"Superdrive!" exploded Lane.
The slashing catman got one more ship before the Solar Guard went into the superdrive and raced away.
"Did you record that?" asked Lane.
"Tried to. The recorder blew."
"So did all of them. Creepers! What a nasty thing to have around."
Thompson said: "One of my techs is repairing a recorder now. He thinks he can give the wave analysis."
"How?"
"He finds that certain of the crystalline structures in the wave recorder are de-crystallized."
"Meaning what?" demanded Lane.
"Meaning that certain frequencies hit the nuclear resonance of the crystalline structures. I'll let you know."
"Let us know quick," said Downing. "If we can analyze it, we can either reproduce it or shield against it."
"Cats at seven o'clock, forty degrees!" exploded the observer in Lane's ship.
"Anywhere else?" demanded Lane.
No answer.
"Fight 'em," snapped Lane.
There were six catmen converging on Lane's command. The rest of the Solar crew flung around and headed for the local fight. Lane's dymodines flashed out and were stopped cold by barriers.
"Crash stations!" ordered Lane. "Prepare for total destruction!"
The six catmen got above Lane's ship and drove him downward with pressors and an occasional light—it must have been very light—touch of the belly-tearing beam. Above the six were the sixty-odd Solarians fighting to get through and fighting a useless battle.
"We can't damage 'em," snarled Lane. "Superdrive—right through 'em!"
He almost made it. His ship rammed up under the stellar drive, came level with the screen of catmen, and almost made it through. But four of them reached forth with the belly-tearing beams and took separate parts of his ship. The warning creak of plates caused the pilot to stop.
Lane's ship was thrust down below again.
"Superdrive—away!"
Lane's ship turned and dropped.
The action was too fast for the Solarian crew, and he left them far behind. But the catmen were right with him all the way.
"Cut it," said Lane in a tired voice. "Let 'em play. Save our strength for later when we can do something."
They went inert. No drive, no sign of fight, no objection.
A side-force hit them, slapping the ship sidewise about fifty feet. It jarred the ship's delicate mechanisms into a short fluster of unreal alarms and ringing signals, but the sturdy stuff was not permanently damaged.
Still no response from Cliff's ship.
They poked him down brutally with a pressor and then jerked him back up again.
More alarms and more nosebleed among the crew.
They caught the ship in force-zones and played catch with it from one catman to the other, poking and thrusting. They ripped off one of the turrets with the snatcher.
Then they stopped. And they waited. Quietly they hung above Lane's ship, watching, watching, watching.
A full, solid, nerve-breaking hour they waited, and the men in Lane's ship waited, wondering.
"Try it!" snapped Lane.
The ship leaped into motion, driving to one side.
Snatchers raced out and caught the fleeing ship, dragged it back, and again they went through the pushing, pulling, tossing program. And then again they stopped with a few, final perfunctory pokes and shoves.
"They're catmen, all right," snarled Lane.
The rest of the Solar Guard came up, and once more they tried to break through the screen to free Lane's ship. Lane shook his head. "Pilot. How long under superdrive before we hit the speed of light?"
"Seven minutes."
"Then drive straight down. I don't think any beam can exceed the speed of light. Once we get up there, they can't reach forward after us, at least."
Lane's ship dropped. And the catmen followed, maintaining their distance with superior balance and accuracy. A minute passed. Two. Three. Four. Five. And then at an even six, a snatcher reached forward and took Lane's ship by the empennage and shook it enough to rend a few seams.
"O.K., cut it," he said wearily. "I wonder what they want of us beside to play cat-and-mouse?"
There were three more sessions of the cat-and-mouse trick, separated by hour intervals. Then the six catmen, their nature satisfied, took hold of Lane's ship in a cluster of snatcher beams. Lane heard the plates give as the fields-of-focus closed down.
He closed his eyes, breathed a short prayer, and waited.
Stellor Downing called Thompson. "Back to One," he said.
"Giving up?"
"Can you think of anything to do?"
"No."
"Well, let's get back where we can plan."
Thompson assented. It was reluctant, however, and a day later, when they landed on One at their camp, he faced Downing. "Sort of solves your problem, doesn't it?"
