“Two—Has the command ship moved up?”
“Not that big. Waddle-feet carrying in things.”
“What kind of things?”
Sweeting snorted. “Waddle-feet things, heh? Maybe they leave. Ho! Spiff’s here. . . . ”
She whistled, went forward into the water. Nile stood watching intently. Against the flank of a great rising wave two hundred yards out, two otters appeared for an instant, were gone again. . . .
“You look something of a mess, Dr. Etland!”
She’d jerked half around on the first low-pitched word, had the gun out and pointing as his voice registered on her consciousness. She swore huskily. “Thought you were a—forget it!”
On the surface twenty feet to her right, straddling the saddle of a torpedo-shaped carrier, Parrol shoved black jet rig goggles up on his forehead, reached for a spur of floatwood to hold his position. A UW rifle was in his right hand. He grinned briefly. “Dr. Cay?”
“All right for the moment,” Nile said. She replaced her gun, hand shaking. “Did you run into trouble coming in?”
“None at all. The immediate area’s clear?”
“At present.”
Parrol had left the mainland in response to Nile’s first call for help nine hours previously. Most of the interval he’d spent being batted around in heavy typhoon weather with a static-blocked communicator. He was within two hours of the island when he got a close-contact connection with sledman fleet units and heard for the first time that Dr. Etland meanwhile had got out another message. The Sotira racer had received her chopped-off report about Parahuans, carried it within range of other sleds. It was relayed through and around disturbance areas, eventually had reached the mainland and apparently was reaching sled fleet headquarters all about Nandy-Cline. Parrol’s informants couldn’t tell him what the overall effect of the warning had been; if anything, communication conditions had worsened in the meantime. But there seemed to be no question that by now the planet was thoroughly alerted.
They speculated briefly on the possibilities. There might or might not be Federation warships close enough to Nandy-Cline to take an immediate hand in the matter. The planet-based Federation forces weren’t large. If they were drawn into defensive positions to cover key sections of the mainland, they wouldn’t hamper the Parahuans much otherwise. The mainland police and the Citizens Alert Cooperative could put up a sizable fleet of patrol cars between them. They should be effective in ground and air encounters, but weren’t designed to operate against heavily armed spacecraft. In general, while there were weapons enough around Nandy-Cline, relatively few were above the caliber required to solve personal and business problems.
“The sleds have unwrapped the old spaceguns again,” said Nile. “They’ll fight, now they know what they’ll be fighting.”
“No doubt,” Parrol agreed. “But the Navy and Space Scouts are the only outfits around organized for this kind of thing. We don’t know if they’re available at present, or in what strength. If your web-footed acquaintances can knock out communications completely—”
“Evidently they can.”
Parrol was silent a moment. “Could get very messy!” he remarked. “And in spite of their heavy stuff, you figure they’re already half convinced they’ll lose if they attack?”
“Going by their own brand of logic, they must be. But I don’t think it will keep them from attacking.”
Parrol grunted. “Well, let’s talk with the otters again . . . ”
The wild otters had joined the group. They confirmed Sweeting’s report of the arrival of a second ship beneath the lagoon. It was more than twice the size of the first, anchored directly behind it. Parahuans were active about both. Parrol and Nile asked further questions and the picture grew clear. The second ship seemed to be a cargo carrier, and the Parahuans apparently were engaged in dismantling at least part of the equipment of their floatwood installations and storing it in the carrier.
“So they’re clearing the decks,” Parrol said. “And not yet quite ready to move. Now, if at this stage we could give them the impression that the planet was ready—in fact, was launching an attack on them—”
Nile had thought of it. “How?” she asked. “It would have to be a drastic demonstration now. Not blowing up their blockhouse. Say something like hitting the command ship.”
“We can’t reach that. But we can reach the two under the lagoon. And we can get rather drastic about them.”
“With what?”
“Implosion bombs,” Parrol said. “Your message suggested I should bring the works, so I did. Three Zell-Eleven two pounders, tactical, adherent.” He nodded at the equipment carrier in the water below them. “In there with the rest of it.”
“Their ship locks are open,” said Nile, after a moment.
“Two should do it. One in each lock.”
“Spaceships. It may not finish them. But—”
They glanced over at Spiff. He’d been watching them silently, along with the other three.
“Like to do a little bomb hauling again, Spiff?” Parrol inquired.
The big otter’s eyes glistened. He snorted. Parrol got to his feet.
“Brought your rig,” he told Nile. “Let’s go pick up Dr. Cay and get him out to the car. He’ll be safest there. Then we’ll take a look at those ships. . . . ”
Trailing Parrol and the carrier out to the aircar, Nile darted along twenty feet below the surface, the twin to his UW rifle clasped against her, luxuriating in the jet rig’s speed and maneuverability. They’d left the otters near the floatwood; fast as they were, Sweeting and her companions couldn’t have maintained this pace. It was like skimming through air. The rig’s projected field nearly cancelled water friction and pressure; the rig goggles clamped over Nile’s eyes pushed visibility out a good two hundred yards, dissolving murk and gloom into apparent transparency. Near the surface, she was now the equal of any sea creature in its own element. Only the true deeps remained barred to the jet rig swimmer. The Parahuan rigs she’d seen had been relatively primitive contrivances.
Parrol, riding the carrier with Ticos Cay asleep inside, was manipulating the vehicle with almost equal ease. It too had a frictionless field. He slowed down only in passing through the denser weed beds. By the time they reached the aircar, riding at sea anchor in the center of a floating thicket, a blood-red sun rim had edged above the horizon.
They got Ticos transferred to the car, stowed the carrier away, locked the car again, made it a subsurface race back to the floatwood and gathered up the otters. Spiff and Sweeting knew about tactical bombs by direct experience; their wild cousins knew about human explosives only by otter gossip and were decidedly interested in the operation. Roles were distributed and the party set off. Spiff, nine foot bundle of supple muscle, speed, and cold nerve, carried two of Parrol’s implosion devices strapped to his chest in their containers. He’d acted as underwater demolition agent before. Parrol retained the third bomb.
And shortly Nile was floating in a cave of the giant roots which formed the island floor, watching the open locks of the two Parahuan spaceships below. A fog of yellow light spilled from them. Two points of bright electric blue hovered above the smaller ship, lights set in the noses of two midget boats turning restlessly this way and that as if maintaining a continuous scan of the area. There were other indications of general uneasiness. A group of jet-rigged Oganoon, carrying the heavy guns with which she had become familiar, floated between the sentry boats; and in each of the locks a pair of guards held weapons ready for immediate use.
All other activities centered about the lock of the larger ship. Parahuans manipulating packaged and crated items were moving into it from the sea in escorted groups, emerging again to jet off for more. Like the guards, they carried guide lights fastened to their heads.
Nile glanced around as Spiff came sliding down out of the root tangles above. The otters had returned to the surface to saturate themselves with oxygen before the action began. Spiff checked beside her, peering out through the roots at the ships, then tilted his head at her inquiringly. His depth-dark vision wasn’t equal to hers but good enough for practical work. Nile switched on her rig speaker. “Dan?”
“I read you.”
“Spiff’s back and ready to go.”
“My group’s also on hand,” Parrol’s voice told her. “We’ll start the diversionary action. Sixty seconds, or any time thereafter—”
Nile’s muscles tightened. She gave Spiff a nod, watched him start off among the roots. Resting the barrel of the UW rifle on the root section before her, she glanced back and forth about the area below. Her position placed her midway between the two ship locks; Spiff was shifting to the right, to a point above the lock of the cargo carrier, his first target. Where Parrol and the other three otters were at the moment she didn’t know.