VI.
The catman's steps faltered. This alien, that had come from some distant star, was definitely primate in evolution. He knew primates—they had primates on Sscantoo, here—and primates were nasty animals. They were filled with curiosity—mass curiosity—that had been the basis for a platitude on Sscantoo: "Curiosity saved a mansee." When you killed or wounded a primate, the woods would fill up with curious, chattering hordes of his fellow-primates. It made life rather dangerous unless you were prepared to fight your way out.
And this curious fellow was none the less a primate in spite of the fact that his face bore the stamp of civilization and he wore clothing. He was curious—even more curious than one of the Sscantovian apes. He walked forward boldly in spite of the fact that he was a prisoner and must know that fact. The catman wondered how bold the primate would have been if his ship had landed of its own free will—or had landed despite the objections of his six ships.
If he were bold now, a prisoner, he would be downright arrogant as a victorious captor.
Linzete, the catman, stopped. He didn't like primates, and the idea of confronting a primate armed with intelligence as well as the natural instincts of the apeman bothered him.
At Linzete's commandatory motion, Cliff Lane stopped. But not until he'd taken a full step beyond the catman's command just to show him. Twenty paces apart they stood, eying one another.
Cliff smiled.
Linzete's eyes glittered.
Cliff shrugged. This was getting nowhere.
Linzete took a step forward, and Cliff stepped forward two steps.
Linzete seemed pleased. This primate, he thought, is no larger nor does he seem stronger than I. I do not believe that he is as quick.
"A move out of you," thought Lane, "and I'll clip you!"
Linzete stooped and picked up a pebble from the ground. He put it on top of another pebble, and then stepped back and to one side by fifty paces. He waved Cliff a waiting motion, and then with a lightning motion Linzete drew his side arm and fired.
The sharp crack of electrical discharge split the air. A dazzling pencil of energy spat forth and the pebble disappeared in a blinding coruscation.
Lane laughed.
Linzete scowled. That sound was very much like the chanting and cachinnation that went on among the primates when they were amused.
Cliff Lane stooped, picked up a pebble and threw it high above Linzete's head. The modine came from Cliff's holster, poised for an instant while it spat energy, and then was thrust back home again. The motion was a flowing swift thing of muscle and timing, and the end-result was the explosion of the pebble in midair.
The flash and the explosive report of tortured air and matter caused Linzete to blink. When his eyes opened again, the primate's weapon was holstered.
Linzete's breath came out in a sharp hiss.
Lane shrugged and remembered the hiss of an annoyed cat.
Sound in the air caused both of them to look up. A small ship was circling the open spot, and it landed not far from Cliff. Clad in spotless white—spotless and seamless white—from toe to fingertip, and an inverted bowl of clear glass or plastic, the catman emerged from his open craft and came forward. On his back was a small tank and valves for air, obviously.
Cliff puzzled for only a moment. The white-clad one lifted a square case from the plane and, coming forward boldly, snapped down a portable set of legs and opened the door in front of Cliff.
From the cabinet he took slides of glass. He took Cliff's hand between his gloved fingers and pressed the human's fingers to the slide. He caught the human's breath on another slide. He made a convulsive motion with his face, and Cliff smiled and coughed on another slide. From the cabinet he took a scalpel and with a deft motion—and before Cliff could act—the doctor took a neat slice out of the small finger of Cliff's left hand. He doused the cut immediately; the substance removed the pain, at any rate.
He took a sample of Cliff's blood, scraped the skin of Cliff's forearm, and clipped off eight or nine of Cliff's crisp black hairs.
Then he closed the cabinet and sealed it. From the plane he took a large spray, and setting it up aground, the doctor proceeded to stand, turn, and generally bathe in the atomizer output. He sprayed the outside of the cabinet with it, and then proceeded to work the ground and air over, spraying in all directions, including the other catman, Linzete. The doctor finished his proceedings by spraying Cliff Lane's ship on the outside, and turning the spray into the spacelock and liberally drenching the runway and entrance of the Solarian vessel.
Cliff nodded understandingly. He didn't even object to being sprayed himself, for the stuff was aromatic though a bit sticky when it started to dry.
The doctor took off.
"Wonder what he'll find," mused Cliff. And then a large white craft landed. It was completely inclosed, and the driver's compartment was set off from the rest.
"The paddy-wagon," grinned Cliff. Clad as the doctor had been, four catmen came from the craft bearing sprays. One of them approached Cliff and motioned for him to follow. Cliff nodded, but turned and called back:
"Let 'em sterilize to their heart's content, fellows. After all, we want their co-operation!"
He entered the large ship as the other three catmen entered the spacelock of Lane's ship and went to work.
