Space Gypsies

CHAPTER FOUR

He made his way again to the dead area, having a great deal of trouble with his burden of stuffed figures. Trees tried to block the way. Brushwood plucked at the clumsy bodies which nearby were so unconvincing. There was one time when a vine entangled a dragging stuffed leg, and he had to put down the whole burden to clear it. Again he found himself surrounded on three sides by tree trunks too close to let him through. He had to retrace his steps and find a more open way.

He reached the killed circle. He went into it, dodging tree trunks and with his unwieldy burden scraped at by the brittle sticks which once had been underbrush. Presently he tripped, and looked down to see what he’d tripped on. It was a fine wire coated with transparent plastic like all the metal objects of the slug-ship culture’s making. It had undoubtedly communicated with a relay, which some hours earlier would have flashed a killer-field to murder him and re-kill anything within its range. Now the killer-field generating outfit was smashed, and an essential part of it lay useless in the Marintha’s engine room.

But the trip-wire was information Howell needed. It told him where the foremost member of a rescue party, marching toward a booby trap that had lured them here, would have released pure death upon himself and all living things nearby as a reward for his altruism.

So Howell put down, here, the dummy representing himself. It would be plainly visible from the sky. He went back and placed the others as if while following him they had all been killed. It was an admirable picture of what would have appeared if the Marintha had been a rescue ship lured to this place by the message-beam—as the Marintha had been—and if all its ship’s company had gone unsuspectingly to their fate.

Having accomplished this errand, Howell was more than doubtful of its usefulness. He went doggedly back to the still-living jungle he’d left. He was fully aware, now, of the mischances that could turn any stratagem into futility. But it suddenly occurred to him that he and the others of the Marintha Were practically inviting catastrophe. He was suddenly appalled by the idea of Karen being left alone in the yacht. There were adventure tape-dramas—mostly historical or period pieces—in which people did experience danger and face disaster. But they were make-believe. And for believability most of them were laid in earlier times when humanity was not—as it now believed it was—plu-perfectly safe.

The four of them, Howell reflected angrily, were like children who’d never been really frightened. They pretended delicious terror for the fun of it. When they encountered really alarming things, they tended to react like children who do not like the way a game is going. They tried to stop playing. That was certainly the case with Breen, and probably with Ketch. They were now looking over the rubble remainders of a long-shattered city. For the time being, they’d stopped playing at flight from a slug-shaped enemy spaceship.

Howell hurried back toward the yacht. Just past the edge of the dead area he passed the spot where he’d put the three small skeletons under a decorous cover of green-stuff. He’d had nothing then with which to dig a grave, and he had nothing now. But he wouldn’t have stopped anyway because he began to think of shocking omissions in their reactions to real danger. Karen was alone in the ship, right now. They hadn’t monitored the all-wave receiver. Howell had computed the position and course and hence the time of arrival of the slug-ship on its way here now. It shouldn’t arrive for some time yet; but it could have driven again, planning to use power for deceleration on arrival. It could turn up any instant! And Karen would be alone, because he’d been out setting up a scenic effect, and Breen and Ketch were out botanizing!

He was almost running when he caught the first glimpses of the yacht between tree trunks. At a hundred yards he shouted. He heard the clanking of the metal dogs that held the port shut and sealed it. The port cracked open, and. Karen peered fearfully out. An infinite relief and gratitude showed on her face, but she was terrified.

She couldn’t speak when he vaulted up to the then fully opened port. She clung to him. She’d been crying. She was still frightened.

“What’s happened?” he demanded fiercely.

It was singular that he held her close, and this was the first time they’d ever acted other than decorously, but it was not the occasion for romantic speeches. He kissed her and repeated as fiercely as before, “What’s happened? What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

“There’s a—whine in the sky,” she said shakily. “The—the receiver picked it up. I heard it! It’s like—what you said was a slug-ship…”

She didn’t try to release herself. He asked grimly, “How long ago?”

“N-not long. Maybe five minutes…”

“Then we’ve some time. If it was landing, it’d be down now. It’s making one orbit to slow down. A low orbit could take around ninety minutes. We’ve got to get Ketch and your father.”

