“No, sir. We’ve got others.” Towers’ voice was unintentionally sharp.
Glossip looked at him coldly. “Do you have any in those landing-boats you’re bringing down?”
“We have several of them, sir.”
“Could you have one dropped to this ship?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then go out, have an extra pack dropped down, and bring it in here.”
Glossip reached back and took hold of a brass knob dangling on the end of a slender chain, and there was a bong-bong on the far side of the bulkhead behind him.
The corridor door opened up and a somewhat dull-looking Centran lieutenant saluted.
“Sir?”
“Take Colonel Towers here to the entry port. Inform the officer of the hatch that the colonel is to have every consideration, and may leave by the red or the green as he chooses. He—”
General Glossip paused abruptly.
The lieutenant had suddenly forgotten Glossip, and was looking at Towers’ completely furless face and hands. Next he stared to right and left of Towers’ ankles. He had that characteristic look of a Centran—one possessing poor manners and dubious intelligence—seeing an Earthman for the first time, and trying to locate the tail.
General Glossip’s teeth came together with a snap.
He turned to Towers, very politely.
“Colonel—”
“Sir?”
“If you would just step outside for a moment, while I give Lieutenant Molgrim a few final instructions—”
“Yes, sir.”
Towers stepped outside, and could feel the lieutenant’s gaze on him the whole distance.
Towers pulled the door shut and stood to the other side from the sergeant on guard.
From behind Towers, the general’s voice came through the door, low and angry:
“You sickly lump of Mikeril bait! Stand up! Eyes front! Get that silly look off your face! Was that the first Earthman you ever saw?”
The Centran sergeant glanced up and down the hall, then, strictly contrary to regulations, murmured confidentially, “I was on Earth in the invasion.”
Towers hesitated. He should deliver a stiff reprimand. But here at last might be a source of information.
“Yes, sir,” murmured the sergeant. “I was only a cub, but I was at General Horsip’s headquarters when the counterattack hit. Believe me, there was something. Whatever else they say, I know Earthmen can fight. Anything I can do for you, sir, just send the word for Klas Makkil. In a place like this, we have to stick together, or we’re finished.”
Towers dumped regulations overboard.
“What is it you’re up against on this planet?”
“The toads go through the air so fast you can’t see them. That’s the worst. Next is that they float underwater with just the curve of their eyes awash. They can spot you, but you can’t spot them. By the hairy arm, sir! It’s not safe to set foot outside in the daytime, and it isn’t much better at night.”
“Thanks, Makkil. That’s more than the general told me.”
“General’s all right, sir. But this place has him whipped, and he’s too mad to talk about it.” The sergeant stood straighter as footsteps approached from the general’s office.
The door opened, and the lieutenant came out, trembling all over. “Please follow me, sir.”
As Towers started down the hall, the sergeant hissed in his ear, “Go fast, from red.”
Beneath the closed red hatch in the aft fin, Towers dropped to a low crouch.
The Centran officer in charge bellowed, “Raise the bars! Drop the hatches!”
Towers glanced up at the disk of dazzling sky directly overhead, snapped the pack control to full lift, straightened his legs in one violent thrust, and shot though the hatch. Abruptly he was in bright sunlight, breathing air that seemed fresh and almost cool.
From the ship dwindling below came a clang as the hatches slammed shut.
Towers glanced up, to see that Logan was evidently alert for treachery. The landing-boats were in a formation of open concentric rings, lowest on the outside, and progressively stepped up toward the center. From this formation, they could open fire on the Centran ship without obstructing each other, or close on it simultaneously from all sides.
Towers slipped his belt communicator into his hand.
“Logan.”
“Sir?”
“Lift formation a thousand feet.”
From below came a roar, and Towers recognized Glossip’s voice:
“Colonel Towers! Your orders were to bring no ship or landing-boat to the surface!”
There was a momentary silence, and Towers deduced that Glossip could see the boats lifting, and realized Towers must already have given the order.