"Look," snapped Stellor Downing. "I've got a few feelings and a number of nerves. Lane and I were not deeply in love with one another. Yes, it solves a lot of problems, Thompson, but don't taunt me about it, or I'll take a modine to your throat, see?"
"We might have tried again," insisted Thompson.
"We might have tried for a month. We couldn't even touch them. If you're intimating that I gave up quick—?"
"You weren't leaning over backwards."
"Quoting an old, famous fable, 'sometimes it is better to fall flat on your face.'"
"Meaning?"
"We've got whole skins. They were after captives, not meat. They wanted the same thing we do but they got 'em first."
"So?"
"So we take whatever wave analysis we have and try to figure 'em out. If we can reproduce any of that stuff, we'll go back."
"Hm-m-m."
"Look, Thompson, as far as this job is concerned, your job of keeping Lane and myself out of one another's hair is over. One head of hair is gone, see."
"And what do you intend to do about it?"
"I intend to carry on. Now forget about the fact that a personal grudge of mine has been taken out of my hands and let's get on to working out some means of fighting back. Lane is gone. I'm trying not to gloat. But you're not helping. So stop it."
Toralen Ki shook his head in a worried manner. "One is gone."
"A substitute?"
"I fear that any substitute may not be as good."
"Nonsense, Toralen. Were there a better man than either, we'd have selected him; if either had not existed, a lesser man would have sufficed."
"The right kind is so very few," complained Toralen Ki.
"We can find one. We will have to return to their planet to do so, and it will be harder for us—but it can be done. No good general has only one plan of battle."
"But so much depends—Ah well, despair is the product of the inferior intellect. We will, we must carry on."
Hotang Lu opened his large case. "I will contact our superiors immediately and ask their advice."
"Yes," nodded Toralen Ki. "Also ask them if they have the answer to the less-sensitive detector, yet."
Hotang turned the communicator on and waited for it to warm up. His hand dropped into the case and came up with another small instrument of extreme complexity.
"Once the suppressor is destroyed," he said with a smile of contemplation, "we can use this on them."
"And that means success!" breathed Toralen Ki. "From that time on, our plans—"
"Wait, the communicator is operating," said Hotang Lu, waving a hand. He reached for the communicator's controls and started to talk swiftly, pressing his head against the plate above the voice-transmitter.
Flight Commander Thompson handed Downing a sheaf of papers. "There's the wave analysis," he said with pride.
Downing looked them over. "You've got the technical crew. Can we reproduce all or any of it?"
"Only by tearing down a couple of modine directors. The boys can convert the spotting, training, and ranging circuits—they'll use the components—and rebuild the thing to generate barriers. The snatcher is easy. We'll just juggle the main modulating system of a tractor generator. That comes out so simple I feel slightly sick at not having thought of it myself."
"What is its analysis?" asked Downing.
"Couple a force beam with a tractor focus-zone generator. The tractor, you know, operates on the field-of-focus principle. A rough sphere at the end of the beam—anything in that field is drawn. The snatcher merely applies the field-of-focus idea to the side-thrust of a force beam. You raise the power several times and anchor it with a superdrive tube coupled so that the thrust is balanced against a spatial thrust instead of the ship. That tears the guts out of anything."
"I have an idea that you might be able to cut instead of tear if you include some nuclear-resonant frequencies in the field of focus generator."
"Is it necessary?"
"Might be interesting," said Downing. "They tear. If we land on them with something that quickly, precisely, quietly, and almost painlessly slices a sphere out of one of their ships, they may be impressed."
"You have something there. I'm going to tear into some of the planet-mounted jobs. We are now sixty-three ships. I can make one snatcher out of every dymodine that's planet-mounted out here. Shall I?"
"How long?"
"Ten hours each."
"Six hundred and thirty hours. Twenty-six days and six hours."
"We'll make it in twenty days. By the time the boys get to Number Ten or Twelve they'll be working shortcut and on production-line basis and the piece-time will drop."
"Twenty days is long enough, believe me. We'll toss in my gang and Lane's gang, too. They can go to work on the modine directors and make barriers out of 'em if you claim they'll work."
"They'll work."
"Then let's get going. The Little Guys are tearing their hair as it is."
