"I'm having a peek at its PM&R pack spill-off. It's lord and master
of the universe! There's only one thing worthy of touching its pedal
pad--the puppet barge. That's because the barge, being metal too, is _a
totem_!"
The director shook his head and mumbled, "Most unusual." Then, "Carol!
Can you see anything at all significant in its memory pack? Any
evidence of--"
But in the next instant she screamed and lunged back away from a
foot-long metallic crab that had drawn up before her.
"The Flora C&A!" Stewart made a grab for the thing, but it skirted his
gloved hand and started forward again.
McAllister backed away until he came up against the outcropping beside
the girl. Squirming qualmishly, he kicked out and caught the crab
broadside, sending it skittering back.
Then he shouted in pain and gripped his instep with both hands. "My
foot! It's broken!"
But, a moment later, Stewart was certain the injury was negligible,
judging from the adequate support the foot provided in McAllister's
sprint for the Photon.
* * * * *
Bigboss completed his transmission and turned full attention on the
eureka signals coming frantically from Grazer.
Interested, he inspected the sequenced data and took note of the
modulation peaks that exactly duplicated the C_{5}H_{8} parameter.
Grazer had sensed _hydrocarbon_! More important, one of his
spectrometric biodetectors was getting a whiff of DNA molecules!
Even those significant findings, however, accounted for but part of
the frenzy with which Grazer was transmitting his impulses. There was
much more behind the eurekas than that. But all the lesser worker could
convey telemetrically was his general excitement, for there were no
parameters dealing with the third element of his discovery.
Perplexed, Bigboss pondered this inadequacy of communication between
him and his servitor--until a rationalization circuit came up with the
recommendation: Tap in on Grazer's direct video system.
He did.
And Bigboss went momentarily irrational as motor circuits fought one
another to express the exultation flooding from his evaluation pack.
He leaped three meters high. His upper command section turned up a
hundred revolutions per minute in triumphant delirium. He extended
and retracted his vises, leveled his blaster and spat out a lance of
vicious destruction that slashed a concentric trench in the ground
about him.
Then he damped all activity and steadied himself with a sober
appreciation of the telemetric signals Grazer had contributed. The
servitor was confronting three hated non-Totemic mobiles!
They had emerged from their needle! They had come finally to hurl
direct challenge at the Supreme Being!
Circuit currents surging once more toward irrational levels, Bigboss
calmed himself with dedication to the vengeful destruction of those
insolent creatures.
He transmitted a "stop-what-you're-doing-and-follow-me" order and
headed into Grazer's telemetric signals. Every twenty meters or so,
a discrimination circuit peaked in its erratic pattern and he hurled
out a bolt of raw energy, annihilating a boulder here, leveling a rise
there, pulverizing an occasional crag.
In his excitement, however, he had neglected the environs-scanning
procedure he had devised to compensate for his damaged video sensor.
And he didn't realize that, while he had been stabilized for
transmission, Minnie had almost reached him in a stealthy advance. But
now he was pulling steadily away from her.
Ignoring their order of social priority, the workers converged on the
nearby outcropping. Some bore to the right around the rock formation,
while others joined Bigboss in a flanking maneuver to the left. The
long-legged Maggie and Peter the Meter evaluated the slanted stone as
comprising no barrier and proceeded directly over it.
* * * * *
When he finally swung around and brought the contemptuous mobiles
under direct visual observation, Bigboss paused to evaluate the
situation. It required no small amount of self-control to restrain his
motor circuits. But he _had_ to. For he was determined the arrogant
mobiles would not again reach the sanctuary of their Totem.
Grazer stood before the three creatures, his servo units idling as his
transmitter continued to send frantic eurekas. And now his excited
impulses were joined by those of other servitors who had formed a half
circle around the outcropping--Peter the Meter, boasting of excitation
of an infrared radiometer; Breather, reporting traces of both oxygen
and carbon dioxide in the immediate atmosphere; Minnie, whose high
neutron flux instruments were beginning to identify concentrations of
calcium, potassium, carbon.
Sequencing and storing the data, Bigboss sent out a curt directive that
amounted to: Do not analyze! Just stay out of the way!
The ring of clansmen remained poised. Several times one of the
nonmetallic captives attempted to force its way through the workers,
but was pulled back by another mobile.
Bigboss brought up his blaster and loosed a vicious, blinding charge
that swamped half a dozen unretracted photometers and pulverized
the top of the outcropping. He adjusted his aim, compensating for
the crouching, huddled position the interlopers had assumed, and fed
renewed energy to the blaster's condenser.
