Terror flared across the Saturnian moons. One of
the Woollies, that perfect slave-race, had killed
a _man_! But to Big Bill, shambling away
from his bloody, suddenly silent master, the
ancient pattern of obedience was unchanged.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Big Bill lumbered swiftly forward across the frozen ground, and behind
him came the rest of the work gang--a score of bent and mighty manlike
shapes, draped like Big Bill from head to foot in long white hair.
They moved in a straggling group, but the rhythmic side sway of the
great bodies was more uniform than the tread of marching men. Their red
eyes peered ahead through the noonday twilight toward the landing strip
two hundred yards away, slashed clean and straight across the ragged
low-gravity terrain.
There were human figures--three of them--moving along the edge of the
strip that was nearer to the cluster of lighted Company buildings. At
the distance they all looked alike, big-headed and thick-waisted in
their vacuum suits, but even so, Big Bill identified them with ease.
Behind those dull red eyes were perceptions wholly alien to Man's,
senses to which the distinctive personalities of the men were things as
obvious as are apples or oranges to eyes and fingers.
Brilliant lights flashed on all along the landing strip. Thin
nictitating membranes descended over the eyes of the approaching
Woollies, and the gang came to a simultaneous halt. They sank slowly
to their haunches on the iron-hard, fire-cold surface, and in the act
became less like fur-clad men and more like crouching, hairy beasts.
Big Bill hunkered unmoving in his place, but his peculiar senses were
probing with an unusual curiosity at the familiar minds of the three
men. The one who had just risen from bending over the switchbox that
controlled the lights was named Paige, and, when Big Bill's mind
touched his, the Woolly felt an odd apathy behind which something tense
and secret smoldered like a fire banked under ashes. And the fire was
hate.
The second, who stood stiffly near Paige, was called Doc. In his brain
too burned hate, a dense and palpable thing to Big Bill, mixed with a
fear which turned the hatred inward on the mind that had given it birth.
The third man was Paul Gedner.
He stood a little apart from the others, gazing into the starry sky
from which the rocket would come. For the watching Woollies his tall
figure was clothed in a tangible aura of power, commanding all their
inborn, robot-like obedience. He towered like a sublime and terrible
god between the narrow horizons of Phoebe, over the desolate landscape
of weird lights and shadows cast by Saturn and the distant Sun. And
in his thoughts the Woollies glimpsed dimly something beyond their
understanding--a Plan, worthy of godhead in its cosmic vastness,
leading toward some unguessable triumph--and it was that Plan which the
other men hated and feared.
There was still a fourth human on Phoebe. But that man's mind had gone
where not even a Woolly's perceptions could follow it.
Abruptly Gedner gestured, and though the furry watchers could not
hear what he said into his helmet radio, they turned as one to stare
eastward.
* * * * *
High up in the dusky sky a white star was moving. In seconds it
grew through magnitudes; it became a fiery, onrushing comet, then a
polished, hurtling cylinder of steel lit up by the glare that went on
before it. Swiftly the rocket descended; its underdrive flared briefly
out, flattening its trajectory, and it came in over the jagged horizon
on a long slant toward the landing strip.
The flame of the drive perished, and an instant later the face of
the little moon vibrated to the shriek of steel runners on fire-glazed
rock. The ship sledded forward in a shower of red sparks for five
hundred yards before friction slowed it to a stop.
The men were running toward the ship even as it was still sliding,
their little top-heavy figures increasingly dwarfed by the great
gleaming hull, though they were coming nearer to the slope on which the
Woollies squatted.
Big Bill watched intently as a forward port swung slowly open in the
smooth side of the rocket. His mind was still attuned to that of the
tall Gedner, and beneath his flat skull stirred an excitement, utterly
strange to the Woolly, yet in some way pleasant. The feeling was not
Big Bill's, yet for the moment it was as much a part of him as it was
of the man whose thoughts imprinted themselves upon his. Big Bill was
a complete extrovert; his mind, like those of all his race, was a
sensitive instrument attuned to the mental atmosphere around him, and
almost incapable of independent ideation. By that token the Woollies
were willing slaves of the introverted, insensitive Earthmen.
The metal gangway had descended to grate against the rocky ground. Two
vacuum-suited silhouettes appeared in the lighted airlock and began to
clamber down, the first with a self-possessed, leisurely poise, the
other showing signs of a jerky impatience. Behind them came another,
grotesquely burdened with a weight of luggage which would have given
trouble to half a dozen men under Earth gravity.
But Big Bill's mounting interest was focused on the first of the new
arrivals. He sensed clearly that this was the visitor expected, with
various and puzzling reactions, by the three waiting men, and also that
the coming of this strange, great rocket, long before the scheduled
arrival of the little freighter which stopped at long intervals to load
the Phoebean jade, had something to do with the fourth man--the one
who now lay out on the frigid rock outside the dwelling of the humans,
without a vacuum suit, a tarpaulin pulled up over what had been his
face.
