“Logan?”
“Sir?” came the voice of his second-in-command.
“Drop the landing-boats another thousand feet.”
Overhead, the bright glint began to change form and position.
Logan’s voice came through again. “How do things look?”
“About the same as on the screen. Nothing moving. No Centrans, humanoids, or animals in sight anywhere. But I have the sensation of a hundred sets of unfriendly eyes watching. Do you see anything?”
“No, sir. Nothing worth mentioning.”
Towers pressed down the knob of the grav pack’s control rod, felt mounting pressure against his eardrums as he dropped, and yawned and swallowed to ease the pressure.
He looked down at the Centran command ship lying on dark sand near the edge of a patch of dark-green brush. The ship had a low bulge along its upper flank, and rising from this, two big thick vertical fins one behind the other. These fins, oval in cross-section, bristled with gun muzzles, spike-bars, and nests of sharpened blades, and were crowned by metal cages backed with mesh.
Logan’s voice came through reassuringly.
“Still nothing moving down there, sir. It looks O.K., at least.”
“Hm-m-m,” said Towers, unconvinced, looking over the guns and spike-bars.
Logan said, “What do you plan to do, sir?”
“Obey orders—when Glossip condescends to give them to me.”
Sark Glossip, who had brought Towers to this planet by his call for help, had provided an explanation that was a model of its kind:
“So,” Glossip had said, looking out intently from the communicator screen, “the Special Effects Team can straighten out planetary revolts?”
“We’ve certainly had experience at it,” said Towers. “What’s the trouble, sir?”
“How about planets that haven’t yet been . . . ah . . . fully integrated?”
“You want the Special Effects Team for the initial conquest?”
“Well,” said Glossip defensively, “we’ve run into an unusual situation—”
All Towers handled were unusual situations. But he nodded sympathetically, and looked receptive.
Glossip doubled back on his tracks.
“Is the Special Effects Team used in the initial conquest?”
“Not in the actual landing. But sometimes later on, if the situation is bad enough.”
“It’s bad here.”
“What’s wrong, sir?”
“It’s an extremely serious situation. Very serious, Towers. Very serious indeed.”
Towers listened patiently.
Glossip said, “We’re in a tough spot here.” His eyes strayed to Towers’ insignia of rank. “Colonel—if I understand you correctly—you will give assistance, if I request it.”
“Yes. But—”
“Very well. I do request assistance. Now, Towers, I want to discuss this with you.”
“Yes, sir,” said Towers exasperatedly.
“Down here. So, the first thing for you to do, Towers, is to come down, and we will go over this.”
“General, I can do a better job if I have some idea what the mess is before I’m in it.”
The Centran thrust out his jaw. “I think this is a much wiser way to handle this, Colonel. And the sooner you get here, the better.”
“I can get to the planet—”
Glossip interrupted. “In no circumstances are any of your ships to actually touch down here. This is the first thing you have to remember.”
“General, if you’d give me a few details, I could decide much better what—”
“Exactly why I want to discuss this with you, Colonel. As soon as possible—just as soon as you can get here.” Glossip frowned thoughtfully. “There isn’t any truth, I suppose, in the rumor that your people have developed a one-man gravitor pack?”
“Yes, we—”
“Splendid! Then you can come down using that, and you won’t need to bring even a landing-boat to the surface.”
Towers opened his mouth, and shut it again.
“Fine,” said the general. “Then that’s settled. Now, then, we’ll want to know exactly when you can get here . . .”
* * *
Now, thinking back on this conversation as he drifted down toward the Centran ship, Towers felt again the urge to profanity.
“Logan.”
“Sir?”
“I’m going down there now.”
“Yes, sir. Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
Towers dropped more rapidly, scanning sea and island, and seeing nothing move.
Suddenly, Logan said, “Sir—”
“Yes?”
“On high magnification, we’ve found a great many small translucent objects of some kind, barely afloat—in the water around the island below you.”
Towers looked down intently. “Any motion from these things?”