He kissed her and moved toward the control room. He came back and kissed her again. He vanished. Karen put her hand to her throat. She’d been frightened. But Howell had held her close and kissed her, and now her fears were dissipated. The reason for them was in no wise diminished, but nevertheless her eyes shone a little. And it could have been said that any two people of suitable age, thrown together as they had been these past three months, would either dislike each other excessively or care for each other a great deal. Karen would have denied it. She was quite sure that if she and Howell had never known each other, and their eyes had met on a crowded street, they’d have known what she was now sure of.

Howell threw the switch of the yacht’s outside siren. Space-liners were not equipped with such gadgets as sirens, but yachts found them desirable. Landing as yachtsmen did on worlds only other yachtsmen frequented, there was need of an audible signal to guide exploring parties and hunters back to the little ships that went everywhere with no thought of danger.

The yacht’s siren went “Whiro-o-o!” It would be hearable for miles. Howell came back. He put his arms around Karen again.

“That’ll fetch them,” he said confidently. He kissed her and said, “I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time.”

She said unevenly, “I’ve—been wanting you to.”

“We won’t tell them for now.”

“No… not for now…”

It was insanity, of course. The Marintha was crippled and unarmed, and there was a slug-ship descending for a landing somewhere partway around this world. And slug-ships shot on sight at vessels like the Marintha. They made booby traps to murder humans, and there could be no doubt that the landing slug-ship would make the space-yacht a target for monstrous blaster-bolts of which one had already crippled her past repair.

The state of things offered no excuse for hope, unless it was that three-quarters of a mile away there were four dummies made from clothing of the Marintha’s crew. They lay, those dummies, in a blasted area in which nothing grew. If the slug-ship should notice them—which was doubtful—it might assume that all those who travelled in the Marintha had been killed and the yacht needn’t be destroyed before examination. But if it didn’t act on that assumption…

The siren wailed again. The sound would carry over the jungles of an unnamed planet, over hills and hollows, beating upon mountain-flanks and reflected from precipices. Breen and Ketch would hear it and assuredly hasten back. But in the meantime, Karen felt the magnificent uplift of spirit which comes to a girl when she becomes admittedly the most important thing in a chosen man’s life.

They talked pure romantic nonsense, which was doubly foolish because there were things urgently needing to be done. But none of the things that needed to be done were really possible; therefore it would have been quadruply foolish to put aside their sudden and urgent rejoicing in each other’s existence. It would last, it seemed, for only a very short time, but that was all the more reason to rejoice while it was still possible.

The siren wailed again. Its monstrous quaverings went up and down the scale, and flying things launched themselves from jungle treetops and dashed crazily about, and doubtless there were small walking or crawling things that crouched down in their holes and listened to it fearfully, But Howell and Karen hardly noticed it.

They were looking at each other as if they’d never seen each other quite completely before, when Ketch shouted from a little distance away. Then Karen smiled ruefully and drew away from Howell as he released her, and they greeted Ketch and Karen’s father as they came to the port of the yacht.

“We found a rubble-heap,” said Ketch, with a look of shrewdness on his face. “And something else.”

Breen puffed up into the yacht.

“Bad luck!” he grunted. “Very bad luck! There were holes there! Somebody or something dug those holes! Lately!”

Howell nodded unemotionally. Ketch and Breen were agitated by some discovery they’d made. He had now to make them resolute and ready to face what the revelation of a slug-ship’s approach meant. It was, in substance, that they were almost certainly about to be killed. If they reacted as he believed they should—And if they didn’t—He said, “I’ve something to tell you—”

“They were humans,” said Ketch. “They—”

“No doubt about it!” puffed Breen. “No doubt at all! They dug holes down to deposits of metal in the rubble. There was rust left behind. They’d found machinery, maybe. Rusted past recognition, but they can smelt it down, no doubt. Their ships—”

“We found where their ships had grounded,” interposed Ketch. “Brushwood crushed flat. They’d landed, and they’d stayed a while, digging in the rubble-heaps.”

“Must’ve had metal detectors,” said Breen, still partly out of breath. “To tell where the metal was. That’d make them—human. They couldn’t be anything else!”

