Chapter III

Stewart dug out from under the miscellany of dislodged gear that had buried him in his acceleration couch.

"Good landing," he grumbled at McAllister, whose hands were still trembling at the controls, "--all six of them."

White-faced, Carol recovered her composure by releasing her hair from its free-fall net. "I wasn't sure," she whispered, "whether he was going to land or just play bounce."

Randall tested his legs. "Well, at least we _are_ here."

He crossed over to the external view console and threw a switch. One of the screens flickered, then steadied with a wide-angle image of the sky, framed in the sweeping curvature of the horizon. Aldebaran, setting, was bisected by a serrate mountain range, while its fourth planet was rising in all its brilliant immensity.

More interested in their surface surroundings, however, Stewart brought another screen into play and aimed it at the ground. The lens swept across, then came back to focus on a silvery form that reared skyward beyond a nearby hill.

"At least McAllister put us down in the right place," he conceded. "There's the telepuppet barge--right where I left it."

He swung the lens on around and picked up movement on the ground almost in the shadow of the _Photon_.

"And there are our puppets!" Carol announced.

The Operations Co-ordinator, its laser intensifier evidently locked in the ready position, was leading a march toward the ship. Some of the team were not in evidence, as was to be expected after a year of managing on their own. But there was the Seismometer, the Astronomical Data Collector and the Solar Plasma Detector.

Trailing behind were the Atmosphere Analyzer and the Radiometer Complex. Stewart could make out even the lesser forms of the Micro-organism Collector and Analyzer, the Flora C&A and the Subordinate Mineral Specimen Collector. In the distance, the Roving Magnetometer was homing in on the rest of the team.

He opened the locker and selected a hostile-atmosphere sheath. "This shouldn't take long. Just a matter of replacing the OC's malfunctioning unit. It's either a thermal increment problem or a component that's been ionized by particle radiation."

Reluctantly, Randall turned from the zenith screen. "How are you going to go about it?"

"Try a few oral commands on the OC." He slipped into the rubberized suit. "Trouble's probably in its CXB-1624 digital system."

"You picking up anything, Carol?" Randall asked.

She tilted her head alertly. "Just the subordinate stuff. I can't tell if the CXB's functioning 'til big boy starts transmitting to the relay station. However--"

She paused to stare curiously at Randall, who was still scrutinizing the sky. Stewart wondered momentarily whether the director might not be wrestling with a morbid fear of the astronomical distance separating him from home. It was possible, with Sol and Centauri far less prominent than Aldebaran's minor companions in the field of brilliant stars.

"However," Carol resumed, "I'll put on a sheath and go with you. Out there I might tap the predigital spill-off and find out whether it's correlating and sequencing properly."

"You'd better stay aboard for a while," Randall advised. "Those puppets haven't responded to human direction for over a year."

"You mean there might be danger?"

"Let's just say their behavior may not be entirely predictable." He gestured toward the screen. "Like now."

* * * * *

The vanguard of robot explorers, led by the towering Operations Co-ordinator, had reached the ship. The Magnetometer began darting around one of the hydraulic fins, charting lines of isomagnetic intensity. The Mineral Analyzer had already sunk its drill into the broad, flat surface of the stabilizer. And the Flora Collector and Analyzer was being boosted by the OC to the lowest spiral of the ship's subspace drive intensifier. Deposited upon the ceramics-insulated coil, the crablike puppet was doing its best to flake off some of the outer substance for testing.

McAllister laughed. "Look at those mixed-up machines! They're trying to _analyze_ the ship!"

"That's what I mean," Randall pointed out soberly. "One of their inhibitions is to ignore refined metal. That's how we keep their barges from being pecked to pieces."

"You don't think we can run into trouble out there, do you?" Mortimer asked, concerned.

Randall hesitated. "No, but we won't take any chances, although it's doubtful that loss of contact has obscured their _basic_ inhibition."

"Of course it hasn't. Nothing like that's ever happened."

"In that case, you won't mind accompanying us outside."

Mortimer stabbed his chest with a pudgy thumb. "_Me?_"

"Right."

McAllister, Stewart noticed, was frowning in front of the screen as he watched the Flora C&A munching away at the subspace drive coil. "That thing can't do any damage, can it?"

"Not as long as the current's off," Stewart assured.

Mortimer paled as he lunged for the subspace drive switch.

But just then there was a thunderous concussion and the _Photon II_ lurched and swayed on its hydraulic fins.