“Very good,” came Glossip’s voice. “See they don’t come within a hundred reaches of the surface, Towers.”
“Yes, sir,” called Towers obediently. He had the growing suspicion that he and Glossip were going to have a head-on collision soon.
He described Glossip’s order to Logan, and asked. “Do we have an extra gravitor pack handy?”
“Yes, sir,” said Logan, “though how we’ll get it into the ship I don’t know. I’ll set the pack to descend slowly.”
“Good. But—wait a minute.”
Towers looked around exasperatedly. Glossip didn’t bother to explain. He just gave orders. It was, therefore, a little hard to improvise if his orders turned out to be impractical.
Glossip had ordered Towers to bring the extra pack into the ship. Of course, to do that, Towers had to go through the same thing he’d gone through the last time, with the added handicap of the extra pack. Was there some reason why Glossip wanted Towers himself back in the ship, or would the pack alone be enough? The devil with it.
“And Logan—”
“Sir?”
“Put a coil of fishline and a couple of lead weights, from the survival kit, in the pocket of the pack. Maybe I can guide the pack down to the ship from up here.”
“Yes, sir.”
A moment later, a dark object detached itself from one of the landing-boats, and began to drift down.
Towers, hovering, could feel the sun through his uniform, and every breath of air seemed to stay where he exhaled it. He lifted up on the control, and climbed toward the pack.
He still had to get that pack into the Centran ship, and before he tried that, it might not be a bad idea to get a little more information.
“Logan, what happened when I went down to the command ship?”
“I wish I knew, sir. It looked like twenty to thirty blue-green mermen materialized around that pair of conning towers.”
“Materialized?”
“Well, sir, if they flew, they were too fast to follow.”
That, thought Towers, was what Makkil had said. He cleared his throat.
“They materialized over the fins—the ‘conning towers’?”
“Well, not over them, at first. They—clumped.”
“They what?”
“Well, they—piled up. The impression most of us got was that they didn’t appear all at once, but in rapid succession. It seemed that the first ones were lower than the ones that followed. Then they—dematerialized—disappeared and were gone.”
Towers shook his head. No wonder Glossip hadn’t wanted to talk about it. He looked down at the water, then up at the landing-boat.
“You’ve got this recorded?”
“Yes, sir. But we haven’t had time to check it over.”
“Do you have any idea where these things came from, or where they went to?”
“We don’t know where they went to. But they apparently came from the water around the island. First, a series of splashes and then they appeared over the ship.”
“Splashes?”
“Yes, sir. As if something had just been dropped into the water. I suppose if something came out of the water, fast enough, it would make a splash, too.”
“Hm-m-m,” Towers thought it over, saw that the pack was close, caught it, and reached into the pocket for the fishline. Just as he drew it out, something in the placid water below threw back a flash of reflected light.
Four feet of glistening teeth and crocodilian head split the water in a streak of foam. There was a wild thrashing, and a humanlike upper body came into view, muscular arms wildly beating the water, mouth wide open and features contorted, the whole body—head, limbs, and torso—blue-green in color. Then the huge jaws twisted sidewise, and there was just a long swell of smooth water marked by a whitish rush of bubbles. Then the distant piercing scream reached Towers, like a reflected flash of agony.
Around the island, a series of low spouts of water flung up and fell back in a splash.
Logan said, “That’s roughly what happened before.”
From the Centran ship came Glossip’s voice:
“Colonel Towers! Bring down the pack!”
Towers started down, counting seventeen places in the sea marked by circular ripples.
Logan was saying, “But the last time that happened, the mermen showed up over the ship.”
“The splashes came from the places where you’d noticed some kind of translucent objects?”
“Yes, sir. We were apparently seeing the eyes and maybe part of the brow.”
Again, that fit with what Makkil had said. It added up, but what did it add up to?
“Do you still see any in the water around the island?”