“They could,” said Howell coldly. “They could be slug-ship beings like those in the one that’s orbiting now, to come down next time around.”

“But they have to be humans! They’re gone now, but—” Then Breen stopped short. “What’s that you say?”

“There’s a slug-ship in orbit,” said Howell. “Karen heard its whine. Considering the booby trap and the Marintha plainly visible from the sky, where do you think they’ll turn up?”

There was silence. Then Ketch said almost with zest, “We’ve got to get away fast! Take what we can carry and hide until we can make contact with the humans here. They’re bound to go away again!”

“After studying the Marintha,” said Howell savagely, “and learning that there’s another human race than the one they know and set traps for! After possibly guessing that this other human race was wiped out and now has built up again from survivors of the rubble-heap cities after they were smashed thousands of years ago!”

“What—” Ketch’s mouth dropped open.

“And after very probably learning,” continued Howell, still savagely, “that they can do another massacre now, because they’ll have traditions if they haven’t records of smashing the civilization of the rubble-heap men! And they’ll know where to find it. Surely! Do we have to go and hide so they can do that all over again?”

Breen asked querulously, “What else can we do?”

Then Howell told them what else they could do. Their response was almost unbelievable. They were civilized men, citified men, generations removed from any real danger of sudden death. But they were not generations removed from drama-tapes, in which they’d experienced vicariously all sorts of thrills and splendid adventures. Watching them, they developed a fine confidence that they’d survive unharmed all the dangers and dramatic twists of the plot. Now they found themselves cast in roles of a highly dramatic type. Howell’s instructions sounded like stage directions. Breen obediently took one of Ketch’s sporting rifles. Ketch hesitated. He spoke to Karen—but Karen had received Howell’s orders as if there could be no possible other course of action. She, herself, picked out a light rifle with which she’d made good scores at targets. The Marintha’s company, save for Howell, prepared for an essentially hopeless battle as if for amateur theatricals.

Only Howell’s grimness was real. He’d handled the three small skeletons which appeared to be those of children. He did not look upon coming events as adventures in which nothing lethal or final could happen to the human participants. He could envision Karen killed: Karen the victim of such a blaster-bolt as had disabled the Marintha; Karen wounded, injured, dying. He didn’t envision himself as killed; nobody can really do that. But even generations of total safety hadn’t erased the instinct of man to face lions or slug-ships in defence of a girl he cares for.

So Howell was the one member of the Marintha’s crew who knew bloodthirstiness in anticipation of the slug-ship’s landing. He couldn’t imagine what sort of beings manned—or creatured—a slug-ship, but already he hated them with a violence that harked back to the ancient days when men carried stone hammers and spears to kill with.

Breen and Ketch had only enthusiasm to urge them on, but with an infinite amount of luck it might not matter. It could be that long-buried instincts would reappear when the fighting began. Target-shooting was a standard sport and on most worlds a man was expected to make a good score at the flip-targets as in much older days a man was expected to play a good hand of bridge. Living targets might help.

“How about the radar?” asked Ketch briskly. “We want to be warned when they come.”

“No!” said Howell angrily. “This is to be an ambush! The Marintha has to seem dead to make it one. They could pick up a radar-pulse!”

“An ambush! ” Breen said zestfully. “Yes! I’ve seen them on drama-tapes. And we’re to lie in ambush!”

Howell pointed out one of the Marintha’s view-ports. If the slug-ship landed on this side, here was a good bit of cover. That spot would have a good field of fire. This other would be good concealment from which to shoot.

“Try not to spoil the skins! ” said Ketch.

Howell didn’t protest the confusion of a hunter’s thinking with that of a man fighting for considerably more than his own life.

“Now, over on this side—”

There was a whining noise from the control room. The all-wave receiver had picked up the drive of a slug-ship. Howell’s jaws clamped tightly. He was assuming that the slug-ship creatures thought like men, though they might have very different motives.

But intelligence that arrived at space-drives like those of men, and booby traps such as men have been known to set for each other, and weapons like those of men—the huge blaster-bolt that had hit the Marintha was simply an oversized ball-lightning missile—if the slug-creatures paralleled human achievements, they must think like humans, though they need not feel like them at all.

