Garlock finally broke away from the lonesome Inspector and the Pleiades started down.
‘That’s the most utterly horrible thing I ever heard of in my life!’ Lola burst out. ‘Like Wasps – only worse – people aren’t bugs! Why don’t all the planets get together and develop something to kill every Ozobe in every system of the group?’
‘That one has got too many bones in it for me to answer,’ James said.
‘I’m going to get hold of that Engineer as soon as we land,’ Lola said darkly, ‘and stick a pin into him.’
They found the Engineering Office easily enough, in a snug camp well outside a large city. They grounded the starship and went out on foot, enjoying contact with solid ground. The Head Engineer was an Arpalone, too – Engineers were not a separate race, but dwellers on a planet of extremely high technology – but he did not know anything about space-drives. His speciality was rehabilitation; he was a top boss of a rehab crew…
Then Lola pushed Garlock aside and asked her own questions. Yes, the Ozobes came from space, the Engineer replied. He was sure of it. Yes, they laid eggs in human bodies. Yes, they probably stayed alive quite awhile – or might, except for the rehab crew. No, he didn’t know what would hatch out -he’d never let one live that long, but what else would hatch except Ozobes? No, not one; not a single one. If just one ever did, on any world where he bossed the job, he’d be sent to the mines for half a year…
‘Ridiculous!’ Lola snapped. ‘If they did come from space, the adult form would have to be something able to get back into space, some way or other. That is simple, elementary biology. Don’t you see that?’
He didn’t see it. He didn’t care, either. It was none of his business: he was a rehab man.
93
Lola ran back to the ship in disgust.
‘Something else is even more ridiculous, and is your business,’ James told the Head Engineer. ‘Garlock and I are both engineers – top ones. We know definitely that a one-hundred-percent cleanup on such a job as this – millions – simply can’t be done. Ever. Under any conditions. Are you lying in your teeth or are you dumb enough to believe it yourself?’
‘Neither one,’ the Engineer insisted stubbornly. ‘I’ve wondered, myself, at how I could get them all, but I always do -every time so far. That’s why they give me the big job. I’m good at it.’
‘Oh – Lola’s right, Jim,’ Garlock said. ‘It’s the adult form that hatches – something so different they don’t even recognize it. Something able to get into space. Enough survivors to produce the next generation.’
‘Sure. I’ll tell Brownie – she’ll be tickled.’
‘She’ll be more than tickled – she’ll want to hunt up somebody around here with three brain cells working and give “em an earful.’ Then, to the Engineer: ‘Do you know how they rehab a planet that’s been leveled flat by the golop?’
‘You’ve seen one? I never have, but of course I’ve studied it. Slow, but not too difficult. After killing, the stuff weathers down in a few years – wonderful soil it makes, too. What makes it slow is that you have to wait fifty or a hundred years for the mountains to get built up again and for the earthquakes to quit…’
‘Excuse me, please,’ Garlock interrupted. ‘I’ve got a call -we have to leave, right now.’
The call was from the Inspector. The nearest planet Clamer, was being invaded by the Ozobes and needed all the help it could get.
In seconds the Pleiades was at the Port of Entry.
‘Where is this Clamer?’ Garlock asked.
The Inspector pointed a thought; all four followed it.
‘Let’s go, Jim. Maybe…’
‘Just a minute!’ Lola snapped. She was breathing hard and her eyes were almost shooting sparks as she turned to the old Arpalone and drove a thought so forcibly that he winced.
‘Do you so-called “Guardians of Humanity” give a cockeyed tinker’s damn about the humanity you’re supposed to be
94
protecting?’ she demanded viciously, the thought boring in and twisting. ‘Or are you just loafing on the job and doing as little as you possibly can without getting fired?’
Belle and Garlock looked at each other and grinned. Jim was surprised and shocked. This woman blowing her top was no Brownie Montandon any of them knew.
The Inspector was not only shocked, but injured and abused. ‘We do everything we possibly can. If there’s any one possible thing we haven’t done, even the tiniest.. .*
‘There’s plenty!’ she snapped. ‘Plain, dumb stupidity, then, it must be. There must be somebody around here who has been at least exposed to elementary biology! You should have exterminated these Ozobe vermin ages ago. All you have to do is find out what their life cycle is. How many stages and what they are. How the adults get into space and where they go —’ And she went on, in flashing thoughts, to explain in full detail. ‘Are you smart enough to understand that?’
‘Oh, yes. Your thought may be the truth, at that.”
‘And are you interested enough to find out whose business it would be, and follow through on it?’
‘Yes, of course. If it works, I’ll be quite famous for suggesting it. I’ll give you part of the credit—’
‘Keep the credit – just see to it that it gets done]’ She whirled on James. ‘This loss of human life is so appallingly unnecessary! This time we’re going to Clamer, and nowhere else. Push the button, Jim.’
‘All I can do is set up for it, Brownie. Whether we …”
‘We’ll get there!’ she blazed. ‘It’s high time we got a break. Punch it! This time the ship’s going to Clamer, if we all have to get out and push it there!’
James pushed the button, glanced into his scanner, and froze, eyes staring. They were in the same galaxy!
All three had studied charts of nebular configurations so long and so intensely that recognition of a full-sphere identity was automatic and instantaneous.
Lola, head buried in the scanner, had already checked in with the Port Inspector.
‘It is Clamer!’ she shrieked aloud. ‘I told you it was time for our luck to change, if we pulled hard enough! They’re being invaded by Ozobes and they did call for help and they didn’t
95
think we could possibly get here this fast and we don’t need to be inspected because we’re compatible or we couldn’t have landed on Groobe!’
For five long minutes Garlock held the starship motionless while he studied the entire situation. Then he drove a probe through the mental shield of the general in charge of the whole defense operation.
‘Battle-Cruiser Pleiades, Captain Garlock commanding, reporting for duty in response to your S.O.S. received on Groobe.’
The Arpalone general, furiously busy as he was, dropped all other business. ‘But you’re human! You can’t fight!’
‘Watch us. You don’t know, apparently, that the Ozobe bases are on the far side of your moon. They’re bringing their fighters in most of the way in transports.’
‘Why, they can’t be! They’re coming in from all directions from deep space!’
‘That’s what they want you to think. They’re built to stand many hours of zero pressure and almost absolute zero cold. Question: if we destroy all their transport, say in three hours, can you handle all the fighters who will be in the air or in nearby space at that time?’
• ‘Very easily. They’ve hardly started yet. I appoint you Admiral-Pro-Tem Garlock, in command of Space Operations, and will refer to you any other space-fighters who may come, I thank you, sir. Good luck.’
The general returned his attention to his boiling office. His mind was seething with questions as to what these not-human beings were, how or if they knew so much, and so on; but he .forced them out of his mind and went, quickly and efficiently, back to work. James shot the Pleiades up to within about a thousand miles of the moon.
‘How long does it take to learn this bombing business, Jim?’ Lola asked.
‘About fifteen seconds. All you have to do is want to. Do you, really?’
‘I really do. If I don’t do something to help these people. I’ll never forgive myself.’
James showed her – and, much to her surprise, she found it very easy to do.
96
The vessels transporting the invading forces were huge, spherical shells equipped with short-range drives – and with nothing else. No accommodation, no facilities, no food, no water, not even any air. Each transport, when filled to the bursting-point with as-yet-docile cargo, darted away, swinging around to approach Clamer from some previously-assigned direction. It did not, however, approach the planet’s surface. At about two thousand miles out, great ports opened and the load was dumped out into space, to fall the rest of the way by gravity. Then the empty shell, with only its one pilot aboard, rushed back for another load.