“The only trouble,” he said, “is that I don’t know where the activating switch is. I tried to find it the other night and couldn’t. Yet, it must be so obvious that I’ll feel like a fool when I do locate it.”
Vainly he pulled at the little levers set in the arms.
“My failure to activate this was the main reason I returned to the yacht and sailed on to Estorya. Of course, I had to go and find out just what the situation was and get a good idea of my plan of campaign. Perhaps if I’d stayed here and taken a chance on going into the city blind, we’d have been better off. At least, your mother wouldn’t now be in prison, and we wouldn’t have the additional worry of rescuing her.”
He rose from the chair and began pacing back and forth.
“How ironic if I’d come this far and could get no farther! But then, what else could I expect? It’s up to me to solve this, and I’m not infallible, omniscient. It should be functioning as of now. I know that the ring of rocket-shapes has got it paralyzed so it can’t act. Nevertheless, unless it’s blown a fuse, gone neurotic from frustration, or just worn out, there should be some indication that it is still in operation.”
“What do you mean?” said Grizquetr. “How can the island be paralyzed?”
Green stopped pacing to gesture at the radarscopes. “See those? Well, there should be some funny lines squiggling across it, or little dots moving, or arcs sweeping across it. They would be indicating the shapes of things in the immediate neighborhood outside the island, and the lay of the land. Thus, I imagine that in the ancient days, when it spotted a rocket shape, which would then have been a genuine spaceship and not a mockup, it would have detoured around it. The whole island was, in one of its functions, a field attendant, a scavenger. It removed anything from the plain that wasn’t supposed to be there. There’s why they now attack ‘rollers and crush them and disintegrate the parts that fall beneath their bases. That also explains why the island is trapped by a ring of rocket-shaped towers. The radar detects a complete circle and, being unable to molest any object shaped like a rocket, it squats in one place until it runs down or the rocket shapes are removed.
“Of course, it worked automatically. But there were controls for a man to operate it when there was a special job to do or if he had to take it to another place it ordinarily wouldn’t go when on automatic. These controls must be the ones.
“The question is, does the island switch itself off and on at certain intervals, scanning the area around it to see if the inhibiting objects have gone? If so, there’s no telling how long we may have to wait before its next sweep. And we just can’t afford to wait!”
He was in agony. As long as he could keep his body and brain in action, he felt he was progressing. But as soon as he had to wait upon some inanimate object that he couldn’t attack, or came across a seemingly unsolvable problem, he was lost. He just didn’t have the patience.
Lady Luck whined. She was tired of being imprisoned in the bag at Green’s waist and felt that she had been a good girl long enough.
Absently, he lifted her out and put her on the table. She stretched, yawned, licked her lips, and then padded across the table. Her tail switched back and forth, and its tip brushed the surface of the centrally located TV screen.
Immediately, a metal ball on the panel glowed red and a sharp whistle sounded. Two seconds later, light sprang into being in all of the viewers.
CHAPTER 27
“OH, YOU BEAUTY, YOU DOLL, you lovely Lady Luck! Whatever would I do without you!” shouted Green. He started forward to caress the cat but, alarmed, she jumped from the table and sped across the room.
“Come back, come back!” he called. “I wouldn’t hurt a single one of your lovely black hairs! I’ll feed you on beer and fish the rest of your life, and you’ll never have to put in a day’s work!”