The whine of the distant space-drive stopped. It cut in again. Off once more. Howell could tell what the unseen space-vessel was doing. It was decelerating, of course, to come down and view the Marintha from nearby for its destruction, or whatever alternative the slug-creatures had in mind. If the eyes of the slug-creatures were no better than men’s, or their telescopes not more useful, it would want to arrive over the Marintha moderately low down. If it suspected powerful weapons of human ships, it would tend to stay high. In any case it would not land before it had in some fashion tested out those supposed weapons. If the four dummies in the dead space were seen and accepted as corpses, the testing might not be elaborate. But the Marintha had to lie perfectly still as if all its crew were dead or destroyed. And it might be destroyed anyhow.

There came a mooing, bleating, howling sound from the all-wave receiver. It was beast-like, animal; it formed no words. It sounded like a monster bellowing defiance.

“That’s a challenge,” said Ketch brightly.

“We don’t answer it,” said Howell curtly.

The unthinkably dismal sound came again. Karen’s features showed fear. But she looked quickly at Howell, and her uneasiness disappeared.

There came words from the unseen ship overhead. They were spoken in a clear soprano voice. There were consonants and vowels. It seemed to Howell that he recognized some of the sounds that the booby trap bait-beam had repeated so often. They would be words that happened to occur both in the planetary broadcast and this other mocking, derisive challenge.

This was mockery and it was derision. Howell ground his teeth. He was convinced now that the slug-ship overhead was the same that had challenged the space-yacht in the first place ,with a beastly sound like these last. It had trailed the Marintha in its overdrive escape from the encounter. It had followed the overdrive change-of-course to this system. Its breakout point, here, happened to be farther from the green planet than the Marintha’s, so it had arrived there on solar-system drive much later. But now it was overhead and the Marintha was grounded below, and a ship cannot go into overdrive in atmosphere. It will vaporize itself. So the slug-ship aloft could mock the Marintha. And it did.

“I think,” said Howell detachedly, “that things depend now on whether or not they saw or see the dummies I set out.”

Breen and Ketch now seemed to feel the high excitement of men participating in the high adventure of a drama-tape. Howell couldn’t believe that they were desperate like himself, but he needed to keep them in this frame of mind since it was the best he could hope for. When action began they might panic and flee, or they might react as most men have always done when they found their backs against a wall.

More bestial sounds. The soprano voice again.

Breen said, “Too bad the diggers at the rubble-heap city went away! They’d have fought with us.”

“They’re humans,” said Ketch. He listened to the sounds from emptiness. “No doubt about it. Not like whoever’s making that racket.”

This was admirable, sophisticated, tape-dramatic reaction to imminent danger awaiting the moment of its arrival. Howell needed to confirm them in their roles of calm and confident combatants-to-be. He said, “How do you know they’re human?”

“He found—”

“I found something,” said Breen. “An anthropologist could make deductions from it. I make the obvious one—that one of the diggers’ children lost it.”

He drew a small and draggled object from his pocket. It was a stick and a bit of paper or something of the sort. It was coloured. It was very small.

It was a pinwheel, a child’s toy, made out of unimportant materials on a miniature scale. A child would run with it and be charmed by its spinning, or hold it gleefully in a wind to see it turn from the wind’s pressure. But it was no more than three or four inches across.

Howell almost paid attention. But he couldn’t keep his eyes from the screens that showed the sky. There was a ship up there which mocked the Marintha. It just barely might see the dummies, and if so it might just barely think the Marintha empty of its crew—that all its occupants had gone to be killed by the booby trap.

There was a spark in mid-sky. It was a lurid, furious, deadly blue-white speck of incandescence. It grew. It was coming down. To the Marintha. Exactly where it would strike would depend, of course, on the thinking of the creatures in the slug-ship. But in matters of technology they thought like men. They had to! So the one remote chance Howell had seized upon was a guess at further similarity of thinking processes. If the human race in this part of the galaxy built spaceships in the form of globes, the Marintha’s hull-design would make the skipper of the slug-ship want to examine something so strange and new. In that case he wouldn’t want to destroy it if he could help it. He might smash a part of it as a precaution. But he might—

The ravening, flaming missile came down. In air, it did not move with the limitless velocity of the bolt that had been fired in between-the-stars. It grew, and sped ferociously for the yacht. Its brilliance was intolerable. Only at the last instant could Howell he sure that it would be a miss.