Thompson nodded.
"But look," said Downing, "don't rip up any dymodines ahead. Convert slowly. If the catmen attack, we'll need all we can muster to fight 'em off."
"Right."
"And as for Cliff Lane—he isn't dead until we prove it, see? So far as I know, he might be getting an education in cat-culture right now."
Thompson looked at Downing for a long time, saying nothing. Then he turned and left, still without comment.
Cliff Lane and his ship were herded down to the ground. His ship was surrounded by the six catmen, their beams pointed at him, waiting. For an hour they waited, using all the patience of the feline. It got on the nerves of the humans, and they wanted to do something.
Their trouble was that they didn't quite know what to do.
Cliff, after the full hour had ticked off, said: "I'm thinking of the cat that got a neuropsychosis over mice because one came out of the hole and kicked him in the face."
"Think it's wise?"
"Never was very fond of cats," admitted Lane glumly. "I find them even more obnoxious when I see them employing intelligence. That makes it worse—"
"But just going out—?"
"D'ye want to sit here for months?"
"Think they would?"
"Probably. At least, long enough to have us tearing out each other's hair."
"But—"
"But nothing. Have we got the planet-analysis yet?"
The aide pawed through the delivery basket on Lane's desk and came up with a sheet of paper. He read: "Pressure sixteen point three. Temperature eight-one, humidity thirty-seven. Air: Oxy twenty-one, nitrogen all the rest—with a trace, of course, of CO2. Pollen count not too bad, bacteria count about normal, but the spore count is zero."
"No spores?"
"Nope."
"Gosh," smiled Lane. "Imagine a world where they can't smother a steak with mushrooms!"
"So what are you going to do?"
"Me? I'm going out there and tell 'em what they're missing. Imagine—no mushrooms!"
"I'm just thinking of what a nice world this would be to do tropical research. I've even seen fungus growing on steel."
"No, you haven't. Bakelite I'll buy, but when the stuff grows on steel it is growing on the dust that has collected. Well, tell the boys in the back room to cover me as I emerge."
Lane undogged the spacelock and the rams pulled it back out of the frame. Riding on the front of the automatic runway, Lane stood in an indolent attitude, the thumb of his right hand hooked over the belt just one-half inch from the butt of his modine. His other hand held a cigarette.
As the runway hit the ground, Lane took a last puff of the cigarette, stepped to the ground and dropped the glowing butt. He crushed it with his heel, and then took five forward steps, looking about himself with open curiosity.
The catman ship directly in front of him opened its spacelock and one of the catmen emerged.
Lane walked forward boldly to inspect this alien creature. He acted as though he were not a prisoner, but a visitor—and it was probably that attitude that saved him from further cat-and-mouse, for the catman seemed unsure of the next move.
The catman was more man than cat, just as the human—in the catman's nomenclature an apeman—the human was more man than ape. He stood erect. His legs were long and excellently muscled. His shoulders were broad and sloping, and his arms were well rounded. The temperature was high—to Lane's liking, being Venusite—and the scanty uniform of the catman matched the shorts, high-laced boots, shoulder straps and cape of the Solarian. The catman's hands were long and spatulate, and the fingernails were as broad as Cliff's. The retractile claws were gone—deleted in a hundred thousand years of evolution. Gone were the fur and the tail and the slitted eyes, and all of the other basic cat-characteristics. The whiskers were gone also, and the ears were no longer mobile, but on each side of the head just as the human's. They were still pointed on top and resembled, or at least reminded Cliff of a cat's ears modified in human mold.
Catman?
Well, there was something distinctly feline about the creature, humanoid though he seemed. He was lithe, and instead of walking forward, he prowled. There was a quick alertness—not visible, but felt—to the catman's every move.
Yes, this creature was definitely of feline evolution.
And Cliff Lane walked forward boldly. He smiled inwardly, gaining confidence from the fact that he was still alive and unharmed. Prisoner he might be, but he was no humble prisoner. He was proud and haughty, and he was not taking any guff.
He strode forward to hasten the first meeting between Primate and Feline on the common ground of civilization.
VI.
