“You sure?”
Julius shrugged. “No, I’m not. But it’s a hell of a good bet. If analogies to Earth mean anything, the cephalopods were the only large, fast-moving, advanced predators produce by the molluscs. By any of the invertebrate phyla, as a matter of fact. Well, there were the eurypterids, but I’ve never agreed with those people who think the eurypterids were—”
“Julius!”
“Huh? Oh. Sorry. Old habits die hard. All right, Hector, to cut to the chase—yeah, I’m almost sure it has to be something like the maia. More or less, you understand.”
The look Hector gave him was not filled with admiration.
” `More or less’ doesn’t cut it, Julius. We’re talking mano-a-mano here, not horseshoes.”
Julius threw up his hands with exasperation.
“So I’m not a genius!” He blew out a deep breath. “All right, Hector. Try to imagine a mean, bad-tempered maia. With some kind of long tentacles instead of short arms. The tentacles will have some kind of cutting or stabbing tip—something like a horn, maybe.”
“Are they going to be bigger or smaller than the maia?”
Julius pondered the question.
“Hard to say. Among invertebrates, predators are usually bigger than their prey. The same’s generally true for marine predators, including vertebrates. But the rule doesn’t always hold up with advanced land forms. Quite a few mammalian predators are smaller than their prey.”
“That’d be a break.”
Julius gave him a sidelong glance. “Not necessarily, amigo. Predators who are smaller than their prey usually hunt in packs.”
Hector rolled his eyes. “That’s great. Just great.”
Julius was chewing his lip fiercely.
“But whether they’re bigger or smaller than the maia, the predators will almost certainly be faster. Course, that’s not saying much. That’ll be one of our big advantages, by the way. I can’t be positive, but I’m almost certain that human beings will be able to run a lot faster than anything on Ishtar.”
He pointed a finger at Hector. “But—don’t assume that because we can run faster that our reflexes are any faster. These predators can probably move their tentacles as fast as we can move our arms. Hell, even the maia can move their arms pretty quickly when they want to.”
“Yeah, I know. I saw one of the kids fall off a maia’s cowl the other day. Damned if the maia didn’t catch her before she hit the ground.”
The pilot scratched his chin thoughtfully.
“Weelll. I’d kinda been thinking in terms of swords, but—”
“No! Swords would be almost useless. If you tried to use it as a chopping weapon, you’d be trying to cut through that godawful tough mantle. Take hours. Unless you were El Cid or something, which we ain’t. Same problem with axes. Look, Hector—there’s one really vulnerable part on the body of a cephalopod: the head. Unless these critters are completely different from Terran cephalopods, which is possible but there’s no way to tell for sure without cutting open—”
“Don’t even think it, Julius.”
“—I’m surrounded by saints! The point is, they don’t have skulls. There’s nothing protecting the brain except a mass of flesh. Which is probably thinnest right between the eyes.”
“Well, you can use a sword to stab. Especially something like an epee.”
Julius goggled. “You want to play matador with something that looks like a walking version of It Came From Beneath the Sea? Such a hero! Such cojones! Such a fucking moron!”
The pilot laughed. “All right, already!”
“Spears, Hector. We want spears. Something we can stab straight in with, while keeping a distance.”
“Sounds good. What kind of spear, do you think?”
“You’re asking me?” demanded Julius. “When we’ve got Indira? Who’s spent a lifetime studying the wicked ways of times gone by, when men were men and didn’t suffer fools gladly.”
Indira proved a reluctant consultant, but Hector was finally able to get from her what he needed.
“It’s basically an assegai,” he explained to Julius four days later, showing him the spear he had made. “The blade’s heavy, shaped like a narrow leaf, about forty centimeters long. It’ll stab real good, and you can still chop with it if you have to. But instead of a short handle, like a real assegai, I put a long one on it. What do you think?”
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