“No, sir. But we don’t see any such numbers anywhere else.”
“Maybe jellyfish of some kind.”
Towers dropped straight for the ship. From here, he could see the gun muzzles in the foreshortened upright fins. The guns pointed not only at sand, brush, and sea, but also at the dented armor of the neighboring fin. Was that to protect against an enemy too close to be reached otherwise? But then, why was only this part of the ship protected against attack?
From below, a voice boomed in Centran:
“Colonel Towers! When we open the bars, drop fast toward the red hatch! When you’re four or five reaches away, swerve for the green hatch. We’ll drop it as you come through. Don’t hesitate, and don’t shoot.”
The cages atop the big fins swung open, to show beneath them small chambers with large hatches at the bottom. The hatch in the forward fin was painted green, and in the aft fin red. Towers shoved down on the control, and plunged toward the aft fin.
The island, and the Centran ship, sprang up at him, enlarging in a rush.
He yanked the control sidewise and forward, and shot toward the forward hatch.
Suddenly, the air was filled with blue-green flippers, white teeth, and flying slivers of pointed shell.
There was a whine of bullets, the green hatch fell open underfoot, and he yanked up on the control as he plunged into thick darkness and a hammering clang shook the air. The deck sprang out of the gloom, and a voice roared, “Shut and lock! Report!”
Towers landed hard, sank down on his knees, felt the crushing pressure grow light, and barely managed to snap the control to neutral before it threw him back up at the hatch.
From overhead came shouts.
“Green clear!”
“Red clear!”
“Cease fire! Check your walls! New guard, by the red gate!”
Directly before Towers in the sweltering dimness, a Centran captain raised his hand in salute.
“The general’s waiting, sir. Follow me.”
Towers was barely able to breathe in the overpowering heat. He glanced around, to make out vertical bars that divided the space under this fin from a corresponding space farther aft. On each side, armed Centran guards, stripped to the waist, watched the opposite compartment.
Ahead of Towers, the Centran captain dropped through a hatchway, and Towers followed.
He found himself walking along a narrow corridor cooled by a faint current of air. The captain rounded a corner, and halted at a doorway where a Centran sergeant stood on guard. The guard boredly presented arms, the captain knocked, and a gruff bark answered from within. The captain opened the door, spoke briefly into the room, then turned to Towers.
“Go right in, sir.”
Towers stepped in. The heat, in here, was the worst yet.
Across the far corner of the room, under a sluggishly-turning four-bladed ceiling fan, was a desk. In back of the desk was an overturned pivot chair, one clawed foot upraised. Seated at the desk was a burly Centran stripped to the waist, his fur plastered to him as if he’d just stepped out of a shower. A glance was enough to show Towers that this was General Glossip.
General Glossip’s frame of mind was evident in the abrupt way he toweled the condensation off a pitcher of ice water, and slapped the towel over the upraised claw of the pivot chair, then glanced to the other side of his desk where a tub of ice trailed streamers of fog in the stifling heat, while condensation trickled onto a sodden bath towel, a thin stream of water curled out toward Glossip’s desk, and the general cast a venomous glance at it before looking up at Towers.
Towers, who had crossed the room to stand at attention before the desk, was momentarily distracted by a small green-and-brown striped lizard lying atop one of the broad sluggishly-turning fan blades. This lizard, a blissful expression on its face, apparently had the advantage of the only breeze in the room.
Towers became aware that the general was following his gaze. Towers saluted, and reported his presence.
Glossip’s face was expressionless as he returned the salute.
“Well, Colonel,” he said dryly, “I see you got here safely.”
“I’d have had a better chance with a little more information, sir.”
“And just how the devil was I supposed to explain a thing like that to you or anyone else?”
“Exactly what did happen when I was coming in?”
Glossip squinted at him, then nodded sourly. “Happened so fast you didn’t have time to see it? Well, Towers, far be it from me to try to explain it.” He glanced at the wide harness of the gravitor pack. “Is that the only one of those one-man packs you have?”