* * *
“Well,” said Moffis, looking interested and sitting forward on the edge of his chair. “I’m willing, now you put it that way, but where should I start?”
“Start anywhere,” said Horsip.
Moffis cleared his throat, and looked thoughtful.
“Well, for one thing,” he said at last, “there’s this piecemeal filing-down they’re doing to us.” He hesitated.
“Go on,” prompted Horsip. “Talk freely. If it’s important, tell me.”
“Well,” said Moffis, “it doesn’t seem important. But take that trip from the landing-boat to here. That wasn’t a long trip, yet they knocked out at least one ground-car. If it was the same as other trips like it, they would have put fifteen men out of action, and three ground-cars, at least. Suppose we have three hundred men and fifty ground-cars we can spare as escort between here and the landing-boat place. Each time, they’re likely to get hit once, at least. It seems like just a small battle. Not even a battle—just a brush with some die-hard natives.
“But in two trips, we’ve lost one man out of ten, and one car out of eight.”
Moffis paused, frowning. “And the worse of it is, we can’t put it down. It’s like a little cut that won’t stop bleeding. If it just happened here, it would be bad enough. But it happens everywhere and anywhere that we don’t have everything screwed down tight.”
“But,” said Horsip, “see here. Why don’t you gather together five thousand men and scour that countryside clean? Then you’ll have an end to that. Then, take those five thousand men and clean out the next place.” He grew a little excited. “That’s what they did to our landing parties, isn’t it? Why not spring their own trap on them?”
Moffis looked thoughtful. “We tried something like that earlier, when all this started. But the wear on the ground-cars was terrific. Moreover, they moved only a few scores of men, and we had to move thousands. It was wearing us out. Worse yet, as they only had small bands in action, we couldn’t always find them. We’d end up with thousands of men milling around in a little field, and no humanoids. Then, from somewhere else, they’d fire into us.” Moffis shivered. “We tried to bring the whole army to bear on them, but it was like trying to shoot insects with a cannon. It didn’t work.”
“Well,” said Horsip, “that was too bad; but still, you had the right idea. But you overdid it.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Moffis. “None of us were in very good form by then.”
Horsip nodded. “But look here, take five thousand men, break them up into units of, say, five hundred each. Train the units to act alone or with others. Take six of the units, and send them to troubled places. Hold the other four in your hand, ready to put them here or there, as needed.”
Moffis looked thoughtful. “It sounds good. But what if on their way to the trouble place, these men get fired on?”
Horsip suppressed a gesture of irritation. “Naturally, the five hundred would be split up into units. Say it was ten units of fifty men each. One fifty-man unit would clean out the nest of snakes, and the rest would go on. When they were finished, the unit that had stopped would go after the rest.”
Moffis nodded. “Yes, it sounds good.”
“What’s wrong then?” demanded Horsip.
“The natives’ stitching-gun,” said Moffis dryly.
“The which?” said Horsip.
“Stitching-gun,” said Moffis. “It has a single snout that the darts move into from a traveling belt, like ground-cars on an assembly line. The snout spits them out one at a time and they work ruin on our men. If this five-hundred man team you speak of was hit on the road, and just fifty men from it tried to beat the natives, we’d probably lose all fifty. The only way to win would be to stop the whole five hundred, and let the men fire at them from inside the ground-cars.”
“But, listen,” said Horsip. “Just how many natives would they be fighting?”
“Twenty, maybe.”
Horsip did a mental calculation. “Then you mean one of their men is worth two to three of ours?”
“In this kind of fighting, yes.”
* * *
Horsip made a howling sound in his throat, let out the beginning of a string of oaths and cut them off.
“I’m sorry,” said Moffis. “I know how you feel.”
“All right,” said Horsip angrily, raising his hand and making gestures as if brushing away layers of gathering fog, “let’s get back to this stitching-gun. It only shoots one dart at a time. How does that make it better than our splat-gun, that can shoot up to twenty-five darts at a time?”
“I don’t understand it exactly,” said Moffis, “but it has something to do with the way they fight. And then, too, the stitching-gun shoots the darts out fast. It shoots a stream of darts. If the first one misses, the humanoid moves the gun a little and maybe the next one strikes home. If not, he moves it a little more. This time, five or six darts hit our man and down he goes. Now the humanoid looks around for someone else and starts in on him. Meanwhile, another humanoid is feeding belts of darts into the gun—”
“But our splat-guns!” said Horsip exasperatedly. “What are they doing all this time?”
“They’re heavy,” said Moffis, “and it takes a little while to get them into action. Besides, the enemy . . . I mean, the humanoids . . . have had all night to set their gun up and hide it, and now they pick out their target at will. We have to stop the vehicles to go into action. And that isn’t the worst, either.”
“Now what?”
“The splat-gun operators can’t see the enemy. I mean, the humanoids. They’ll be dug in, and concealed. When the gunners do realize where they are, as likely as not the splat-guns can’t get at them, because there is nothing but the snout of the stitching-gun to fire at. It’s likely to be someone firing from inside the ground-cars that finally picks off the humanoids.”
Horsip looked at Moffis thoughtfully. “Are there many more difficulties like this?”
“The planet is full of them,” said Moffis. “It seems like heaven compared to what it was when the full-scale fighting was going on, but when you get right down to it, it’s hard to see whether we’ve made any headway since then or not. The maddening part of it is, we can’t seem to get a grip on the thing.” He hesitated, then went on. “It’s too much like trying to wear down a rock with dirt. The dirt wears away instead.”
Horsip nodded, made an effort, and looked confident. “Never mind that, Moffis. You’ve got the molk in the stall for us. He’s still kicking, but that just means there’s so much the more meat on him.”
“I hope so,” said Moffis.
“You’ll see,” said Horsip, “once Planetary Integration gets started on the job.”
The staff of Planetary Integration came down on the planet the next day. Soon they were coming in from the landing field in groups. They were talkative people, waving their hands excitedly, their voices higher-pitched than most. Their faces were smug, and in their eyes was a glint of shrewdness and cunning as they regarded the new world around them. Moffis did not look especially confident at their arrival, but Horsip brimmed over with energy and assurance. He began to put the problems to them:
First, what to do about the ambushing on the road?
The answers flew thick as dust in summertime.
Small forts and splat-gun nests could be built along the chief roads. Light patrols could scour the fields alongside to seek out the lop-tails before they got their guns in place. Strips of leaping mines could be laid alongside the roads at a distance, so the lop-tails would have to cross them to do any damage. Light airplanes could drop explosives on them. The problem was easy.
What about the stitching-gun?
Simple. Capture as many as possible from the lop-tails, and teach our men how to use them. Find the factories that made them, and induce the manufacturer to make more. And the same for the place that made their darts. Minor details of the gun’s outward appearance could be changed, and a big seal attached, reading “Official Centra Stitching Gun.”
Now, the big question: How to end this creeping war?
The Planetary Integration staff had a simple answer for that one. Every time a human was killed, ten of the lop-tails should lose their lives. If that didn’t stop the foolishness, then eleven lop-tails should die. If it still went on, then twelve lop-tails. Each time the ratio was raised there should be an impressive announcement. Placards should be scattered over the country, saying, “If you murder a Centran, you kill ten of your own kind.”