Randall shrugged. "Well, there goes our subspace drive."

"And our long-range transmitter too," Stewart added. "They both work off the same generator."

Outside, the puppets were withdrawing.

Mortimer, pulling up short of the switch, spread his arms apologetically. "I forgot to turn the circuit off."

Stewart grimaced. "Well, one thing's for sure: We're not going to finish up in a couple of hours and head for home."

Aiming the pickup lens more directly at the damaged area, Randall filled the screen with an image of shredded cable and shattered ceramics. "It'll take a week to repair that."

McAllister's face had whitened, causing the veins in his forehead to stand out under taut skin. "You mean we're stuck here?"

"As far as subspace is concerned. And I can't think of any lively spot we might want to visit in the Aldebaran system."

* * * * *

Keeping a ridge of hills between themselves and the robots, Stewart trailed the telepuppet team towards their working area.

Randall stumbled and fell against him. Glancing back, he saw that the director had lost his footing because he was still staring at the sky. Within the helmet, his face appeared harsh and grim in the profuse coral planetlight.

Stewart shrugged, deciding to let the other wrestle in silence with his phobias, whatever they might be. As for himself, he had his own brand of jitters to worry about. And what made things worse was that he had no idea what was behind them.

Not that he hadn't been afraid before. One could hardly put in twelve years with the Bureau of Interstellar Exploration without getting his courage sullied somewhere along the way by a cliff-hanger or two. But, in each of those cases, the menacing factor had been vivid, easily recognizable, something he could put his finger on.

The apprehension that lurked in the back of his mind now, however, was something he had never encountered before. Vague to the point of being mysterious, it seemed to be hardly more concrete than a fear of fear itself. But he felt that at any particular moment, if he found the right curtain to draw aside, he would expose a darkened recess filled with horror.

Was this dread something that was reaching up from the depths of his phantasmagoric nightmares? Was his subconscious, for some reason, handing up reservations on the acquisition of the Hyades as pearls on the string of galactic expansion? Intuition? Hunch?

Whatever it was, he didn't like it. And he cared for it even less now--as he trod the surface of this remote satellite and stared hypnotically ahead at the brilliant stars of the Hyades, well above the horizon. For how could he be certain _this_ wasn't a nightmare and that in the next instant the stella ova wouldn't hatch and hurl their fierce Harpies at him?

"Why don't you try the big boy with a few commands?" Mortimer's voice rasped in his earphones. The ship systems officer, pulling up the rear, resembled an overinflated balloon as he gestured at the line of telepuppets through a breach in the ridge.

Satisfied with the concealment their present position offered, Stewart flipped on the command transmitter and intoned, "Supervisor to OC. Stabilize and remain where you are."

The master robot didn't even break stride.

He tried the order again, then repeated it several times as he tuned slightly up and down the band.

"It's no use," he said finally. "Either the thing's slipped frequency, or it's not receiving at all."

"Carol will spot any new wave length," Randall assured.

"What we ought to do," Mortimer proposed impatiently, "is show that thing who's boss."

Then Stewart caught the motion in the corner of his eye as the ship systems officer struck out for the marching file of puppets.

He intercepted the line near the tail end and tried to force his way in between the Solar Plasma Detector and the Magnetometer so he could close in on the OC. But the SPD kicked out with a stiff pedal pad and sent him sprawling in the path of the Magnetometer, which simply strode over him.

The Atmosphere Analyzer nudged him aside with an inflated air pouch and, in its turn, the Radiometer Complex compounded the indignity by planting a motor appendage in his abdomen. Mortimer rose screaming, circled wide around the Micro-organism C&A and the Subordinate Mineral Specimen Collector and raced for the ship.

"This," said Stewart, "may not be as simple as we thought. Evidently some basic inhibitions have faded."

"We can't risk getting in range of one of those larger puppets, especially the OC," Randall agreed.

Abruptly the master robot stabilized, swung sharply to face the horizon and adjusted its parabolic antenna.

"Look!" Stewart pointed. "The thing's transmitting! But it's not properly oriented! _It's beaming in the wrong direction!_"

"Where's it transmitting _to_?" Randall asked anxiously.

"Can't tell without point-to-point astrographs. Anyway, what difference does it make? It's only a random misorientation."

On the way back to the _Photon II_, Stewart lost himself in confusion. Random misorientation? Of course. What else? But why should he even consider the alternate possibility--that the misorientation was _not_ random, as suggested by the director's question?