The catman's steps faltered. This alien, that had come from some distant star, was definitely primate in evolution. He knew primates—they had primates on Sscantoo, here—and primates were nasty animals. They were filled with curiosity—mass curiosity—that had been the basis for a platitude on Sscantoo: "Curiosity saved a mansee." When you killed or wounded a primate, the woods would fill up with curious, chattering hordes of his fellow-primates. It made life rather dangerous unless you were prepared to fight your way out.
And this curious fellow was none the less a primate in spite of the fact that his face bore the stamp of civilization and he wore clothing. He was curious—even more curious than one of the Sscantovian apes. He walked forward boldly in spite of the fact that he was a prisoner and must know that fact. The catman wondered how bold the primate would have been if his ship had landed of its own free will—or had landed despite the objections of his six ships.
If he were bold now, a prisoner, he would be downright arrogant as a victorious captor.
Linzete, the catman, stopped. He didn't like primates, and the idea of confronting a primate armed with intelligence as well as the natural instincts of the apeman bothered him.
At Linzete's commandatory motion, Cliff Lane stopped. But not until he'd taken a full step beyond the catman's command just to show him. Twenty paces apart they stood, eying one another.
Cliff smiled.
Linzete's eyes glittered.
Cliff shrugged. This was getting nowhere.
Linzete took a step forward, and Cliff stepped forward two steps.
Linzete seemed pleased. This primate, he thought, is no larger nor does he seem stronger than I. I do not believe that he is as quick.
"A move out of you," thought Lane, "and I'll clip you!"
Linzete stooped and picked up a pebble from the ground. He put it on top of another pebble, and then stepped back and to one side by fifty paces. He waved Cliff a waiting motion, and then with a lightning motion Linzete drew his side arm and fired.
The sharp crack of electrical discharge split the air. A dazzling pencil of energy spat forth and the pebble disappeared in a blinding coruscation.
Lane laughed.
Linzete scowled. That sound was very much like the chanting and cachinnation that went on among the primates when they were amused.
Cliff Lane stooped, picked up a pebble and threw it high above Linzete's head. The modine came from Cliff's holster, poised for an instant while it spat energy, and then was thrust back home again. The motion was a flowing swift thing of muscle and timing, and the end-result was the explosion of the pebble in midair.
The flash and the explosive report of tortured air and matter caused Linzete to blink. When his eyes opened again, the primate's weapon was holstered.
Linzete's breath came out in a sharp hiss.
Lane shrugged and remembered the hiss of an annoyed cat.
Sound in the air caused both of them to look up. A small ship was circling the open spot, and it landed not far from Cliff. Clad in spotless white—spotless and seamless white—from toe to fingertip, and an inverted bowl of clear glass or plastic, the catman emerged from his open craft and came forward. On his back was a small tank and valves for air, obviously.
Cliff puzzled for only a moment. The white-clad one lifted a square case from the plane and, coming forward boldly, snapped down a portable set of legs and opened the door in front of Cliff.
From the cabinet he took slides of glass. He took Cliff's hand between his gloved fingers and pressed the human's fingers to the slide. He caught the human's breath on another slide. He made a convulsive motion with his face, and Cliff smiled and coughed on another slide. From the cabinet he took a scalpel and with a deft motion—and before Cliff could act—the doctor took a neat slice out of the small finger of Cliff's left hand. He doused the cut immediately; the substance removed the pain, at any rate.
He took a sample of Cliff's blood, scraped the skin of Cliff's forearm, and clipped off eight or nine of Cliff's crisp black hairs.
Then he closed the cabinet and sealed it. From the plane he took a large spray, and setting it up aground, the doctor proceeded to stand, turn, and generally bathe in the atomizer output. He sprayed the outside of the cabinet with it, and then proceeded to work the ground and air over, spraying in all directions, including the other catman, Linzete. The doctor finished his proceedings by spraying Cliff Lane's ship on the outside, and turning the spray into the spacelock and liberally drenching the runway and entrance of the Solarian vessel.
Cliff nodded understandingly. He didn't even object to being sprayed himself, for the stuff was aromatic though a bit sticky when it started to dry.
The doctor took off.
"Wonder what he'll find," mused Cliff. And then a large white craft landed. It was completely inclosed, and the driver's compartment was set off from the rest.
