“See, you twist this arming button. Click it to ‘remote.’ Then you move off. As soon as you’re more than thirty yards away, you depress both triggers. Simultaneously.” The trigger bar was designed for bat-feet. The twin trigger at either end of the bar was a logical safety device. Eamon could work one in his sleep. It was difficult for him to grasp that any semisentient could not easily take one apart and reassemble it.
“Just show me one more time,” said Fluff.
“Look. I’ll arm it.” Eamon was exasperated by now. “You’re not supposed to move it once it is armed, but we have to take some risks. Then all you’ve got to do is press the triggers. Any fool can do that.”
“I think so,” said the galago doubtfully.
And then, because things were getting heated down there . . . he was off. With just a mouthful more brandy for the road.
* * *
Galagos are possibly one of the most acrobatic small primates around. Being nocturnal, however, they don’t normally have an audience.
Fluff finally had the audience he’d so often craved for his magnificent, elegant gymnastic skills. However he kept finding that somehow he wasn’t climbing with panache. It was odd. He felt like a superstar. He just wasn’t focusing too well.
* * *
The rats and bats watched in horror as the galago swung wildly across the roof, flinging itself with remarkable drunken inaccuracy at small knobbles of Magh’ adobe . . . and somehow sticking.
“It doth piss glue,” said Nym. “There is no other . . .”
Everybody gasped.
Fluff’s lurching progress had nearly come unstuck. A piece of adobe decide to stick to his hand instead of the curving roof.
Somehow, by giving the law of gravity a complete raspberry, the galago caught hold of something else with the other hand.
Then it was hanging there, with a piece of loose Magh’ adobe in one hand and a minuscule handhold in the other.
“I shall have to throw it to you,” whispered the galago.
* * *
It was surprising the Magh’mmm didn’t hear the sound of gritting teeth in the ceiling. But the Magh’mmm was in debate with the Korozhet. “If it is indeed as you say, then we must redouble our efforts. This species must be pushed to extinction.”
* * *
The galago weighed up the throw. Then, tossed the chunk of adobe. Eamon dropped through the hole, snatched, and was back inside the ceiling before you could say “bogtrotter.”
Fortune favored them. Neither the appalling throw nor the dart into the room had been detected.
The galago continued his progress. Lower. Lower. And lower down the wall. The projector was in full view of any life-form with eyes in the hall below. It sat on a platform just above human head-height.
The roof crew watched, hardly daring to breathe. And then when the galago was mere feet from the platform . . .
* * *
The Magh’mmm spoke: “But we do not see the need to keep these aliens alive any longer. You asked us to keep all the specimens in good condition. But we have sufficient humans for larval conditioning. Since you say they are incapable of telling the truth, they will not give us the information we have asked for. Once we have confirmed it with the Jampad prisoner, these are of no further . . .”
Chapter 45: “Thar she blows!”
The grub-tenders had finished their frantic tending of their instinctively most precious charges. Now they began cleaning. The inputs to the group-mind from myriad Magh’ in a scorpiary were just too numerous to have each individual directed specifically and individually all the time. Much of what the individual Magh’ did was simply instinctive, within the broad parameters of the group-mind orders. The stack closest to the old entryway had an untidy wire to the old doorway. There was considerable alien junk lying there. There was also a mess of sticky diesel and fertilizer and a rat-trap and a bangstick-cartridge trigger.
The grub-tender pulled the wire.
* * *
6:28 a.m.
Henry M’Batha’s vigil finally had its reward. In another ten minutes the sun’s heat would have masked the infrared explosion signature coming from the brood-chamber. He was dialing before the heat had dissipated.