* * * * *

Bigboss completed transmission and burst into an instant fury of thwarted purpose. He leveled his blaster and annihilated the ridge behind which the defiant mobiles had recently hidden.

He swiveled his central section, redirecting the blaster at a boulder that lay between him and the needle and destroying it in a fiery eruption of light and heat and pulverizing forces.

Fuming, he paced forward, stopped and paced back again. He had _seen_ the audacious creatures who were bold enough to invade His Realm! But He had been able to do nothing about them. For at that moment the irresistible compulsion of function had taken over and He could only orient and transmit all the data from his master tape.

Surlily, he bled off excessive current in his reaction circuits and watched his workers going dutifully about their business. Inactivity was frustrating, of course, but it was not entirely unwelcome. For there was much now that demanded evaluation, even though his urge to pursue the contemptuous mobiles and blast them from their needle was almost overpowering.

For one thing, there was the needle itself. Had He made it? (Oh, why couldn't he _remember_ these things?) Of course, He must have, although he couldn't recall the specific act of Creation. And he must have produced the arrogant mobiles too, even though they would probably claim _they_ had created _Him_.

But the needle itself was _metal_! Even a precursory analysis with Minnie's high neutron flux tools had established this. It was _so_ much like the clan's Totem it must be Totemic.

The evidence was undeniable. Every member of the clan was metal. The clan's Totem was metal. Therefore the new thing from the sky was to be revered as the traditional Totem was.

Hence he had been justified, he assured himself, in issuing the "cease-and-desist" order that had brought an end to destructive analysis of the needle.

But, still, it was providing sanctuary for the detestable little mobiles. Which comprised a frustration that was almost unbearable. A venerable Totem offering protection to the arrogant non-Totemic creatures that had to be destroyed so His Universe would be cleansed of their blasphemous impudence!

The demands of logical deduction fully served, he published on each wave length an order that amounted to: "Vigilance is to be maintained against the non-Totemic mobiles. Report instantly on their reappearance."

That taken care of, he reduced current in his rationalization pack. But the pleasant calm of abstraction did not last long. Peter the Meter began flooding his allocated frequency with eureka signals from an infrared photometer. And once again the source of disturbance was at a remote distance in the sky.

Oh Bigboss, he invoked Himself. Not _another_ Totemic-non-Totemic complication!

As before, Sky Watcher accepted the reported co-ordinates and trained a visual telesensor on the indicated position. But nothing was there. His doppler radar gear, however, did manage to pick up a blip at many hundred kilometers' distance just as it vanished.

Only a meteor, Bigboss decided, relieved. He let the evaluation stick, even though Peter the Meter had detected no ionized trail that would have verified that type of disturbance.

And Bigboss generated a good deal more easily, satisfied that the new manifestation had not, after all, been _another_ needle.

His peace of rationalization pack was fleeting indeed, however. For in the next moment it required the full versatility of all his servomechanisms to maintain balance against a sudden upheaval of the ground beneath one of his appendages.

Tottering precariously, he engaged his underslung illuminator and video sensor. Screw Worm, having evidently bored a great distance, was emerging at the spot where his foot pad had been planted.

Fifty meters off, Minnie was expectantly rigid, her lens aimed in his direction. She was poised for a running start toward him should the opportunity present itself.

Screw Worm finally surfaced. Angrily, Bigboss kicked him back toward Minnie, who returned--disappointed, it seemed--to her work.

* * * * *

The huge Tzarean ship, bristling with the most formidable weapons its makers had devised in millennia, recovered from subspace emergency, adjusted its concealment shield and slipped into orbit.

Assemblyman Mittich, second in command, used a stout tail to brace himself against shifting inertia and watched Vrausot, Chancellor of the Tzarean Shoal, hiss his nagging instructions.

"The data, Kavula!" he demanded. "Punch out the data!"

Cowering before the impatience of the Tzarean World's highest authority, the pilot beat upon the control computer with a taloned fist. "It will be feeding out soon--I hope."

Mittich pressed forward into the anxiety that filled the compartment with hydrostaticlike intensity. It was well past time for his isotonic saline soaking and already the coarse drying process was chafing his chitinous skin. He was even sensitively aware of each scale as it grated against the one beneath it.

But he couldn't withdraw. Not when they were so close to determining whether an eons-old culture was doomed to extermination.

The computer clacked its readiness and belched out the new data. Vrausot snatched up the perforated strip and his massive head swung up and down in satisfaction.