"The paddy-wagon," grinned Cliff. Clad as the doctor had been, four catmen came from the craft bearing sprays. One of them approached Cliff and motioned for him to follow. Cliff nodded, but turned and called back:
"Let 'em sterilize to their heart's content, fellows. After all, we want their co-operation!"
He entered the large ship as the other three catmen entered the spacelock of Lane's ship and went to work.
Within fifteen minutes, Cliff Lane was residing in a sterile, spotlessly white room. The windows were sealed and the door was air-tight. A portable atmosphere-cleaner purred in one corner, freshening the air and cooling it. From a speaker in the wall there came music—of a sort—and through a double window in the wall Lane and the catmen indulged in mutual inspection.
A large block of paper hung on an easel, and a heavy black crayon lay in the tray. Cliff nodded. Heavy black crayon so that his sketchings could be seen from the distance. He smiled, scowled at the music, and then started to sketch.
The Little People had not been able to convey the reasons for their desires to the humans, but human and catmen were not possessed of any form of telepathy to augment their communications. Cliff was a fair cartoonist, and he progressed well.
The catmen began to understand.
The days sped past, marked only by the clock and the chiming of watch-change bells. Dymodines returned from their mountings on the living rock of the innermost planet, they entered the ships of the combined commands, and were converted, one by one. The machine shops in the bellies of the ships hummed and racketed, and the stockroom stores went down. The scrap pile outside on the airless face of One grew as the dymodines were converted; parts of no use were tossed out.
The catmen did not molest them. Not once during the twenty days of labor was there any report, or any sight of the catmen. If the catmen were using scanners on them, the catman scanner used frequencies never tried by humans, for the detectors gave the spectrum a clear ticket.
Yet the strain was there, and the men worked furiously to convert the dymodines to snatchers, because they knew that until they were finished, they were a group of sitting ducks. Dymodines had been blocked by the catmen—and that left them unarmed.
Then on the twentieth day, Stellor Downing gave the order to lift and head for the fourth planet.
In a close formation, the sixty-three ships arrowed into the sky, hit superdrive, and headed away from the sun.
They arrived above Four and began to look for trouble. They circled the planet twice, took a few tentative stabs at the ground with their improved snatchers, and generally let it be known that they were there and seeking either their fellow or knowledge of his whereabouts.
The recognition detectors flashed Lane's trace, and they put direction-finding equipment into gear. They circled above the field upon which lay Cliff Lane's craft.
There was no sign of human life there. The spacelock was closed, and it could not be known whether from the inside or from the outside. Signals gained no answering flash, but the complete confidence with which they circled this field did get them an answer of sorts.
Beams flashed up, and spattered against the barriers of the flight. A pair of extra heavy battlecraft leaped out of underground slides and drove up into Downing's flight. The heavy beams lashed about, and four of Downing's ships folded over their torn midsections. Then Downing's ship answered fire.
It was not spectacular. The sphere of energy was not visible, nor was it heterodyned. It closed upon the midsection of the heavy battlecraft. It cut, quietly and with lightning swift precision. It moved, swinging on a force beam and taking with it a sphere of the battlecraft's middle—a perfect sphere, mirror-finished on the plates, girders, and equipment that met the surface.
The energy ceased and the perfect sphere dropped toward the planet.
Smoke poured from the gaping hole, and the battlecraft buckled, folded, and exploded like a bomb. Bits of broken ship spread far and wide, and the main mass fell back upon the spaceport.
It lay there, inert, smoke trickling from its shapelessness.
It was a blackened monument to two hundred thousand years of civilization.
The other battlecraft sped on through the flight unscathed. It looped high in the space above Downing's flight and crossed around, looped away and came back on the level against Thompson's group. It drove in through the flight, lashing sidewise at Thompson's ships.
And four of them reached out and sliced four large spheres from the battlecraft. Shredded, the ship died in the air. It disintegrated, and it rained metal parts for fifty square miles—a rain of smoking, shapeless masses of deadly steel.
"More?" snapped Stellor Downing.
Blatantly, the flight landed on the field, covered the other ships, and then waited for a move. As Downing said, "It's their move this time!"