All these things, Big Bill knew, had one meaning: the fruition of the
great Plan was close at hand.
Abruptly the Woolly rose from his squatting position, disregarding the
others who remained motionless, and rolled silently forward on his
great splayed feet to within a short distance of the knot of humans.
His telepathic sense groped curiously at the mind of the visitor, but
told him little, since he was unaccustomed to the interpretation of
its vibrations; but his vision served him better. The figure turned
to give some order to the porter, who was still on the gangway, and
the combined light of Saturn and the Sun fell on the face behind the
transparent mask, a feeble illumination that was yet enough for the
great red eyes of Big Bill.
He saw that the face was subtly different from any he had known
before--more rounded, with less prominent feature, smaller bones better
sheathed in flesh, and, more spectacularly and superficially, it was
framed in long soft hair which gleamed with almost metallic brightness
at the edges of the faceplate.
It was Big Bill's first glimpse of an Earthly woman, and the sight of
this alien being set up a queer unease in his little, heteroplasmic
brain.
* * * * *
Leila Frey gazed round her, at the ill-lit Phoebean landscape, with
a look of no great rapture. She said flatly, "I think, if I were in
charge of Saturn Colonial, I'd give this rock back to the Indians."
The tallest of the Company men said, shrugging, "That's probably what
they'll do before another year is out. It won't be that long before the
market for genuine Phoebean jade has worked down a couple more income
levels, to the point where it can't compete with the just-as-genuine
synthetic product."
"That's a pre-eminently dirty trick," said Leila Frey with sudden heat.
"Some of my friends bought your jade when you were holding production
down and the price was just about out of reach. Now you start flooding
the market with the stuff, and--" She had turned to look directly
at the tall Earthman, and the Saturn-light was on his face. Her lips
parted in surprise and for a moment she was quite dumb; then she
essayed a laugh of pleased surprise, which rang hollow inside her air
helmet. "Why, Paul! Fancy meeting you here!"
Gedner's smile showed strong white teeth. "What would life be without
coincidences?"
"But this one is rather too good to be true," insisted the girl on a
false note of gaiety. "Everybody knew you'd buried yourself somewhere
in the wilds. But imagine me stumbling onto your grave!"
Paul Gedner's grin tightened. "Not so surprising, Leila darling. You're
royally paid to go around the System digging things up, aren't you?"
Captain Manoly of the _Zodiac_ broke in, his voice betraying his
irritation. "I believe Miss Frey's luggage has all been landed."
"Fine," said Gedner, glancing toward where Mark Paige was already
wrestling with an assortment of trunks and cases far too expensive and
extensive to be appropriate on the little mining moon. "You must have
thought this was another society assignment, Leila.... You're in a
hurry to lift, Captain?"
"That's right," snapped the spaceman. "I've got a schedule to keep up."
But neither his schedule, nor the unhappy fact that he was seeing none
of the impressive sum which Leila Frey's syndicate had paid to persuade
the managers of the line to allow a troublesome unscheduled stop, could
have warranted his obvious nervousness. He had already cast more than
one apprehensive glance into the twilight beyond the little group of
humans. Now Leila caught the movement of his helmet and followed the
look.
She could not suppress a gasp. Scarcely a dozen yards away crouched a
huge white shape, somewhat like a man, more like a gorilla, a strange
albino gorilla with a fell of hair like a muskox, covering all its face
save the expressionless crimson eyes. Its great three-fingered hands
rested on the ground as it cowered and stared.
Leila recovered her composure. "Is this one of your renowned killer
Woollies?" she asked coolly of Gedner.
"Not him. Big Bill's my right hand man." Gedner beckoned and the
creature rose and padded toward him. "Carry the lady's luggage, Bill."
Paige relinquished his task with alacrity. The great Woolly embraced
the entire load with ease, and moved toward the lighted buildings.
Leila's eyes followed him, and, accustomed as she was to the sight of
Woollies, a faint shudder shook her. The news which had brought her to
Phoebe was responsible for that shudder; two days before, the message
from the lonely moon had shaken the whole Saturnian system--
"_A Woolly has killed a man!_"
* * * * *
Now on all the moons of Saturn, the human colonists paled in terror
before their familiar and trusted slaves; families trembled behind
locked doors, streets were deserted, industry at a standstill. On
the Earth and Mars exchanges, the stocks of Saturn Colonial dropped
sickeningly and continued to drop. The whole thriving economy of the
Subsystem, based on Woolly slave labor--far cheaper than human workers,
cheaper even than robots--rocked on its foundations.
It was impossible, unbelievable--but frightened millions believed.
All experience and all psychological tests pointed to the complete,
robot-like reliability of the Woollies. The great race which had ruled
Saturn's moons before the Age of Man had, before its unexplained
extinction, bred its slave-creatures with superb skill, for vast
strength, for adaptability to the diverse environments of the
satellites--and for a perfect susceptibility to telepathic control.