Within fifteen minutes, Cliff Lane was residing in a sterile, spotlessly white room. The windows were sealed and the door was air-tight. A portable atmosphere-cleaner purred in one corner, freshening the air and cooling it. From a speaker in the wall there came music—of a sort—and through a double window in the wall Lane and the catmen indulged in mutual inspection.
A large block of paper hung on an easel, and a heavy black crayon lay in the tray. Cliff nodded. Heavy black crayon so that his sketchings could be seen from the distance. He smiled, scowled at the music, and then started to sketch.
The Little People had not been able to convey the reasons for their desires to the humans, but human and catmen were not possessed of any form of telepathy to augment their communications. Cliff was a fair cartoonist, and he progressed well.
The catmen began to understand.
The days sped past, marked only by the clock and the chiming of watch-change bells. Dymodines returned from their mountings on the living rock of the innermost planet, they entered the ships of the combined commands, and were converted, one by one. The machine shops in the bellies of the ships hummed and racketed, and the stockroom stores went down. The scrap pile outside on the airless face of One grew as the dymodines were converted; parts of no use were tossed out.
The catmen did not molest them. Not once during the twenty days of labor was there any report, or any sight of the catmen. If the catmen were using scanners on them, the catman scanner used frequencies never tried by humans, for the detectors gave the spectrum a clear ticket.
Yet the strain was there, and the men worked furiously to convert the dymodines to snatchers, because they knew that until they were finished, they were a group of sitting ducks. Dymodines had been blocked by the catmen—and that left them unarmed.
Then on the twentieth day, Stellor Downing gave the order to lift and head for the fourth planet.
In a close formation, the sixty-three ships arrowed into the sky, hit superdrive, and headed away from the sun.
They arrived above Four and began to look for trouble. They circled the planet twice, took a few tentative stabs at the ground with their improved snatchers, and generally let it be known that they were there and seeking either their fellow or knowledge of his whereabouts.
The recognition detectors flashed Lane's trace, and they put direction-finding equipment into gear. They circled above the field upon which lay Cliff Lane's craft.
There was no sign of human life there. The spacelock was closed, and it could not be known whether from the inside or from the outside. Signals gained no answering flash, but the complete confidence with which they circled this field did get them an answer of sorts.
Beams flashed up, and spattered against the barriers of the flight. A pair of extra heavy battlecraft leaped out of underground slides and drove up into Downing's flight. The heavy beams lashed about, and four of Downing's ships folded over their torn midsections. Then Downing's ship answered fire.
It was not spectacular. The sphere of energy was not visible, nor was it heterodyned. It closed upon the midsection of the heavy battlecraft. It cut, quietly and with lightning swift precision. It moved, swinging on a force beam and taking with it a sphere of the battlecraft's middle—a perfect sphere, mirror-finished on the plates, girders, and equipment that met the surface.
The energy ceased and the perfect sphere dropped toward the planet.
Smoke poured from the gaping hole, and the battlecraft buckled, folded, and exploded like a bomb. Bits of broken ship spread far and wide, and the main mass fell back upon the spaceport.
It lay there, inert, smoke trickling from its shapelessness.
It was a blackened monument to two hundred thousand years of civilization.
The other battlecraft sped on through the flight unscathed. It looped high in the space above Downing's flight and crossed around, looped away and came back on the level against Thompson's group. It drove in through the flight, lashing sidewise at Thompson's ships.
And four of them reached out and sliced four large spheres from the battlecraft. Shredded, the ship died in the air. It disintegrated, and it rained metal parts for fifty square miles—a rain of smoking, shapeless masses of deadly steel.
"More?" snapped Stellor Downing.
Blatantly, the flight landed on the field, covered the other ships, and then waited for a move. As Downing said, "It's their move this time!"
The white ship landed in their midst. From it came Lane and his crew. The crew entered their ship, but Lane remained, waiting for Downing. In the crook of his arm he held a small, white-furred creature, and he stroked it gently with his free hand.
"Just lucky," grunted Downing.
"You talk big," retorted Lane. "But stay back, Downing. You're contaminated."
"Meaning?"
"You're alive with deadly bugs."
"Nuts. So are you."
"No I'm not. I've been sterilized within an inch of my life. Look," he said, holding up the Sscantovian equivalent of a guinea pig.
"Cute—but so what?"
"I've got the catmen scared of all Solarians—and from here on in, I'd hate to be any race that bucks us. Take hold of this animal, just for a moment."
Stellor Downing put his hand on the creature's back. He held it for a moment and then let go. Lane put the little animal on the ground and stood back.
"Well?"
