“There is.” Towers took him by the arm. “You see that bug, flattened on the doorframe? Odd-looking bug, isn’t it? It appears to have a sting on one end, and a sucker on the other end. Now, look in this supply closet. Obviously from all this stuff that’s eaten up, the escaped humanoid spent a long time in here. Now, this bug didn’t pay much attention to us yesterday, but flew around the room, hovered outside the door to this closet or sat on the doorframe over the closet, buzzing from time to time. Now, our insects don’t trouble these humanoids, but something kept that humanoid from coming out till after we closed up and snapped off the lights in here.”
“Yes, sir,” said Cartwright, frowning at the squashed bug. “It must have been that insect.”
Towers nodded. “And the sooner we find out what that insect is, the better. The obvious way would be to get the information from some expert in Planetary Integration, but” —he listened for a moment to the distant shouts and screams coming from the Centran part of camp—”I’m afraid they’re not going to be available for a while.”
“Yes, sir,” said Cartwright. “So I should—”
“Go through these papers,” said Towers, pointing to the stacks of Centran reports on the floor. “As soon as you find out what this bug is, your punishment’s over.”
Cartwright whipped out a pocket knife, cut the strings binding the end stack of reports, pulled out the top one, and started to read. Abruptly he stopped, and looked intently at the thousands of reports waiting to be read.
Logan said to Towers, “Sir, if we do find the right kind of bug, and can mass-breed it, that should take care of protecting the Centran camps. After we have enough bugs.”
“We might be able to do more than that with them,” said Towers, frowning. “We have to be very careful about spreading complete colonies of our own insects over a planet. But this bug is native to the planet, and on top of that it doesn’t seem to bother us.” He slewed his desk around to something like a normal position, and amidst the shouts, buzzing, droning, and whining sounds, sat down and tried to think.
“But, sir,” said Logan apologetically, “first we’ve got to get around this ammunition shortage.”
* * *
The days blended into weeks as they struggled with the ammunition shortage, and a host of miscellaneous problems.
Klossig’s part of camp was like a city after a siege. The buildings were shot up, dead and wounded were strewn around indiscriminately, the air was choked with smoke from small fires that threatened to get out of hand and burn up the whole camp. The Centrans not hurt in the shooting were dazed from the shock of the revolt, and half-dead from the attacks of the insects that broke it up. Powerful insecticides had disposed of most of the insects, but a few kept reappearing from unlikely places, to add a pall of nervous dread to the desolation.
To keep the camp from being overrun by the humanoids, Towers had to rush his own men onto the walls as sharpshooters, backed up by roaming squads of close-trained wolves, big cats, and gorillas. The other Centran camps pleaded for help as their munitions supply dwindled, and this strained Towers’ manpower to the limit. Just as he reached the point where he had nothing to spare, Cartwright discovered in the Centran reports a reference to an odd bug that terrorized the humanoids in the daytime, and was destroyed by them at night, the nests being thrown down, ripped open, and the young bugs torn out, to be eaten as a special delicacy.
By degrees, Towers managed to straighten out the worst of the mess, getting automatic devices into operation to ease the strain on his men. The scouts then went into action, and brought back several nests of the insects. But now, one of the random eddying migrations of the humanoids produced a surge of population below Klossig’s camp, and the number of desperate climbers coming up the cliff rose to an unprecedented flood.
At this point, Klossig fortunately was able to get back onto his feet. A sudden burst of energy swept through the Centran part of camp. The troops, jolted into action by the sight of dead mutineers dangling from gallows, took over from the Special Effects men on the walls, and savagely knocked the humanoids off with clubs, axes, and sledge hammers.
This desperate effort gave Towers and his men just time enough to study the main routes up which the humanoids climbed, and to put some Special Effects into operation. The mountain suddenly blossomed out in live wires, strips of rock polished mirror-smooth and greased, and sets of handholds that supported a climber’s full weight for a brief moment, then snapped out on forty feet of cable, stopped with a jolt, and wound up ready for the next climber.
Towers, mopping perspiration from his brow, returned to his office to find a report stating that the local bugs were now being propagated successfully by mass-breeding. The report stated: “Initial efforts at fractionation suggest that in no very great time we will have on hand a spectrum of strains ranging, in their effects on the local humanoids, from very moderate to near-lethal virulence.”
“In other words,” said Towers, in relief, “we’ll have strains of bugs capable of hitting the humanoids with everything from annoyance to terror.”
“Well,” said Logan, “that’s a relief. We’ve about stopped the humanoids coming up the wall, but the Centran troops are dead on their feet, and I hate to think what will happen if more humanoids should climb up. With the bugs, we can stop them.”
Towers was drawing a careful sketch on a pad. “The original problem wasn’t just to stop them,” he said. “That will leave us, Klossig, and the humanoids, right in the same hole we were in to start with. The problem is to somehow break the humanoids out of their planetary mob. See if you can find one of our men who’s ingenious at construction.”
Logan went out, and came back with a thin, wiry individual with capable hands. Towers pointed to several sketches. “We’re going to plant nests of bugs down there in the jungle. The bugs will frustrate and terrorize a large proportion of the humanoids by day—which, we hope, will tend to break up their instinctive-traditional pattern of living in an endless cycle of eat, reproduce, and kill. But at night, the humanoids will go up after the nests, and only a few that happen to be located in particularly inaccessible spots will survive. Unless we take precautions.”
The technician looked over the drawings. “You want a kind of cage, or barrier, with knives and other stuff sticking out, so the humanoids can’t get at the nests?”
“No,” said Towers, “so the humanoids can’t get at the nests as the humanoids are now. These cages have to be of various kinds, requiring different degrees of ingenuity to open, the mechanism has to be out where it can be seen, and some of the doors are to have widely-separated releases, so they can be opened by cooperative effort.”
The technician frowned, then straightened up as a light seemed to dawn on him. “I get it. I’ll start right to work on it, sir.”
“Good.”
The technician hurried out with the sketches.
Towers, feeling exhausted, pushed back his chair and got up. He thought he would go outside, take a little walk, and get some fresh air. He opened the outer door and froze.
Coming straight for him, a wild-eyed hairy figure burst across the clear space between the barracks. Right behind sprinted a crowd of Centrans with clubs, axes, and sledge hammers. But the humanoid was gaining.
Towers barely had time to reach for his gun.
There was a terrific burst of lights, then spiraling blackness.
Towers was on his back, vaguely aware of a soft covering over him. He opened his eyes.
Daylight hit him with a hammering shock.
He waited a moment, and tried opening his eyes gradually. By degrees, he succeeded, until in a half-squint he could look around.
He was lying in his own room with a medical orderly watching him tensely.
Towers tried to sit up. The room wavered around him.
“Careful, sir,” warned the orderly.
Towers waited till the room steadied, then sat up further. The orderly propped him up with a pillow.
Towers said, “Where’s Major Logan?” His voice came out in a whisper, and he had to clear his throat and try again.
“I’ll get him, sir.” The orderly went out.
A few minutes later, Logan came in.
Towers said, “What day is it?”
“Sir, you’ve been out for nearly ten days. The doctor thought you were done for.”
Towers grunted, and swung carefully to sit on the edge of the bed. He felt light-headed, but otherwise all right. It came to him with a shock that he actually felt better than he had earlier. He no longer ached all over. He glanced at Logan.