The white ship landed in their midst. From it came Lane and his crew. The crew entered their ship, but Lane remained, waiting for Downing. In the crook of his arm he held a small, white-furred creature, and he stroked it gently with his free hand.
"Just lucky," grunted Downing.
"You talk big," retorted Lane. "But stay back, Downing. You're contaminated."
"Meaning?"
"You're alive with deadly bugs."
"Nuts. So are you."
"No I'm not. I've been sterilized within an inch of my life. Look," he said, holding up the Sscantovian equivalent of a guinea pig.
"Cute—but so what?"
"I've got the catmen scared of all Solarians—and from here on in, I'd hate to be any race that bucks us. Take hold of this animal, just for a moment."
Stellor Downing put his hand on the creature's back. He held it for a moment and then let go. Lane put the little animal on the ground and stood back.
"Well?"
"Wait a minute, will you? Even potassium cyanide takes time to kill—"
The little creature was running around, sniffing the ground and obviously looking for food. For three minutes it searched quietly, and then with a plaintive mew, it sat on its haunches and scratched its back. The plaintive cry became louder—and tufts of hair came from the back where the hind paw was scratching.
The creature scratched furiously—and succeeded in de-hairing its back,in the shape of Stellor Downing's hand!
"What in—?"
"Wait."
Downing looked at his hand in a sort of horror.
The scratching increased, and bits of skin followed the pattern of the bare patch. The plaintive cry became strident in a tiny voice. The little animal stopped scratching, turned over on its back and wriggled in the dirt of the spaceport. It wrenched itself back and forth sharply, and with squeals of pain. Its four feet opened and closed against its stomach, and the whites of its eyes gleamed.
A black patch appeared on the pink of the abdomen, and the paws scratched at the spot. It grew, and the pig cried continuously.
Cliff Lane took out his modine and blasted the suffering pig with a shake of his head.
Both he and Downing were a little sick.
"What—?"
"Fungus. As I gather it, the Solar sector of the Galaxy is alive with a violent evolution of fungus. We live in it, we breathe it, and we—eat it. They cringed in horror at what they found on the microscope slides, and this is the fourth pig I've killed. But I'm completely fungicided now, and I can handle 'em. But you see, Downing, you are alive with fungus spores looking for a place to live. They can't live on you, but what few that do escape the bactericidal action of the skin find it quite easy to go to work on an animal that has never been required to strive for life against fungi."
"Are the whole race like this?"
"No. Not entirely. But they haven't our strength against such—not by a jugful. They're right on the edge of the Solar sector, as I get it. They have some fungi, but it's nothing like the stuff we have on Terra. I think that Sol may be the center—the evolution may well have started there, mutated there, and anything that grows elsewhere may be spore-born on the Arrhenius Theory to the rest of the Galaxy. Brother, we're tough!"
"Well, what have we accomplished besides killing guinea pigs, discovering a set of new weapons, and blasting the guts out of a couple of their best craft?"
Lane smiled. "I've succeeded in carrying over to them the problem of why we're here. They do not understand any more than we do, but they're willing to let us seek out the machine."
"What about blasting their ships?"
"Won't bother them too much. They'll rather enjoy the development of the slicing cut—after all their human appearance, they're still cats. They like to fight silently, and slash quietly, and then to slink away in the night. They're strictly predators, and their evaluation of life is rather low."
"So?"
"You may have to prove your prowess with a bit of fighting, Downing. Personal, I mean."
"Well—"
"And you may not. You've always accused me of being brash, bold, and impulsive. All three of 'em got me across to this gang. I've always accused you of being quiet, shy, and coldly-calculating. They'll like those features, too."
Three white-clad doctors surrounded Downing with their sprays.
"That stuff they have is better than the glook they sprayed me with," remarked Lane. "But it doesn't smell as good and it is inclined to sting a bit. They developed it after making me live in a glass-inclosed laboratory for about two weeks."
Downing submitted to the spray with scratching and shrugging. "Tell me," he clipped, "how're the women?"
"Cats," grinned Lane.
Downing grunted. "Sounds like 'sour grapes' to me."
"Frankly, they ain't bad, Downing. But a guy can't do much when he's living in a laboratory."
Downing laughed. "People who live in glass houses shouldn't."