There was a furious flash of light. There was the shock of an explosion transmitted to the space-yacht by the ground on which it rested. Then there was steam and smoke and hurtling masses of soil and shattered jungle trees. Some of them hit the Marintha. Then there was a twenty-foot crater in the ground, some four feet deep and only yards from the Marintha’s hull.

Howell said quickly, “Good! It looks like we’ve fooled them!”

Breen had jerked to tenseness. Ketch had paled a little.

“Now they’ll miss again,” said Howell. “On purpose. Here it comes!”

There was a second infinitely lurid spark darting down from the center of the sky. It exactly repeated the velocity and the fury of the first. It struck closer to the Marintha. There was a second impact and monstrous spouting of steam and flying masses of dirt and shattered limbs and tree trunks. There were “heavy blows on the Marintha’s outer plating. She tilted all askew.

“If we acted normally now,” said Howell, “we’d jump out the ports and run. And they’d see us and blast us. The next bolt won’t be so close.”

Ketch and Breen looked at him, and he assumed the devil-may-care manner of a tape-drama actor in a moment of high suspense, just before splendid and melodramatic action. The pose built up the illusion that this was something in a staged adventure which could not but end happily after stirring deeds of derring-do. Ketch straightened up. Breen composed his features.

“Right!” Breen said enthusiastically. “And we’ll lie in ambush—”

A third giant blaster-bolt landed a little farther off. A fourth and a fifth. They looked very much indeed like bombardment intended to destroy the Marintha and certain to do so if it were continued. Had Howell been less hopeless of any other stratagem, he’d have had the others well away and not gambling their lives on his guess at what the slug-ship skipper would do. But the stakes were too high to be bet except for great and high results.

There were six smoking craters blasted out of the jungle before the sparks ceased to form in the sky. Howell said matter-of-factly, after five minutes had passed without another detonation, “It looks like we put it over! They’ll ground, presently, and come to take a look at what they think their booby trap won for them.” Then, deliberately, he said, “What’s that about the holes you found dug in the rubble-heap?”

Breen stared at him. Then he rose to the occasion and said with fine casualness, “The rubble was excavated in four places that we found. The excavations go down deep in the rubble. All arrived at different depths at traces of corroded metal. Not all of them were iron. Apparently whoever dug them out had metal-detectors and could find out where to dig. And we found where a ship or ships had rested aground and later lifted off again. All this was no more than a day or two before we arrived. And we found that pinwheel. What does it mean?”

“It means we’ve some work ahead of us,” said Howell briskly, “after we’ve done what’s immediately necessary. They ought to be coming in sight shortly.”

He watched the screens in the control room. There was silence. Then the whine of a ship-drive, solar-system type. The slug-ship was coming in for a landing.

Howell said detachedly, “Children on a space voyage aren’t unusual, but children on a ship that mines metal out of rubble-heap cities—that’s something else! When there are booby traps set for them, that means they aren’t just an exploring party or even an expedition gathering up rubble-heap remains. It’s something all its own.”

The drive-whine was loud now. Howell pointed to a screen.

“There’s our friend. Low down. Barely above the trees.”

The bow vision-screen showed a moving shape. It was not of any design ever built by members of the human race now spreading out from Earth. It was utterly alien. It looked very nearly like a giant slug, even to twin horns at its forward parts, resembling the eye-stalks of those gastropoda. It seemed to be made of metal, but again the metal had been covered with something else. It could be guessed that there was a coating of plastic like that on the plates of the booby trap globe and the lethal units of the trap itself.

It checked its forward motion. Its drive-whine was loud and rasping. It came forward again. It changed course to circle the grounded space-yacht at a very considerable distance. It passed not far from the booby trap globe and almost over the dead area. The whining was loud indeed.

