“I just hope the scout ships from that first expedition didn’t go straight to some crossroads of commerce.”
Towers, his mind already elaborating an idea that had occurred to him, said absently, “One way to find out.”
The two men were hard at work, when the communicator on Towers’ desk buzzed, buzzed again, and he flipped it on.
“Sir,” said an apologetic lieutenant, “we have an emergency call from General Glossip.”
“Put him on.”
The screen flickered, and Glossip appeared, in full battle dress. His face was intent, and his eyes glittered.
“Listen, Towers. Can you hear that?”
In the background was the prolonged crash of small-arms fire in a confined space.
Towers, dazed by the suddenness of this, could only say, “I hear it.”
“Nine out of every ten ships I’ve got are under attack. The remaining one out of ten can’t be reached. We don’t know how they got inside, and there’s nothing for us to do but fight to the finish. Keep out of it, Towers. I just want you to know what’s going on. Your orders are to stay completely off this planet.”
“Yes, sir. But—”
“You can’t help us by getting stuck in it yourself.”
“Yes, sir.”
The screen went blank.
Towers glanced at Logan, who was talking to someone on his desk screen. Towers shoved his chair back. Now what? He couldn’t sit here while Glossip and his men were slaughtered. Yet he had Glossip’s orders to stay off the planet. Suppose he dropped leech-canisters on the Centran ships? The canisters would attach themselves to the hulls, and bore their way through. Then they would flood the ships with sick gas. Towers reached for the communicator, then paused. If he did that, he would certainly put the Centrans out of action, but who knew about the body chemistry of the locals?
Frowning, Towers reached for the communicator, and called his intelligence chief.
A harried face appeared.
“Sir?”
“What’s going on down there?”
“I’ve been wondering whether to call you. There’s nothing visible taking place. But in the last ten minutes, we’ve had two reports of a terrific racket on the sound pickups, apparently from the Centran ships.”
“They’ve been boarded. Let me know what happens.”
“Yes, sir.”
Towers’ mind raced through the long catalog of special weapons and devices developed in fights on other planets. Wasn’t there even one he could use? Suppose he used close-trained lions and gorillas, with their controllers operating through the new visual linkage? Could they be counted on to attack the locals and not the Centrans? Was there time to do it? His mind whirled with calculations. So long to “awaken” them, so long to explain the situation to the controllers, so long to get them down to the planet. It would have to be cleared with Glossip, and the Centran troops would have to have some idea what was happening, or they would attack the animals as well as the locals.
Towers shook his head. There wasn’t time.
The communicator buzzed.
“Sir,” said the Intelligence chief, “now the portholes are being knocked out of the ships.”
“That fits. Let me know what else shows up.”
“Yes, sir.”
Towers’ mind was racing. Suppose he flooded the Centran ships with yellow jackets? They would sting the Centrans. But would they touch the natives? Mild methods were unreliable. But anything certainly lethal for the locals would finish the Centrans, too. How to strike at one set of people fighting at close quarters without hurting the other set?
On the desk beside the communicator, the second hand was steadily sweeping around. If he was going to do anything, it would have to be done fast. But, with two sets of them tangled up in close combat, how—
For an instant, some remembered fact seemed to present itself, to show the problem in a clearer light; but it was for an instant only, leaving Towers blankly trying to recover what had flashed through his mind and gone on. Carefully, he groped along a vanishing trail of mental associations. Something about separating two sets of people? Something he’d seen down there? Had he ever seen anything, in the brief time since he’d been here—some instance in which the locals had reacted differently from the Centrans, been at a disadvantage, or displayed a weakness?
The communicator buzzed. Towers snapped it on.
“Sir,” said the tense Communications officer. “General Glossip.”
The screen showed a chaotic flash of Centran troops, drifting powder smoke, swiftly-shifting groups of blue-green forms, now here, now there, always two or three of them to one of the Centrans. Before Towers’ eyes, the Centrans went down. There was no panic. The troops were fighting. But their blows didn’t land. And always, each Centran soldier was attacked by two or three of his enemies, appearing in a flash from nowhere, to strike from the side or rear, and vanish.
Glossip’s voice came through. “Do you see this, Towers?”
“I see it. Listen, we can drop close-trained animals down there—”
“No time, Towers. By the time you get anything here, it will all be over. Do you see how they fight?”
“I see it.”
“Are you recording this?”
“Yes, sir. Automatically.”
“Then there’s a record, at least. They’ll believe it at headquarters. I think I see what happened here. They can change position so fast you hardly see them. If, as our men went out for their night exercise, carrying their rifles, these locals simply flashed through the shadows for an instant, near the ship, long enough to contact the rifles, or do whatever they do, they would then have their homing objects, which the men would carry back into the ships with them.”
Towers nodded dazedly. There it was—Yet another trap.
On the screen, Glossip straightened, and his voice came across clearly. “This is a direct order, Towers. Keep out of this. There’s no time now for you to do anything. Better destroy that pack you wore down here, by the way. Good luck, Towers.”
Then, with his attention elsewhere, the thought came back to Towers. He instantly focused his whole awareness on it, and abruptly the situation seemed to change form. Yes, it was too late for him to intervene physically. But he could still send information.
Glossip was turning from the screen.
Towers said, “General—Lift your ships!”
Glossip turned back. “They’ll only learn—” He saw Towers’ face, and whirled out of sight of the screen. An instant later, a high-pitched whistle cut through the din, in a combination of tones repeated again and again, and then the communicator buzzed urgently.
Towers, vaguely aware of Logan speaking earnestly into his own communicator, snapped down the Hold switch, put the new call on the screen, and saw his Intelligence officer.
“Sir, several of the Centran ships are lifting fast.”
“Good.” Towers called his Communications officer.
“Sir?”
“All the Centran ships should lift shortly. If they don’t lift in the next two minutes, beam the order to lift ship, and either open hatches or smash some portholes. And keep lifting as long as the outside air is thick enough to breathe.”
The Communications officer blinked. “Yes, sir.”
Towers snapped the Hold switch back, and there was Glossip, turned partly away from the screen, his face tense.
Frowning, Towers thought over his brief flash of insight. Everything seemed to hold together. Why should a mechanism develop if it wasn’t needed? And hadn’t it been shown by that humanoid that had attacked Glossip? But then, suppose he was wrong?
Towers snapped down the Hold switch, and called Gunnery. A major with a bulldog jaw appeared on the screen.
Towers said, “The Centran ships have been boarded by the locals and there’s a chance that the locals may get control of some of them. If so, we want to be ready to destroy those ships ourselves.”
“If you need us, sir, we’ll be ready.”
“Good.” Towers switched back to Glossip, found that nothing had changed but the background noise, which was now more screams than shooting, and called the Officer of the Watch. The earnest face of Lieutenant Cartwright appeared on the screen.
Towers said, “Have you had any trouble from the active equipment locker? I left my grav pack there, and it seems to me the locals may have had opportunity to convert it into a ‘homing object’ while I was down there.”
Cartwright’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll check on it, sir. It will only take a few minutes to find out.”
“You don’t plan to just open the hatch and look in?”
“No, sir. I’ll seal the adjoining corridors before I do anything else.”
“Go to it.”
Towers switched back to Glossip, and at the same moment became vaguely aware that Logan was standing beside the desk. But Towers’ attention was fixed on the screen.
Glossip was turned sidewise, gun in hand. His face bore the smile of the man who has been attacked by a robber, and now the robber is at his mercy. Glossip stepped out of range of the screen, and came back dragging a blue-green figure by the arm. The creature’s face was twisted in agony, and both hands were pressed to the membranes, on either side of the head, that served as ears.