"The orbit's absolutely synchronous," he disclosed. "We can keep the alien landing site under constant observation. And our position is additionally camouflaged by those peaks."

He used the scales of an abbreviated forearm to scratch his lower jaw. With all the authority vested within him as Chancellor of the Shoal, Adviser to the Curule Assembly and leader of the current expeditionary force, he directed the pilot to order gunnery practice.

Assemblyman Mittich swallowed incredulously. "But the aliens! Aren't we going to observe them? That's what we came for!"

"Not now." Vrausot waved him off. "Preparations first. Anyway, we _know_ they're aggressive."

"We don't. That's what we have to establish."

The Chancellor shifted his tail from left to right. "We've observed their machines. They fight among themselves, don't they? And isn't it a fundamental fact of design that automatons are fashioned mainly after their creators, even in matters of temperament?"

"Yes," Mittich admitted. "But we _interfered_ with those machines. We interrupted basic behavioral patterns. Our automatons, too, would show primitive social tendencies if the same thing happened to them."

Vrausot exposed a jagged array of teeth that conveyed his displeasure. "I'm in no mood for interference, although I might have expected only forensic exercise from the Leader of the Opposition."

"In that capacity, I'm here to offer suggestions." But it was more than that, Mittich reflected. The Assembly had been quite leery of the compromise plan. The Chancellor had wanted an awesome display of force; the Opposition, a try at peaceful contact.

They finally concurred in: observation, evaluation and application of force _only_ if required. And it was hoped that, on the expedition, the Chancellor and Assemblyman would restrain each other.

But how could _anyone_ restrain Vrausot?

* * * * *

"Prepare for gunnery practice," the Chancellor directed.

"But," Kavula protested, "that will produce observable emissions beyond the concealment of our shield."

Disappointed, Vrausot leaned back upon his tail. "Very well, then--we'll go through the motions. Order a wet run."

Kavula relayed the order and scores of hatches swung open, baring to space the glistening intensifiers of high-powered weapons. The ship reverberated with the hiss-click articulation of military command and response.

Pivoting on his massive tail, Mittich went over to the teleview screen. "I have your permission, of course, to take a look at the alien vessel?"

"Suit yourself," the Chancellor grumbled.

The screen hunted out and steadied upon the alien ship.

"It's clean!" Mittich exclaimed. "They're _not_ armed!"

"Nonsense," Vrausot said, coming over to see. "They've got to be. Why else would they come here?"

"The hull is sleek." The Assemblyman pointed with his long snout. "I see no gun-hatch outlines."

The Chancellor produced the Tzarean equivalent of a humorless laugh. "They're aliens, Mittich--with an alien technology. Perhaps we wouldn't even recognize their weapons if we saw them."

"But, as if they were hostile and furtive, would they have exposed themselves helplessly on that plain--like sitting _uraphi_?"

Vrausot's eyes intensified with resolution. "We're going to strike them--_now_! We're not going to wait and take the chance of having them slip from our grasp."

Appalled, the Assemblyman drew back. "But that's just what we're _not_ supposed to do! We might touch off a war that will annihilate either or both of two cultures!"

"If we don't strike now it'll be _our_ culture that will be annihilated. I wouldn't want that, Mittich. Just think of the glory and honor and tradition of conquest that would be lost forever. What we do here is being watched, indeed, by our ancestors who gave their lives in the final battle for total consolidation of the Tzarean Shoal!"

"But--"

"Our opportunity now is to live up to the finest military examples set by all Tzarean heroes who ever aimed an intensifier out of love for homeworld. Mittich--_This is a time for empire!_"

It was no use, the Assemblyman saw. Vrausot would have his way. He would wear his shining, imaginary medals and order his attack and bring doom to--oh, how many worlds? And the Curule Assembly could only give his leadership the support it would need after he presented them with the _fait accompli_ of this treacherous deed.

"Kavula!" the Chancellor hissed. "Order the gunners--"

But Mittich nudged him in the back. "It could be a seine."

"I--what?"

"We may be swimming into a seine. Perhaps they're just toying with us--waiting to see if we are foolhardy enough to attack."

The scales above the Chancellor's eyes stood on edge as he pondered the ramifications of the other's suggestion. Finally, "We'll hold off a while, perhaps."

Mittich had put him off for a moment. But no gain against Vrausot, political or otherwise, was ever more than temporary.

The Assemblyman was jarred from speculation as one of his major scales split with aridity. He hurried off to his isotonic saline tank.