"Shouldn't what?"
"Shouldn't—period!"
"Well, I intend to return after we get this thing off of our chests. This gang is not human. They aren't the kind you could trust, but they are interesting. It is really something to see their civilization—and to see just how catlike they behave. They never laugh. Their exhibition of amusement is a deep-throated purr. And when one of 'em gets his feet stepped on, he hisses like a couple of cats squaring off on the back fence."
Thompson came up, followed by the spraying doctors. "This is all very fine," he said. "But we've wasted a lot of time. The Little Men are getting quite nervous."
Downing looked at Lane. "I'm sort of glad you turned up," he said flatly. "Especially with permission to hunt that thing."
Lane smiled bitterly. "If I hadn't turned up, Downing, you'd have spent the next fifteen years combing this system for confirmation, wouldn't you?"
"Naturally. Now let's find that machine. I've got a little project of rivet-clipping ahead."
Thompson intervened. "Seems to me that you've both accomplished plenty. Lane here gained the confidence of the catmen and Downing has the fleet equipped with heavy stuff."
"Who?" asked Lane. "I have a hunch that it was your doing, Billy."
"And any confidence-getting he did was strictly fear of our natural environment coming here," returned Stellor Downing.
"All right, break it up."
"We're all to return here as soon as we get the machine destroyed," said Lane. "They want to know what the answer is, just as we do. I have a hunch that finding the machine itself will tell us plenty."
VII.
Toralen Ki turned from the communicator. "Hotang," he called. "They have the answer!"
"Good. Then our time has not been wasted! For now we have the other one back."
"The technicians on Tlembo have just given me full and complete instructions on how to lower the sensitivity of the detector to a proper level."
"Not shielding?" asked Hotang Lu skeptically.
Toralen Ki laughed. "What manner of shielding would stop the suppressor wave? Nothing, I know. Absolutely nothing can deflect or stop it."
Toralen opened the detector case and started to fumble inside. He was not deft, and the tools from the equipment case did not fit his hand. But in an hour he had made the changes suggested by the technicians on Tlembo—but aided finally by one of Thompson's crew of technicians who went to work on the thing with dexterity but complete ignorance of its principles of operation.
Then with the one detector in operation, in Thompson's ship, the flight took off and began to take the last measures necessary to the completion of their task.
Hour after hour they went, out into the space beyond the last planet of the catmen, and out and out, running slowly so that they would neither collide with the machine nor overrun it.
It was a matter of days.
"Dead ahead," said Thompson on the communicator.
"Target?" asked Lane.
"Meteor, it looks like."
"Might be camouflage," suggested Downing. "Remember if it must be destroyed, it is a sign that those who made it knew that it would be against the wishes ofsomebody."
"Did either of you think that it might be a good thing?"
"You mean the machine might be benign?"
"Yes," answered Thompson.
"That's why you are going to analyze it before we destroy it," said Lane.
"Yes?"
"If we destroy it and discover it is benign, then we can reproduce it. Follow?"
"Excellent idea," said Thompson. "Kennebec thought of that?"
"Kennebec is a smart man," said Lane. "He wanted the stuff in the Little Man's ship—stuff none of us can understand yet. He agreed to come out here and blast the machine. But he considered it likely that the Little Man was making a cat's-paw out of the human race and he wanted to repair any damage done as soon as we found out we'd made a mistake."
"Did you ever think that the interval between destroying this and getting the reproduction in working order might be just time enough?" demanded Thompson.
"Yup. I've figured all of that. But I'm following orders, Billy. I'm going to wreck that thing as soon as you tell me you can reproduce it."
Downing interrupted. "You're going to do it? I am."
"Want to bet?" snapped Lane.
"Cut it," said Thompson.
"Make you a deal," said Lane, ignoring Thompson.
"Go on."
"I order you to stop it," snapped Thompson.
"Go fly a kite," growled Lane. "Look, Downing, I'll fight you for the privilege of destroying that machine."
"Deal. How?"
"When Billy has his pictures and data, we'll take off in our fleeters. The idea will be to see who can blast the thing first—no holds barred, right?"
"It's one way of finding out who's the best flier," agreed Downing.
