Those Who Watch

Fifteen

The rescue mission consisted of six Dirnans, two teams of three. Each comprised a complete sexual group: male-female-female in one case, male-female-male in the other. They entered New Mexico the day after the explosion, and began to comb the state for the three possible survivors. The task would have been easier if they had had communicator signals to guide them.

All they had to go by were probabilities, plus one extremely distorted signal. The computers, weighing all the likelihoods, had decided that all three Dirnans must have come down approximately in the center of the state: one in the vicinity of Albuquerque, one closer to Santa Fe, and one west of the line connecting the other two, thus forming a vaguely equilateral triangle. But the best the computers could offer by way of actual locations was an area determination with a built-in error of + 20 miles. That was hardly encouraging.

The rescue team led by Furnil and his two mates had a slight advantage over the other group. Coming down from the north, they were guided by the dim, uncertain bleeping of the damaged communicator, and so they had at least an initial clue. The communicator’s signal was emerging as a bleary smear, spread over too many wavelengths, but it provided a clue of sorts. It told them that one of the three Dirnans who had fallen to Earth had almost certainly landed within a few miles of the Rio Grande somewhere not too far south of Santa Fe, and that he was still alive — for the communicator had to be reactivated every time a signal was sent out.

Finding him was a tall order, though. The Dirnans immediately established their local command post in a motel on the lower outskirts of Santa Fe and set up their portable detecting instruments in the hope that they could clean up that blurred signal and trace it to its source. They attempted to factor out the distortion and narrow their search vectors. Their first calculation showed that the missing watcher could have come down in the vicinity of Cochiti Pueblo, but that proved to be incorrect — or, if the Dirnan had landed there, the Indians were keeping it well concealed. A radical correction in the vectors placed the watcher’s location across the Rio Grande, out by the ruins of Pecos Pueblo; a quick trip there produced nothing, and some reexamination showed that it had been a mistake. The signal was corning from the western bank of the river. They kept looking.

The other group, working its way up from Albuquerque, had nothing at all to go by except the assurance of the computers that they should look in this area. Their instruments remained totally silent. They had to use other methods: asking careful questions, studying police and military reports, placing cunningly worded advertisements in the newspapers. There were no results.

This group was led by a male named Sartak, who affected a rugged, excessively virile Earthman body. His companions were two Dirnan females, one of them somewhat his senior, the other a young one on her first watcher assignment and also in her first sexual group. Their names were Thuw and Leenor. Leenor had an agreeably innocent air about her that made her useful as an asker of questions. Sartak sent her down to the Albuquerque office of the Contact Cult to see if she could find anything worthwhile there. Like all Dirnans, Sartak had a hearty contempt for the cynical emptiness of Frederic Storm’s organization; but it was just remotely possible that some local citizen, having discovered an injured galactic alien, would choose to report that fact to the cult instead of to the military authorities. Sartak could not afford to ignore any leads.

He was programming one of his detecting instruments later that day when Leenor phoned, greatly agitated.

“I’ve just left the Contact Cult,” she gasped. “They don’t know anything about anything there. But — oh, Sartak, we’ve got to do something!”

“About what?”

“About the Kranazoi spy!”

Sartak glared into the telephone screen. “The what?’”

“He was at the cult place too. I could smell him across the room. He calls himself David Bridger, and he’s fat and horrible, and he’s looking for the survivors too!”

“How did you find that out?”

“By eavesdropping. I didn’t speak to him at all. I don’t think he noticed me. I’m sure he didn’t, Sartak.”

Sartak let his breath out in a long, slow snort of disgust. A member of the enemy mixed into this too! Wasn’t life hard enough?

He said, “Do you know where he’s staying?”

“A motel not far from ours. The name is — I’ve got it written down here — “-

“What is it?”

She found the slip and told him. Sartak made a note of it. Then he said, “This is annoying, but we’ll make the most of it. Leenor, get over to his motel and let him pick you up. Pretend to be a moron — your usual act. I doubt that he’ll try to take you to bed, but if he does, cooperate. And find out everything he knows. He may already have information that’s of use to us.”

“What if he finds out my real nature?”

“He won’t. Kranazoi don’t have our sense of smell. He’s got no way of knowing what’s under your skin, and most likely he isn’t familiar enough with real Earthpeople to know that you’re a fake. Just stay very calm, giggle a lot, and listen carefully to everything he says.”

“But what if he does, find out, Sartak?”

“You’re carrying an antipersonnel grenade, aren’t you? We’re acting under the covenants here, and he isn’t. If he makes any hostile moves, kill him.”

“Kill him?”

“Kill him,” Sartak repeated with deliberate brutality. I know, I know, we’re all civilized beings here. But we’re rescuers, and he’s an obstructor. Put the grenade in his fat belly and let him sizzle, Leenor. If necessary, that is. Clear?”

The girl looked a little dazed.

“Clear,” she said.