“We haven’t shot at them,” said Howell deliberately, “because we’ve nothing to shoot a ship with. But they’re pretty well convinced, now, that we’re dead. If they saw the dummies—and they should have—they ought to be quite sure.”

Karen interposed to explain the matter of the dummies, over the sound of the slug-ship’s drive. Ketch and Breen had known nothing about them. They’d been at the rubble-heap city when Howell climbed through treetops, and the dummies were made after that. Karen’s voice was quite steady. And this, like Howell’s more histrionic behaviour, reinforced the atmosphere of a drama-tape adventure tale.

Breen and Ketch could have been simply despairing, but instead they felt—though precariously—anticipation of action of disaster. Howell staged a scene of before-battle discussion. He didn’t believe his plan would succeed, but he couldn’t imagine not trying it. He expected to be killed. Worse, he expected Karen to be killed, too. But for Breen and Ketch and Karen—it was wise to pretend calm confidence.

The slug-ship apparently did see the dummies. Apparently it did not detect that they were fakes. Now it came directly to the Marintha and its drive-whine rose to a scream coming from the all-wave speaker. It came to a stop only hundreds of yards from the grounded, tilted, space-yacht, barely above treetop level, and the protuberances that looked like the eye-stalks of a slug pointed at the yacht as if at a target. The flexible stalks held weapons. Undoubtedly they were ready to fling the incandescent, giant, ball-lightning bolts at the slightest sign of movement on the Marintha.

There was stillness. There was no sign but the high-pitched scream which Howell turned down for comfort’s sake. Then, very gradually, the slug-ship settled to the ground. It vanished behind the trees whose thrust-aside branches and displaced trunks told of their destruction by the landing ship.

The drive-whine stopped. The slug-ship was aground. Howell led the way to the opposite side of the Marintha. The slug-ship might have outside microphones, so he opened the farther port with care to avoid noise. Then he stopped and went back to make sure that if he didn’t open the log-tape instrument itself, all the records of the ship’s journey to here from Earth would be destroyed. He didn’t believe there was real value in the precaution,but he could do no less than take it.

The four of them slipped out and to the ground. Howell had briefed them as if giving stage-directions. Ketch and Breen went around the Marintha’s stern, to make use of cover for the ambush Howell planned. Howell and Karen moved cautiously around the bow, If they were sighted, every shred of hope would vanish instantly. Therefore he had told the others to place themselves close to the yacht. The blasted-out craters might expose targets moving toward it. They should be in position well before a landing party from the slug-ship could arrive.

Howell and Karen ensconced themselves where a fallen tree trunk would be partial protection against any ordinary hand-weapon. Oddly enough, close to the ground they could see farther through the jungle than at normal eye-height. Howell scrunched himself down to take advantage of the fact.

He and Karen were alone again, but he was necessarily absorbed in this next-to-hopeless attempt to resist a fighting ship with sporting rifles. The attempt was so foolhardy that he couldn’t give it less than every atom of his attention. Yet he realized that even highly improbable success in this particular combat wouldn’t ensure their safety.

“There’s a consort of this ship listening in, somewhere a long way off,” he told Karen bitterly. “I hope we’ll do something for her to listen to!”

Then he repeated the advice he’d given Breen and Ketch about the proper time to fire—at the last instant before the slug-ship creatures moved to enter the yacht, so as many as possible could be fired on before they could flee. It did not occur to him, or to Karen, that a girl wasn’t supposed to fight. Against other humans, that convention would apply. But women hunted game on divers worlds. If their targets weren’t human ones, they felt no aversion. So Karen would feel no qualms about shooting at the creatures from the slug-ship. They weren’t specifically human, or even humanoid.

It seemed a horribly long time before there was any evidence on that subject, however. Things made bird-like noises, some among tree branches, some on the ground. Others made animal sounds. A very tiny creature rustled fallen leaves directly before Howell’s firing position.

Then, looking between jungle-stalks close to the ground, Howell saw movement. Things were coming from the landed ship. It was not possible to see them clearly, but assuredly they were not human. For moments Howell believed that they had enormous eyes, until he saw part of a moving shape more clearly and it was evident that what he saw were goggles. They would imply space-suits. The slug-ship creatures wore spacesuits! In atmosphere!

