Glossip shook his head in disgust, then the light of craft and shrewdness lit up his eyes. “Hm-m-m, Towers. Now, just suppose, instead of a warm wet planet—”
Towers smiled. “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”
“What we want,” said Glossip, “are two things. First, to get loose from this place, with a whole skin. Second, to jar the minds of these teleports onto something besides killing everyone they can reach.”
Towers nodded. “Their standard procedure seems to have two stages: First, spread homing objects into the territory of the opposition. Second, attack to kill, with stunning shock-effect and overwhelming force. Considering the conditions on this planet, it must seem almost as natural as breathing.”
“It seems to me that our idea, once we put it into action, ought to do something to this automatic procedure of theirs.”
“Yes. Of course, a lot might depend on what the dissection shows.”
“Yes,” said Glossip. “It will be interesting to see just what that turns up.”
The surgeons, after several long, nerve-wracking sessions, duly submitted a report that boiled down to a statement that the natives were typically humanoid in their body structure, with certain little-understood organs somewhat more developed than in the people of Earth or Centra—but that this was well within the limits of normally-to-be- expected variations; that there was a complicated digestive system, apparently designed to handle a wide variety of local foods. An analysis of the contents of the digestive tract was appended, with sketches and photographs to give some clue to the local diet.
Towers and Logan, and later Glossip, searched backwards and forwards through the report for some explanation of the locals’ teleporting ability. But there was no explanation there. There was, instead, a long statement about the development of the skeletal and muscular systems, and special adaptations for swimming, such as partial webs between the fingers and the elongated toes, eyes capable of being thrust forward under the brow ridges for purposes of better observation, a large chest with exceptionally powerful muscles, the absence of external ears, and speculation as to the hypothetical superiority, underwater, of the membrane that took the place of the external ear.
Towers skimmed over the question of streamline form typical of underwater creatures, but paid close attention to a description of an arrangement in the ear that permitted the mechanism to withstand comparatively heavy pressures, as the chain of small bones that transmitted sound vibrations came to rest inside a supporting cage of bone, while most of the external membrane itself was pressed back against a porous bony surface that apparently could support it at any depths likely to be reached in the offshore waters near the islands.
There was no arrangement for adapting to low external pressures, the report went on, apparently because there was little likelihood of experiencing them on the planet. There were no high mountains to climb, the planet’s axis was vertical to the plane of the ecliptic, eliminating seasonal extremes, the weather seemed uniform, and the report theorized that in the event of unusually low atmospheric pressure, a sense of “unease” would be felt, possibly leading the humanoids to teleport to another locality, or to dive into the warm waters, where the resulting pressure would promptly eliminate any discomfort.
“Too bad,” said Logan, “they didn’t just evolve gills and have done with it.”
“Probably wouldn’t have worked,” said Towers. “They’d have been in competition with the sea life, and it’s formidable.”
Logan nodded. “But at least we’d have understood which mechanism did what.”
Towers leafed back through the report. “Whatever it is, the surgeons could have the organ used for teleporting—if there is a special organ for teleporting—right under their hands and never know it. But what puzzles me is—as far as it’s possible to tell from this—we’ve got everything they’ve got.”
Logan smiled. “Who knows? Maybe they could show us how to do it.”
“Provided they’d stick around long enough without putting a knife in us.”
“There is that difficulty. Well, what now?”
“The first thing is to find some way to get several tons of stuff they can eat off the planet and into storage. The trouble is, they can’t eat our food, so we may have to bring food all the way from here to feed them.”
“Sir, feed them?”
“So we can keep them alive while we bring them back from other planets.”
“I thought the whole idea was to keep them from ever getting to other planets.”
“The idea is to keep them from carrying out their program of conquest, without having to divert manpower from halfway around the universe to do it. What’s the best way to stop someone from carrying out a program of conquest?”
Logan cast a belligerent look toward the planet below.
“Flatten them out. If necessary, kill them.”
“That may be the surest way, if you can do it. But suppose you can convince them that there’s no profit whatever in their program of conquest, that there is, in the nature of things, nothing to gain by it?”
Logan blinked. “Well—Yes, but—”
“In fact,” said Towers, “couldn’t you say a conqueror is flattened out and killed as a conqueror, once he discovers that the result of his clever schemes is likely to be pure agony?”
Logan looked at Towers attentively.
“How do we do that to them?”
The next few days brought word of the other Centran scout ships. They had separated, and all but one had so far found nothing worth mentioning. That one had moored alongside a large desolate chunk of nickel iron, and by pure miscalculation on the part of the scout, the ship banged into this floating chunk of ore before the scout got his beacon and claim-plate anchored in place. On returning, he was stupefied to find eighteen blue-green bodies, a large assortment of weapons, and eighteen unbroken shells, drifting alongside the ship which had a few fragments of broken shell still stuck to it, and innumerable bits and slivers drifting around loose. There was no other ship in sight, and the big chunk of ore offered no sign of an entry or exit. The scout blinked, uttered a fervent prayer, and lost no time getting photographic evidence. He then consulted his “Manual of Official Rules and Procedures,” and found that he now had no choice but to report this airless block as an “inhabited planetoid.” Finds in this category were so rare as to create a sensation when the report came in, followed on closer examination by massive censorship. Only by the authority of the Supreme Staff was the lid pried loose, and then Logan and Towers looked at the photographs and glanced at each other.
“Well,” said Logan, “that proves it. They can teleport to a great distance, once they have a homing object to jump to.”
“Yes,” said Towers, “and it also shows us something else.”
“They’re eager for conquest. This scout scarcely left the ship and came back, and there they were.”
“And they have a definite technique. They come through in a flash, one wave following another. When they’re winning, there’s no end of them. When they’re losing, they stop coming through. How do they know which to do?”
“Maybe one of them flashes through, then goes back and gives the word.”
Towers shook his head. “What if he doesn’t live to go back? No, I’ve studied the films of that business in the corridor, and that isn’t how it works. They come in waves. In the corridor here, one came through, and threw out a stack of shells. To each shell came another teleport, each carrying, as far as the field of view shows us, a shell under his left arm, the thinnest edge of it gripped between fingers and thumb of his left hand, and in one swift motion of his left hand, he flung this out.”
Logan frowned. “Yes, but what—”
Towers yanked a large envelope out of a stack on his desk, pulled out a handful of blown-up photographs, selected a number showing the chaos in the corridor, the air seemingly jammed with natives, the fusion beams searing into them as they flung out the shells that would serve the next wave as homing objects. Carefully, Towers examined each photograph before handing it over.
Each photograph Towers selected showed a shell in the foreground. And each shell showed in its edge at least one small curving break.
“How,” said Towers, “do they know when to come through, and when to stop? In the corridor, we have on the film upwards of forty of them in one attack alone. Some were killed and others got away. But the Centran scout, when he accidentally let his ship drift into the ore body and smash the shell, came up against only eighteen of them. Plus eighteen shells.”
Towers glanced at the report of the scout. One plate showed the shells drifting in space amongst the shambles of eighteen bodies, and assorted rifles, splat-guns, and grenades. The sight was horrible enough, but the nearest shells, lit up starkly by the flash that accompanied the shot, looked perfect and unbroken. He handed the report to Logan.