Glossip looked at Towers. “You were right! I’ll get in touch with you as soon as we clean up the remnants.”
Glossip vanished from the screen, and Towers became vaguely aware of Logan’s voice saying, “Sir, we no sooner got started on this than we unearthed a query from a Centran space depot, asking information about this planet’s surface.”
“Why did they ask about that?”
“It seems that a Centran scout ship broke down, and turned up at the space depot for repairs. An officer noticed a brownish shell stuck to the scout ship, apparently for decoration. It seems that some of the scout pilots will mount on their ship a plume, skull, or some other souvenir of the planet they’ve scouted, as a sort of trophy. This is strictly contrary to regulations, and the Centrans are cracking down on it. Well, this shell is stuck on with some kind of powerful adhesive, but the scout insists he didn’t put it there. The officials at the depot want to know what the surface of the planet here is like, and what the chance is of a thing like this happening with no help from the pilot.”
“Where is this stuck onto the ship?”
“On the underside, where the ship would naturally set down.”
“How big?”
“Roughly a foot across.”
“Sounds exactly like their favorite homing object.”
“Yes, sir. We’ve been assuming the locals could use any large object. Maybe they can’t.”
Towers shook his head. “How much did you hear of what’s going on down there?”
“Just the last few exchanges on the screen.”
Towers described what had happened. Logan listened in amazement and shook his head. “Then it follows they don’t need these shells to home on. Then why did they put one on the ship?”
“More peculiar yet, why did they put it where the ship would land on it?”
Logan said quietly: “The shell would break when they land.”
“That’s it.”
Logan said in exasperation: “They apparently, in some way, familiarize themselves with the molecular structure of an object, and then they can home on it—guide themselves when they ‘jump’ to the place where the object is. Perhaps each object has a characteristic—call it a ‘wave-state’—that the teleports can detect and use to guide themselves to the place where the object is. So, they take great pains to stick a homing object to a departing scout ship, and they stick it where it will be destroyed when the scout ship lands—which is exactly when they will want to use it.”
“Right,” said Towers. “That’s it exactly.”
“But how? Once it’s mashed to bits in the landing, that will change the characteristic wave-form, won’t it?”
“Yes, and tell them that the ship has landed.”
Logan looked startled.
“Otherwise,” said Towers, “how do they know when the ship has reached another planet? It’s there that they want to come out, not somewhere in between planets.”
“And then they home on the ship itself? Yes, I see it. The molecular structure of the ship won’t change substantially. The fact that it remains uninjured, and the shell is destroyed, suggests that the ship has set down. In that case, it follows that they did plan ahead. Even though they weren’t seen, they were active when the first Centran expedition scouted the planet.”
Towers said, “Apparently they aren’t lacking in the taste, or the ability, for conquest. All they’ve been lacking is opportunity.”
Logan, looking stunned, sat down at his desk. “In the short space of time since that first Centran scouting expedition, these teleports have worked out a technique for getting to other planets, destroyed a Centran life-saving station, captured its crew, learned the Centran tongue, seized a quantity of Centran weapons and learned how to use them, surprised a Centran force sent to investigate, wiped out most of it, attacked an entire Centran planetary invasion force, and came within a hair’s breadth of—”
Towers’ communicator buzzed. He snapped it on, to see, through the open visor of a suit of battle armor, the serious face of Cartwright, the Officer of the Watch, who stepped to one side to show half-a-dozen blue-green bodies lying on the deck inside the active equipment locker—a long, high, narrow room with rows of clamp-fastener shelves on one side, and snap hooks on the other side. On one of the shelves lay the grav pack Towers had used on the planet. At the far end of the locker was the closed hatch leading to the outside air lock. Back out of sight of the camera was the corridor to the spray baths and the air lock to the interior of the ship. It was possible to enter the ship by any of several routes, but as a means to cut down the admission of germs and parasites, this was the route taken on returning from a trip to a strange planet, and it was the route Towers had used. On leaving the equipment locker, he had shut the inner doors that cut down air circulation—and the screen was now showing the view through this doorway into the locker, where the blue-green bodies lay like so many rag dolls. Half hidden under a muscular blue-green arm was what looked like a large shell inside a case of tightly-woven fiber that fit like a thick tire on a broad wheel.
Towers looked the bodies over carefully. They all showed plain evidence of having run into a terrific concentration of fire.
“Are there any more to the screen?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What happened?”
“We set up two mesh barriers in the corridors, in case anything came out of the locker in a rush. The first barrier was right outside the locker door here, and the second was back up the corridor with the guns behind it. I came up behind the first barrier to use a hand grapple on the locker doors. There wasn’t a rustle from the other side as I eased the door open. Then here was a yell, a shower of darts, and the whole net bulged back as six or eight hit it at once. I was knocked flat on my back. A kind of shell wrapped with fiber—there it is on the deck there—hit the net and flattened up against it, and another of these natives materialized in the air on this side of the barrier. He had an armload of shells, and as I went down I could see him cast them down the corridor. I yelled ‘Open fire!’ That did it, sir. But if we hadn’t suspected they were in there, we wouldn’t have had a chance.”
The screen drew back, to show a metal frame tightly fitted against the walls of the corridor, with a net, now badly torn, stretched so that it blocked the passage, yet at first was scarcely visible. The view swung around, to show more blue-green forms strewn on the deck. Farther down the corridor was another frame and net, and, behind, it, a pair of short-range nine-barrel fusion guns set up side by side with armored men prone behind them, and behind them, another pair set higher on their adjustable mounts, and angled slightly upward.
Towers glanced back at the motionless forms on the deck.
“Is that all the attackers?”
“No, sir. I think we had fifty here for a moment or two. Apparently they decided it wasn’t working, and left.”
Towers thought it over in silence.
“Let’s have a better view of that deck.”
The scene tilted, and he was looking at motionless blue-green forms with many tiny oval fragments of shell scattered amongst them.
“That can’t be the armload of shells you mentioned.”
“No, sir. Maybe they took them back with them.”
Towers fought down the urge to profanity. The active equipment locker, and that whole stretch of corridor adjacent to it, was now as open to attack as if it were part of the planet. By the same token, it was denied to Towers, except for armored men, and all that was needed was one slip, and the whole ship would be wide open. He didn’t like the way the opposition traded blow for blow. It was painfully obvious who had the initiative, and there was no point stepping the fight up a little bit at a time, so as to make a staircase for them to climb by stages until they perfected their measures up to the level of Centra and Earth combined. What was needed was a blow delivered with a force they couldn’t understand, from a direction they didn’t expect. The difficulty was, the target could move from place to place with lightning rapidity. And since their technology was primitive, there was no way to strike at them through that. With due care, and enough shrewdness and force, over a long period of time, it would probably be possible to exterminate the whole race—provided they never succeeded in establishing themselves on another planet—but that would violate Centran principles, and deny the advantages that might conceivably come from an eventual change in the natives’ attitude. And that was the crux of the matter. How to change that desire for conquest into something more like an honest interest in cooperation?