By the next sine wave peak, however, he regretted his pre-occupation
with the mobiles. For, at that moment, Minnie's drill head, sweeping
through one of his fields of vision before he could discharge the
blaster, crashed into video pickup lens Three.
He sprang back, rationalization pack coming frantically to grips with
this further loss of visual integrity. Through luck rather than intent,
he brought one of his still functioning lenses to bear on the advancing
Minnie.
She let her entire drill head fly in a bludgeoning blow, but he parried
it with his vise while he reasoned out the modified swivel motion now
required to provide adequate coverage with only two lenses.
But the attack had touched off a number of other clashes among socially
ambitious workers. Seismo turned on Minnie's exposed flank and sent a
pedal disc crashing through her after analyzing chamber. Sludge spilled
out upon the ground.
Peter the Meter swung his boom-and-ball gamma ray detector against
Breather's air pouches while Maggie straddled Sun Watcher and
proceeded to stomp on one of his telescopic instruments.
In the midst of all this confusion, Bigboss was only vaguely aware that
the three impudent mobiles had slipped out of the ring of servitors and
were returning swiftly to their Totem.
Infuriated over the imminent loss of prey, he swiveled around in their
direction. Again, however, he neglected his defense.
And before he could trigger a charge at the fleeing things, Minnie's
drill head whipped around in a level arc that snapped his blaster off
at its socket and sent it hurtling across the plain.
As she drew back for another blow, he lunged over and managed to grip
her bit in his vise. With a violent twist, he broke it off at the chuck.
Subdued finally, she withdrew.
* * * * *
"You saw it, didn't you?" Mittich demanded.
Vrausot scratched his jaw with a rigid talon. "Interesting--that
trouble between the aliens and their automatons. What interpretation do
you put on it?"
Pivoting on his tail, the other spun around from the screen to face the
Chancellor. "That they don't even carry side arms. They had no defense
whatsoever against their machines. If they were here looking for a
fight, wouldn't they be armed at all times?"
Vrausot expressed ridicule by tracing a circle with the tip of his
tapering snout. "Mittich, you amuse me. Only one sunset ago you were
bending my tail to make me believe they may be cunning; that they might
have strung out a seine for us."
"Yes?" the Assemblyman prompted, expecting more.
"Now I simply extend your own logic back to you. They prepared that
drama down there for our benefit--just in case we were watching. They
_want_ us to believe they are stupid and helpless."
Assemblyman Mittich laced the other with a calculating stare. He was
aware of the heavy irony in Vrausot's hisses and clicks and he knew the
Chancellor was only deriding him.
"If I had to arrive at an alternate assessment, Assemblyman--" Vrausot
paused and Mittich braced himself for more scorn. "It would be that
the aliens are stupid, inept, blundering, defenseless. Actually, it
would seem that they must have gained interstellar status only through
accident."
"Oh, no. We know _that_ isn't true."
Ignoring the interruption, the Chancellor continued. "And they _were_
foolish enough to come here unarmed, apparently."
But Mittich broke in again. "If I had attracted more votes in the
Curule Assembly, we would have come unarmed too."
"Ah! But we didn't. And do you know why? Because the Assembly really
believes as I do, even though they might not have the courage to
vote their convictions. That's why I'm going to exercise my own
judgment--because I _know_ their subliminal disposition in this matter."
* * * * *
Mittich unhinged his jaw, conveying dismay. There was no doubt now what
the Chancellor's intentions were. Oh, he would probably swim around
cautiously for a while. But his final determination was already cloaked
with inevitability.
Eventually--how soon?--he would lash out at the aliens with all the
ship's invincible firepower. And nothing else could be done to delay
that treachery. For Mittich couldn't conceive of another last-_purai_
diversion, such as the suggestion that the aliens may have strung out a
seine, to forestall the tragedy Vrausot was determined to perpetrate.
Lumbering over to the ship's control panel, the Chancellor directed
his pilot: "Advance five degrees westward along our orbital path then
restabilize."
* * * * *
Kavula's hands darted here and there and the vessel resounded with
the _thuds_ of great tails thumping down on the deck to maintain
equilibrium as new velocity came in surges.
"This will put us below the aliens' horizon," Kavula noted.
"Of course it will," the Chancellor hissed back at the other's
impertinence. "And we'll be in such a position that they won't be able
to observe our artillery emissions."