RyRelee took a deep breath, again producing an audible hiss as the air rushed through the plates of his nostril pit. “Where is the phile now?”
“That will be for you to discover, emissary.” At last the Coran was disclosing the reason for his summons. “We were able to trace the phile to a coastal port of a small sea where it was dispatched by surface vessel, apparently destined for a large blood sports arena in this civilization’s principal city. Too much time has been lost, and presumably the phile will have already reached this destination—that is, if it hasn’t managed to escape in transit.”
“My assignment, then?”
“To pick up its trail—a cold trail, I regret. You must seek out the phile and destroy it. As it has by now quite probably penetrated the major city of this region, we must act secretly to find it and destroy it without inflicting a major disruption to their developing culture.
“As you have observed, RyRelee, you share many physical similarities to the native race of this world. You will find their gravity, atmosphere and climate quite compatible, and you will be protected against their disease strains and parasites. It will require only minor cosmetic modifications and surgical adjustments for you to pass as a native from some distant region of the planet—each civilization there is ignorant of lands and cultures beyond its own sphere of influence. We have recordings of scans acquired from several of the aborigines, so your communications nodes will be programmed with an adequate selection of native languages and customs. Of course, you will be issued the usual essential equipment for operations in the field.”
RyRelee knew it was pointless to inquire further about such modifications and adjustments. He had experienced such indignities on previous assignments, and there was some comfort in knowing that Coran surgery could usually undo what it had done.
“How will I be able to destroy the phile?”
“You will be equipped with the necessary weapons, concealed within your cosmetic constructions: a device to stun the natives should the need arise, and another to destroy the phile. To the aborigines it will appear that you have only gestured with your hand; try not to be observed, but if you do arouse their curiosity, explain it as magic.”
“Their cultural level is that low? I thought I was to be sent to the central region of their civilization.”
“It is, after all, a Class 6 world, emissary,” the Coran reminded him. But RyRelee was more aware of that than the Coran could guess.
“There is another critical matter that you must attend to,” the Coran continued. “An extremely critical matter. We do not know whether the phile is male or female. You must make the necessary surgical identification once you have destroyed it. You know what happened on Doronin. . . .”
RyRelee knew the story all too well, but the Coran supplied him the images of what had taken place on Doronin—all the more to impress upon the emissary the importance of his mission.
An entrepreneur on Doronin had imported a variety of exotics for blood sports staged in defiance of Coran—of Federation—law. There had been a pair of philes, both males it had been believed, but one turned out to have been a gravid female. Because of their deadly environment, philes mated only once—after which the female continued to produce fertile eggs at regular intervals throughout life. While one gravid female had the potential to produce thousands of offspring, on their homeworld only a few chicks would manage to survive to reproduce. But that was on Zuyle, and Doronin was a placid world—or once had been.
The images were of what had been a city before it became an abattoir. RyRelee did not need the voice whispering “. . . Doronin . . .” to identify the scene. The viewpoint shifted, shuddered—blinked to a view from a thousand feet in the air of an armored antigravity raft that had been drifting down a boulevard just below the height of the tallest buildings alongside it. The raft was bucking like a fish with hooks set in its guts. When the armored vehicle yawed and overturned abruptly, the cause became clear. On the raft’s belly plates was a smudge of blue which the focus sharpened instantly into a phile. The beast was gripping minute projections on the metal surface with three of its clawed limbs. With the full length of its remaining arm, it was reaching into the interior through an inspection plate that it had ripped off. Out of control, the raft clipped the side of a building and plummeted into the street.