“Compare the shells that were followed by another wave of attack with those that were not followed by another wave of attack.”
“Hm-m-m. Yes, I see.”
“It’s been a puzzle all along how they signaled the next wave. It might have been that they went back and notified them. It might have been telepathy. Or it might be that it’s done by means of these shells. After all, why do they always use them when they come through? We know they can use other objects. Why don’t they come through carrying a captured spanner from a Centran ship, or a captured Centran helmet? Why isn’t it enough that they come through with a Centran rifle that another of them has ‘learned’? What conceivable advantage is there to lugging this shell along?”
Logan said, “Let’s see now. On some level of consciousness they ‘learn,’ or familiarize themselves, with an object. This object apparently gives off some kind of signal that enables them to home on it. If the object ceases to exist, the signal ceases, too. But, if the object isn’t actually smashed, if a small piece is broken off, then most of the object is still there—maybe the signal would still be transmitted, but the character of it would be altered.” Logan looked up in astonishment. “It might be like a radio tone that abruptly changed pitch.”
“Yes.”
“And that would explain their using the shells. It’s a little inconvenient to break a piece off a rifle or a helmet. Well, if so, we’ve finally got a way to trap them for a change.”
Towers nodded. “If our assumptions are right, we should be able to hit them so hard it will jar their automatic-conquest habit down into their throats—where they will choke on it.”
The following months passed under the painful handicaps imposed by the fact that the locals were on the watch to take advantage of any slip, and this added complexities to the problems of dealing with an unfamiliar planet that no one had thought of before. Dredges were sent down to collect edible plants for use later, and immediately ran head on into the fact that the off shore waters were thick with a honeycomb network of coral-like structures, traversed only by various fish, the locals, and a kind of stretched-out alligator with long armor-tipped snout, numerous pairs of legs, and a highly flexible body. While the coral dulled cutters and jammed machinery, the alligators specialized in punching through the sieve-like containers that held the contents, to get at schools of small fish trapped amongst the vegetation inside.
Meanwhile, the natives pulled out cotter pins, hauled on sprockets and gears, and then swam down to locate the pieces, and tried to deduce what these things were good for. Small TV cameras attached to the machines showed what was going on. The coral was wearing out the machinery, the alligators were living a life of ease and luxury, and the humanoids were demonstrating a fantastic mechanical stupidity, as evidenced by the fact that they swam around the dredge, prodding it with shell-tipped spears, apparently seeking the heart of the beast. But their idea of damage seemed accurate enough. Anything capable of being pulled off, they pulled off, and if it was big enough, they ran their hands over it, with a peculiar expression of concentration, suggesting that they were converting it into a homing object.
It was now up to the technicians to devise a machine that could either avoid or chew through and spit out the coral, resist the efforts of the alligators, and meanwhile stand off the locals. One difficulty followed another, and before it was over the Special Effects Team had devised an armored dredge with underwater cannon and shock generators, and enough circuitry to wire a city. This behemoth was a success until it chewed a path completely through the coral-like barrier, to the outer sea. In through the channel came a beast like the offspring of a mammoth lobster mated to a giant squid. Whatever this creature was, the dredge had apparently intruded into its territory, and by the time it got through, the dredge was scattered over a hundred square miles of ocean bottom. Then there was nothing to do but build another one.
Glossip, meanwhile, had gotten hold of a nuclear furnace and steel works suitable for converting metallic asteroids into sheets, bars and tubes, and he was slowly and methodically running his contaminated space fleet in one end of this and out the other, where his crew labored to convert the sheets, bars and tubes back into space-ships. The frustrations were maddening, and meanwhile the Centran high command grudgingly doled out items that couldn’t be reconstructed, and accompanied the dole with a flood of warnings about the mounting expense. All that made it possible was that the Centrans never used anything complicated where something simple would do the job. When they finally ran into absolutely impossible problems, a crew of experts would show up with the necessary materials and precision tools, and with much shaking of heads and wise advice for the future, put the finishing touches to the work.
At the end, Glossip had a fleet that was not much worse than the fleet he’d had before, and he could walk down the corridor without the thought that half a hundred teleports might spring out at him any minute. Towers by then had large quantities of local food on the way to various planets where scout ships orbited patiently. The local natives had a large collection of miscellaneous parts they were trying to somehow fire, explode, or otherwise put to useful service. Everyone but the natives was worn out, and no one was absolutely certain that they hadn’t somehow insinuated a booby trap into the works somewhere.
Glossip, however, remained as persistent as a river eating its way through a mountain, and Towers was kept busy adding refinements to what he thought might prove to be the only real surprise this race of teleports had ever experienced. But always some part of the plan was weaker than the others, so his work went on and on, until it finally reached the point where he had covered everything he could conceive to be possible, and for good measure, quite a few things he couldn’t conceive to be possible.
The food was now at the planets, under refrigeration. The scout ships were ready to land. The planets were waiting patiently for whoever might care to come down.
Everything seemed as ready as it could be, so Towers gave the signal for the first scout ships to set down.
Seated at his multiple screen, Towers looked from one to another of the landing fields. One view showed slush a foot deep, with occasional showers of sleet lashing past almost horizontally. At the top of the screen, little images of comparison gauges showed atmospheric pressure far below that on the teleports’ home world, while, thanks to a relatively small planetary diameter, the surface gravity was painfully higher.
Another planet had a heavier gravity and thinner atmosphere, with impressive ranges of volcanoes belching clouds of sulfurous fumes over a landscape of cracked earth and bubbling pits of mud, while occasional patches of scrawny vegetation gave the only sign of life.
One of the colder planets had something extra, in the form of humanoids whose protruding muzzles, and all but nonexistent foreheads, were somewhat compensated for by thick fur, exceptionally powerful jaws, and sharp teeth. Considerable numbers of these humanoids, their small eyes glinting shrewdly, were behind the protective rock walls at the edge of the landing ground. Eagerly, they were breaking bits off the edge of large brownish shells, and then carrying the shells and broken-off bits to a Centran bundled in furs, who in return handed out copper disks the size of saucers. These disks the humanoids carried through a nearby stone doorway, to emerge beaming, with handfuls of steel traps, hatchets, knives and small sacks marked with the Centran word for salt. The Centran who accepted the broken bits and the shells dropped the bits in a leather bag, and handed the shells to humanoid children, who tucked them under their left arms and darted off, the grown-ups pounding after them. As the delightful game went on, shells broke and were discarded, and the shaggy humanoids began glancing around eagerly for whole shells that might have been overlooked.
Towers, watching the scene on the screen, suddenly watched more intently.
Over the landing ground, sinking slowly through a brief shower of sleet, the first of the scout ships was coming down.
Slowly the ship settled into the slush, and its weight came to rest on the shell fixed to its underside. Beneath the slush, the shell crushed on the hard-packed pebbly surface.
Towers watched intently. How long would a warlike race stay alert for the possible conquest of a planet?
Around the scout ship, heavily-armed blue-green figures suddenly appeared, shells clutched under left arms, faces lit with a look of determination and triumph.