They were standing on the broad spread of plastalloy that covered the
great landing field of Grand Base, standing in the shadow of the huge
alien ship. The Psych men were pushing the Enlissa out of the ship,
through the path formed by the Inspection Corps men and Roysland's own
Special Weapons Group of the Research Division. The Psych men simply
pushed them into the drop chutes from the ship. Other Psych men kept
them moving toward the trucks that were taking them away.
The Enlissa weren't quite as tall, on the average, as a human
being. The skeletal structure was a little heavier, and the section
corresponding to the human rib cage was a series of armor plates that
completely enclosed the viscera. The pale blue-violet of their skins
came from the cobalt-protein complex that carried the oxygen through
their blood, performing the same function that hemoglobin does in the
human animal.
They were noseless; breathing was done through the mouth. The teeth
were widely spaced, and the lips could not close over them, thus
allowing the Enlissa to breathe, even when unconscious. The eyes were a
solid black. It was impossible to tell, from a superficial inspection,
where the deeply-pigmented surface of the eyeball ended and the dead
black of the lens opening began. They were somewhat larger than human
eyes, but they were set in front of the skull, allowing stereoscopic
vision.
Their protective covering might have been called hair, by stretching
the definition somewhat. By an equal amount of stretching, it could
have been called fingernails or scales. It would have taken an awful
lot of stretching to call it feathers.
The "hair" consisted of ribbons of thin chitinlike material. The
ribbons weren't much thicker than human hair, but they were nearly a
sixteenth of an inch in width, and ranged in color from a glossy black
to a royal blue, depending on the individual.
The feet were splayed, almost radial; the hands were
four-digited--double thumbed and double fingered.
The clothing they wore, though radically cut, was analogous to the
styles worn by human beings.
Roysland waited until the aliens were herded out of the ship. They had
to be prodded like beasts, since there was no way to talk to them. No
exchange of language had ever been achieved; but, like their human
counterparts, the mindjammed Enlissa seemed to be perfectly willing to
obey any exterior commands.
"What?" said Roysland. He had been so engrossed in his own thoughts
that he had only dimly realized that Kiffer Samm was talking to him.
"I said that we'll have to check on them, too, after we see what this
weapon is all about."
Roysland folded his hands and rubbed his thumbs together. "Maybe
before."
"Huh?"
"Never mind," Roysland said. "Here come the last of them. We want
to get all the samples out of their supplies that we can, and we've
already been promised first look at those projectors the Enlissa have
on board the ship. Come on; let's take a look."
The Enlissa ship wasn't organized too differently from the human
version. On the surface, things looked odd; but the laws of the
universe function the same way in all places, so the internal workings
of the ship were essentially similar.
The Special Weapons men went through the ship with the men of the
Inspection Division, photographing, tracing circuits, analyzing,
checking differences, and organizing similarities.
Roysland and Kiffer spent most of their time with the big, complex
projectors that were cradled in the hull blisters.
When Kiffer first saw them, he turned to Roysland and tried to keep
from looking bewildered. "They're subelectronic projectors of some
kind. But _what_ kind?"
"That's what we've got to find out," Roysland told him. "We'll have to
find out what they do on a physical level first. From there, we'll go
on to the physiological level; then we may--just _may_--be able to go
on to the psychological effects."
Kiffer Samm looked up at the great frame of his superior, and grinned
sardonically. "O.K. Now we've got the effect and the weapon that causes
it. Can we correlate the two?"
Roysland shrugged his broad shoulders. "Sure we can. But how long will
it take us?"
* * * * *
The laws of the universe may not differ from place to place, but
the methods of using them do; and the particular laws that may be
discovered in one place aren't necessarily the same ones that are
discovered in another. No two human beings think alike; two different
evolutionary branches of intelligence, stemming from totally different
beginnings, certainly can't be expected to reason similarly. The
amazing thing about the Enlissa was not the ways in which they differed
from humanity, but the ways in which they were similar.
So it wasn't to be wondered at that the Special Weapons technicians
couldn't figure out for the life of them what the projectors from the
Enlissa ship did, or why they worked. If they had been the type of men
to be stymied by seemingly-unbreakable barriers, they would have gone
off their collective rockers in the first three weeks.
One by one, Roysland Dwyn called in the best analysts from every sector
of the human-controlled galaxy. And slowly the information began to
build up.
The first firing test of the enemy weapon was conducted on Syndor, the
outermost and smaller of the two satellites of Kandoris VI. Roysland
had the thing taken to the subnucleonics lab there because he felt that
there was no need to subject the population of Kandoris to any danger
from the backwash--if any. And only God knew how much territory the
effective field might cover.
The Special Weapons group had dismantled one of the projectors from the
ship and loaded it carefully on the X-69, along with the Enlissa-built
generator that powered it.
On Syndor, Roysland watched the unloading. He stood on the broad,
airless stretch of the landing field and watched the grapples lower the
big, tubular weapon to the deck of the field. The blue-white glare of
the distant sun splashed off the metallic sides of the ship, forcing
Roysland to narrow his eyes, in spite of the heavy polarized filter in
the helmet of his spacesuit.
The thing floated down under the control of the grapple beams until it
was only a few feet from the surface.
Roysland heard the voice of the crew leader bellow in his earphones.
"O.K., watch it! Get the truck underneath that thing before you drop
it any more!"
A sturdy six-wheeled truck was moved in under the projector. The
grapple operator turned a rheostat, and the projector sank another six
inches, to rest on the truck.
"O.K.!" yelled the crew leader. "Haul her away!"
The truck trundled off in the direction of the Llordis Mountains.
Kiffer's voice came through Roysland's phones. "Let's go, Roysland; I'm
right behind you."
Roysland turned around. Kiffer Samm was sitting in the driver's seat of
a small jeep.
As he climbed in, Roysland said, "I felt the vibration as you pulled
up, but I didn't pay any attention to it. Coming up behind a guy like
that is real sneaky."
Kiffer's chuckle coincided with the slight vibration of the jeep as it
started moving after the six-wheeler.
* * * * *
The testing area was some miles from the permanent labs. Roysland
wanted to test the weapon by firing at Kandoris herself. The huge
blue-white sun could certainly take anything directed at her.
It took the better part of three days to set up the site for the test,
and during most of that time, Roysland Dwyn was in a spacesuit. The
construction engineers had rigged up a plastic shell for dormitories
and other inside necessities, but the work had to be done in the vacuum
of space. By the time the set-up had been completed, Roysland felt
exhausted in every muscle of his huge body. On the "afternoon" of the
third day, he peeled off his oversize spacesuit and lay back on his
cot. It was much too short for him, and his feet stuck out over the
edge; but he was too tired to worry about that.
Kiffer was sitting on his own bunk, massaging his neck to get the kinks
out. "The thing that bothers me," he said, "is the eternal sunlight.
That blasted star won't go down for another seventy days."
Roysland nodded, but it was obvious that his mind was elsewhere.
"Suppose there is a backwash from this thing," Roysland said at last.
"That would account for a lot of things. We've been wondering why
the Enlissa ships didn't loot our own vessels after they used the
mindjammer."
"Certainly," Kiffer said. "It's obvious. Their own weapon backfired
on them, and left the Enlissa ship incapable of doing any looting. I
figured that out a long time ago."
"Oh, did you?" asked Roysland smoothly. "Then did you figure out why
the Enlissa didn't test the thing before they used it?"