It meant that they couldn’t breathe the air that humans found quite satisfactory. Howell drew in his breath sharply. That was good fortune! It meant that any wound which involved the puncture of an alien’s space-suit would be a killing wound. It multiplied the chances of success in this ambush, provided Ketch and Breen maintained their delusion that this was an adventure like a drama-tape play in which all the heroic characters—themselves—were bound to arrive at a happy ending. Now Howell began to hope desperately that Ketch and Breen would have no time to develop qualms and acquire apprehensions, to become frightened. Because if they did—

They didn’t have time. There was a movement in the jungle. Then—a Thing appeared. It was neither much larger nor much smaller than a man. It wore a space-suit, which was like a mask in that it had all the implications of horror a mask evokes. Howell couldn’t make out what sort of creature the space-suit covered. It was flesh, however, and it carried something which could only be a weapon, and it moved with a writhing, insectile gait. It had limbs, of which one carried its weapon. It had a head which moved to point this way and that, in an insect-like fashion no familiar animal practised.

There was a second slug-creature behind the first. It crawled or writhed close to the leader. This first pair moved eagerly toward the space-yacht. Three others came behind the first two. Two more came behind them. That seemed to be the entire group. They came squirming and crawling through the jungle-growths. They made no sounds. But men in space-suits make no sounds in air, either. They probably spoke freely enough to each other and to the ship by suit-radio—but they wouldn’t speak, at that. They’d grunt and hoot and moo and bellow. They made their way, squirming, to the Marintha’s entrance-port. The first of them up-ended itself against the yacht’s metal sides. It fumbled to solve the problem of the fastening.

Howell fired. At the same instant, Breen and Ketch fired also. Then Karen’s light little rifle let go its bolt. The thing up-ended against the yacht’s hull seemed almost to fly to pieces. Horrible greenish-yellow flesh ripped open.

Howell fired again at another target. He scored a hit, but the things reacted swiftly. Instantly one of them fired back. A blaster-bolt flashed past Howell’s shoulder. He shot again. The rasping crackle of Karen’s rifle sounded in his ears. He knew that Breen and Ketch were shooting ruthlessly into the squirming confusion where the slug-creatures had been bunched. But they didn’t stay bunched. Individuals slithered with astonishing speed into the jungle. Then incandescent blaster-bolts came back, searching for the humans they’d believed murdered beforehand. It took them only instants to change their roles from eager investigators—looters—to targets for four rifles, and then to definitely competent jungle-fighters.

There was one dead Thing, blown almost apart but still writhing, and another whose suit-helmet was shattered. It made high-pitched screaming noises, squirming blindly. It fired its weapon without aim and without ceasing. But then the others had vanished, and almost immediately the four humans were under fire from places not between them and the slug-ship.

The reason was instantly apparent. Intolerable brightness flamed. The flexible things at the slug-ship’s forward part, the things that looked like eye-stalks, twisted upon themselves. They pointed. From one of them a blue-white ball of flame rushed out. It struck a jungle tree and the tree exploded where it hit. A lightning-ball of flame darted from the other tube. It also hit a jungle tree, which exploded like the first.

The slug-ship, obviously, was not abandoning its landing party. It was fighting in defence of its crew-creatures on the ground. In open country it would have been pure, raw, naked destruction. Here, in jungle, a single bolt destroyed only the object it struck, which broke the bolt and released its electric flame. But the bolts came out in unending twin streams.

The seeming eye-stalks poured them out almost as if they were hoses spouting star-temperature flames. It was basic to their deadliness that anything broke them—and that where they broke there was nothing left but steam or vapour. If one struck a thick and heavy tree trunk, all its energy was released exactly there. If one happened to encounter a sapling, it detonated no less violently. If this steady, intolerable sequence of lightning-bolts continued, it would incinerate all the jungle between twin, blasted-out lanes of smoking, steaming, wildly flaming wreckage to which the ship’s artillery-sized blasters added every instant.

It was a highly efficient system for handling combat problems aground. It was perfectly designed for the destruction of Howell and Karen and Ketch and Breen. There seemed to be no possible chance that it could fail.