Toralen Ki looked up at Thompson. Billy smiled. He made motions, conveyed the idea to the Little Man that Downing and Lane were going out to destroy the machine personally.
Toralen Ki fumbled for the meaning and then understood. He agreed vigorously, nodding and smiling.
"The Little Man here says to go ahead," Thompson said, into the communicator. "I'm supposed to be a buffer until this mission is complete—it will be complete when that machine is blasted. Everybody knows that you fellows are going to go rivet-cutting sooner or later—might as well have something to do it over."
"Thanks," said Downing dryly. "And the guy that loses makes a public announcement of his inferiority, see?"
"I'll be listening to you," came Lane's taunting laugh.
"What you'll be hearing is my acceptance," returned Downing.
Thompson left them quibbling and took his crew over to the meteor that carried the machine. It was a real meteor, a huge one almost a half mile in jagged diameter. A well penetrated it, sealed by huge metal doors. They breached the doors and resealed them, once they were inside, to pressurize the cavern.
Then they went to work on the huge machine.
It was bizarre. It was unreal and unearthly. Atomic generators powered it silently, pouring torrents of high power into its apparently senseless circuits. Great silvery crystals twisted and distorted slowly under piezoelectric stress, and sputtered-silver contacts carried off the impulses to other circuits.
Solid metal bars carried some sort of circulatory impulse from place to place—they were reminiscent of wave-guide plumbing but no microwave set-up could function in a system like this.
Then, slowly, the thing appeared to have pattern. Whatever it was, the output of the slowly-distorting crystals was fed in or out of phase through filters and transmission bars to the topmost crystal. It was multi-faceted and obviously not a natural formation. It scintillated and pulsed rapidly, and the facets gleamed against the lights as the crystal throbbed in tune with the feeding currents.
"This," said Thompson, "is going to be reproduced later if for no other reason than just sheer curiosity. Whoever built it is a little ahead of our time and I want to get caught up. Benign or malignant, it must be remade and studied."
Then for hours, Thompson's technicians went over the machine with a fine-tooth comb. Pictures—tridimensional shots, moving pictures, microtime film, and hand sketches. Technicians measured potentials, made pictures of wave shapes from the oscilloscope patterns, and drew endless schematic diagrams. Metallurgists took minute samples of the metals, of the dielectrics, of the crystals themselves, cutting bits out with microscopic modine beams.
Then, as they ran out of things to measure, Thompson took one last look at it. "O.K., fellows," he said, "can you rebuild it?"
"To the last decimal place."
"It's alien," warned Thompson.
"It's still made of metal and crystal."
"O.K." He turned to Toralen Ki and made suggestive motions. He turned off the main feed line, and the atomics thrummed to a stop. Then he suggested that now it was off, why didn't they just take it back to Terra and not bother reproducing it. Toralen Ki shook his head—No. He waved Thompson to come along, and they left the machine in the meteor forever.
"I'm finished," said Thompson, "but wait before you blast. The Little Man seems to want me to confer with him for a moment."
Thompson's ship took off. Toralen Ki emerged from his stateroom with the instrument. He planted it on a table, turned it on, and strapped the plate to his forehead. He offered the other one to Thompson.
Thompson understood. He knew that the Little People had a means of mental communication that augmented their speech. He accepted the plate and strapped it on his own head.
"Now," said Toralen Ki, "I may at last converse with you and your race."
"What is the machine?" asked Thompson.
"The others—they are all right?"
Thompson nodded. "They are destroying the machine. Tell me, what is it?"
Toralen Ki nodded in agreement. "Tell them to destroy it and then to return, for I must speak with them through this, now that the machine is stopped and I may. But destroy it, for the Loard-vogh may have remote control and if they have, it may be started again at any moment."
"Before I blast any alien machine," said Thompson, "I must know what it is. You insist that it be destroyed. How do I know that the machine is not benign?"
"The machine," explained Toralen Ki, "is a device which suppresses the mental activity of all races within its field of radiation. It was built by a ruthless and predatory race to hold down the overall galactic mentality. It must be destroyed, for even though it is not running, full and complete regaining of the mental strength will not be possible until the machine is destroyed because a certain amount of residual power exists in the radiating crystal."