to the door of the passage. “If it is to spacer design, then these doors on all levels will be hung on a column straight down, each above the other. And around here in the wall somewhere will be an opening to repair any jammed control. On a ship a servo-robot is generalized, which means it is bulky and well armored, to work inside or out in space. So it needs plenty of room. Thus a repair space must allow for that and so would be large enough for a man to enter.
“You burn out the lock there, just as Ayyar burnt the doors, giving you access to any control cable. This will be strung in a well, and that will be your passage down to the sealed-off level.”
“If and if and if again,” commented Jarvas. “Always supposing that this is all made to a spacer design.”
“Short of bringing in a large-size cutter, brothers,” Jeyken answered, “I do not see any other way.”
“But I no longer have the sword energy,” Ayyar pointed out.
“Then you will have to capture a suit and get a blaster from it,” was Jeyken’s reply. “At a high voltage that will cut you in. Now, Drangar, this is what you are to look for—” He went into detail concerning the service doors and the machinery to be found within.
Ayyar slumped on the bench and stared at his hands resting limply on the table before him. He did not believe that they would have much profit from plans that left so much to chance, and guess work. Better accept defeat in this, rescue Illylle, retreat overseas, and leave the destroyed Forest, the Waste, and the off-worlders to That.
“We cannot—”
Ayyar raised his eyes to meet those of Jarvas.
“We cannot, or we would! Think you, are you able to set aside the thought that the seeding will fail, that our nation, now only a weak handful, will not have another springtime?”
Within Ayyar was a stirring. The sap drink had awakened and strengthened his body, not his weary mind. Now he knew Jarvas was right, that there had been planted in the changelings the need to perpetuate their kind, to set the treasure traps, to thus produce more and more Iftin. They could no more turn their backs upon that urge than the off-worlders he had seen could escape the call of That.
Perhaps if this was to be the end of the seeding, it was better that it came in battle with That than in slow decay. He got to his feet. That sense of purpose that had wrapped him, given him confidence when he had left the Mirror with Illylle, had ebbed. He had left in him now only a kind of weary determination to see this to the end.
“Illylle?”
“Kelemark and Lokatath will bring her back after we find her.”
They waited upon the night. Two parties left the bay where the ship was already making ready to return overseas, after disembarking a third small force to remain at shore line concealment. One of the parties would go upriver, to deal with the beacon as well as they might. If any of them really believed that could be done, thought Ayyar, watching them disappear among the dunes.
The larger group, with him as guide, headed straight into the same trap from which he had come. His wound made him walk a little stiffly, but without the pain that had made his flight a torturous ordeal. Each of them carried at his belt a flask of oily spicy-smelling mixture that Kelemark and some of the other Iftin believed would overcome their repugnance to any off-world tool they used.
Undoubtedly they made better time than Ayyar had on his way out, covering the ground with their usual agile speed. Always they listened, sniffed, scouted for the enemy. It would seem that That’s servants did not patrol so far south. At least they crossed the trail of no prowlers.
“It does not seem to care.” Ayyar spoke his thoughts aloud as they finally halted, to drink from their sap bottles and eat sparingly of nut meal wafers.
“So it appears,” Jarvas agreed, and then he added, “or else It is so occupied elsewhere and believes us so weak as opponents that It can grind us into nothingness under Its boot sole when more important tasks are behind It—”
“But It began the attack against the Forest.” Ayyar blinked. Had there been a shift of purpose as Jarvas suggested, That turning from the eradication of the remains of Iftcan to more pressing matters?
“Suppose that the struggle against a dying Forest is no longer important,” Jarvas continued. “Suppose That discovered the off-worlders and Settlers, set in motion against us, made such excellent servants for Its purposes that It could easily forget Iftin and use these to build what lies in Its mind. Suppose the Larsh were a tool which failed, that It has slumbered through the ages, waiting the coming of stronger metal—”
“But It is the ancient Enemy against Iftcan, against Ift—” protested Drangar, almost as if he resented the thought that they were as grains of dust, to be brushed contemptuously away to free a site for the building of another plan.
“To Ift, That is the great Enemy, yes. We know that we held It static or powerless for generations, until It fought us on our own plane with the Larsh. But perhaps That has another purpose, and our long struggle merely postponed it. Now It has found material with which to carry out such plans.”
“But the garthmen, the port crew, have been here for years. Why wait until now to use them?”
Jarvas shrugged. “Perhaps It was not aware of them, not until the Iftin arose once more to disturb Its quiescence. Then, triggered by old memories, It moved against us. It may not even know how few we are. Needing servants to take the place of the Larsh, It found them. It may be experimenting. I believe that the false Iftin are an experiment, perhaps not a fully successful one. Remember the robot woman used the open the garth defenses? So That needs raw material for further experiments, summons it, molds it—”