As soon as it was outside, O’Mara’s voice roared from the communicator.
“What the blazes have you done?”
Conway tried to find a simple answer to an apparently simple question. He said, “I suppose you could say that I have prematurely initiated a planetary re-entry sequence.
* * *
The report from Torrance arrived just before Conway reached O’Mara’s office. It said that one of the two stars had a light-gravity planet which was inhabitable while showing no indications of advanced technology, and that the other possessed a large, fastspinning world which was so flattened at the poles that it resembled two soup bowls joined at the rims. On the latter world the atmosphere was dense and far-reaching, gravity varied between three Gs at the poles to one-quarter G at the equator, and surface metals were nonexistent. Very recently, in astronomical terms, the world had spiraled too close to its sun and planet-wide volcanic activity and steam had rendered the atmosphere opaque. Torrance doubted that it was still habitable.
“That supports my theory,” said Conway excitedly when O’Mara had relayed the report to him, “that the bird and the barnacles, and the other insect life-form, originate from the same planet. The barnacles are parasites, of course, with a small individual brain capacity, but intelligent when linked and operating as a gestalt. They must have known that their planet was heading for destruction for centuries, and decided to escape. But just think of what it must have taken to develop a space-travel capability completely without metal..
Somehow they had learned how to trap the giant birds from the heavy-gravity polar regions and to control them with their tendrils- the barnacles were a physically weak species and their ability to control non-intelligent hosts was the only strength they had. The birds, Conway now knew, were a non-intelligent species as were the tendril-less beetles. They had taken control of the birds and had flown them high above the equator, commanding maximum physical effort to achieve the required height and velocity for the linkup with the final propulsion stage-the beetles. They also had been controlled by the barnacles, perhaps fifty to each parasite, and they had attached themselves to the areas behind the wings in a gigantic, narrow cone.
Meanwhile the bird had been shaped and paralyzed into the configuration of a supersonic glider, its claws removed to render it aerodynamically clean, and injected with the secretions which would arrest the processes of decomposition. The crew had then sealed it and themselves in position and gone into hibernation for the duration of the voyage using the bird’s tissue for life-support.
Once in position the propulsion cone comprising millions of insects, hundreds of thousands of which were the intelligent controllers, had begun firing. They had done so very evenly and gently, so as not to shatter or crush the narrow apex of the cone where it was attached to the bird. The beetles could be made to deliver their tiny modicum of thrust whether they were alive or dead and, even with their ability to seal themselves inside a hard coating, the propulsion controllers had not lived for very long-they also were expendable. But in dying they had helped an organic starship carrying a few hundred of their fellows to achieve escape velocity from their doomed planet and its sun.
….. I don’t know how they intended to position the bird for re-entry,” Conway went on admiringly, “but atmospheric heating was intended to trigger the organic melting process when they had braked sufficiently, allowing the barnacles to pull free of the bird and fly to the surface under their own wing-power. In my hurry to get rid of the coating I applied heat over a wide area of the forward section, which simulated re-entry conditions and-”
“Yes, yes,” said O’Mara testily. “A masterly exercise in medical deduction and sheer blasted luck! And now, I suppose, you will leave me to clean up after you by devising a method for communicating with these beasties and arranging for their transport to their intended destination. Or was there something else you wanted?”
Conway nodded. “Brenner tells me that his scoutship flotilla, using an extension of the search procedure for overdue ships, could cover the volume of space between the home and destination stars. There are probably other birds, perhaps hundreds of them-“