"Wait a minute, will you? Even potassium cyanide takes time to kill—"
The little creature was running around, sniffing the ground and obviously looking for food. For three minutes it searched quietly, and then with a plaintive mew, it sat on its haunches and scratched its back. The plaintive cry became louder—and tufts of hair came from the back where the hind paw was scratching.
The creature scratched furiously—and succeeded in de-hairing its back, in the shape of Stellor Downing's hand!
"What in—?"
"Wait."
Downing looked at his hand in a sort of horror.
The scratching increased, and bits of skin followed the pattern of the bare patch. The plaintive cry became strident in a tiny voice. The little animal stopped scratching, turned over on its back and wriggled in the dirt of the spaceport. It wrenched itself back and forth sharply, and with squeals of pain. Its four feet opened and closed against its stomach, and the whites of its eyes gleamed.
A black patch appeared on the pink of the abdomen, and the paws scratched at the spot. It grew, and the pig cried continuously.
Cliff Lane took out his modine and blasted the suffering pig with a shake of his head.
Both he and Downing were a little sick.
"What—?"
"Fungus. As I gather it, the Solar sector of the Galaxy is alive with a violent evolution of fungus. We live in it, we breathe it, and we—eat it. They cringed in horror at what they found on the microscope slides, and this is the fourth pig I've killed. But I'm completely fungicided now, and I can handle 'em. But you see, Downing, you are alive with fungus spores looking for a place to live. They can't live on you, but what few that do escape the bactericidal action of the skin find it quite easy to go to work on an animal that has never been required to strive for life against fungi."
"Are the whole race like this?"
"No. Not entirely. But they haven't our strength against such—not by a jugful. They're right on the edge of the Solar sector, as I get it. They have some fungi, but it's nothing like the stuff we have on Terra. I think that Sol may be the center—the evolution may well have started there, mutated there, and anything that grows elsewhere may be spore-born on the Arrhenius Theory to the rest of the Galaxy. Brother, we're tough!"
"Well, what have we accomplished besides killing guinea pigs, discovering a set of new weapons, and blasting the guts out of a couple of their best craft?"
Lane smiled. "I've succeeded in carrying over to them the problem of why we're here. They do not understand any more than we do, but they're willing to let us seek out the machine."
"What about blasting their ships?"
"Won't bother them too much. They'll rather enjoy the development of the slicing cut—after all their human appearance, they're still cats. They like to fight silently, and slash quietly, and then to slink away in the night. They're strictly predators, and their evaluation of life is rather low."
"So?"
"You may have to prove your prowess with a bit of fighting, Downing. Personal, I mean."
"Well—"
"And you may not. You've always accused me of being brash, bold, and impulsive. All three of 'em got me across to this gang. I've always accused you of being quiet, shy, and coldly-calculating. They'll like those features, too."
Three white-clad doctors surrounded Downing with their sprays.
"That stuff they have is better than the glook they sprayed me with," remarked Lane. "But it doesn't smell as good and it is inclined to sting a bit. They developed it after making me live in a glass-inclosed laboratory for about two weeks."
Downing submitted to the spray with scratching and shrugging. "Tell me," he clipped, "how're the women?"
"Cats," grinned Lane.
Downing grunted. "Sounds like 'sour grapes' to me."
"Frankly, they ain't bad, Downing. But a guy can't do much when he's living in a laboratory."
Downing laughed. "People who live in glass houses shouldn't."
"Shouldn't what?"
"Shouldn't—period!"
"Well, I intend to return after we get this thing off of our chests. This gang is not human. They aren't the kind you could trust, but they are interesting. It is really something to see their civilization—and to see just how catlike they behave. They never laugh. Their exhibition of amusement is a deep-throated purr. And when one of 'em gets his feet stepped on, he hisses like a couple of cats squaring off on the back fence."
Thompson came up, followed by the spraying doctors. "This is all very fine," he said. "But we've wasted a lot of time. The Little Men are getting quite nervous."
Downing looked at Lane. "I'm sort of glad you turned up," he said flatly. "Especially with permission to hunt that thing."
Lane smiled bitterly. "If I hadn't turned up, Downing, you'd have spent the next fifteen years combing this system for confirmation, wouldn't you?"
"Naturally. Now let's find that machine. I've got a little project of rivet-clipping ahead."
Thompson intervened. "Seems to me that you've both accomplished plenty. Lane here gained the confidence of the catmen and Downing has the fleet equipped with heavy stuff."
"Who?" asked Lane. "I have a hunch that it was your doing, Billy."
"And any confidence-getting he did was strictly fear of our natural environment coming here," returned Stellor Downing.
"All right, break it up."
"We're all to return here as soon as we get the machine destroyed," said Lane. "They want to know what the answer is, just as we do. I have a hunch that finding the machine itself will tell us plenty.”