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16

Grant hadn't known it was going to work, but he thought it should work. It did. He'd simply picked Jill up instantly and visualized the overhang above the valley. The transporting instrument took them there. He set her down, took the biped's second spare from his pocket. Jill learned how to use it.

Then she talked.

"Inside a mountain?" Grant said.

"But outside our space." Jill added, "It must work along the same general lines as their transporters, on a huge scale. If we were standing by the lake, I could show you the mountain."

"They've got other prisoners," said Grant then.

She shook her head. "We won't have to consider that." Before being left in the exitless cell, she'd been shifted to another part of the ship, a large laboratory devoted to the study of the human enemy. The enemy had been thoroughly studied. Something floated in a transparent container. Most of its organs were suspended in the container beside it but still connected to it. The extracted heart beat steadily away, and the thing might be conscious because its eyes turned to Jill when she appeared in the laboratory, and remained fixed on her. There was a large number of other study subjects.

Jill evidently was destined for the laboratory after they got the Suesvant from her without harming her. The three bipeds on duty there looked her over in her semi-material state for a minute or two; then one of them waved a hand and she was shifted off to the cell. "They experimented with the first human group they picked up," she said. "What's left of them isn't salvageable. The people transported in from the Star Union Base were killed on arrival. A simple way to dispose of them."

"Then that's it," Grant said. "You go ahead. I'll come in beside you."

They unslung the Suesvants. Jill took the alien instrument in her left hand. She vanished.

* * *

The ship's great control deck appeared before Grant. Jill was standing four feet to his right.

The wide door space behind them was empty. They moved farther apart. The wall on the right was a wall at present, not a viewscreen. Two big-armed bipeds stood halfway between them and the instrument section, watching a scattering of smaller bipeds at work. One of the smaller ones was moving along the rows of consoles, but it didn't look around. No one had seen them appear. No biped as yet—unless they'd happened to check Jill's cell in the last few minutes—should have reason to suspect that a human had obtained some of their transportation devices, had found out how to use them.

They fired together. The big bipeds were hurled forward, struck the floor ponderously, already dead. On the ship, they'd had no reason to wear body screens. Until now.

Grant gave no attention to the smaller bipeds. They were Jill's business. Except for the first one, the shells he'd be using here were explosives and incendiaries. Their targets were the instrument banks.

He fired as quickly as he ever had in his life. A continuous crashing moved along the stands; flames and smoke erupted. Biped voices howled briefly through the commotion, went silent. Jill stopped firing. She stood half-turned to Grant, gaze sweeping the deck. Then she flicked the Suesvant up suddenly, firing past Grant toward the entry. A few seconds later, she fired again.

Grant didn't turn. That was still Jill's department unless she indicated she needed help. He continued his work of demolition. There were secondary explosions at the end of the control deck, other sounds. One of the vast ship's nerve centers was being shredded. How effectively, he couldn't tell.

Then Jill lifted her hand, shouted his name. They hadn't known how long it would take others in the ship to become aware of the destruction being wreaked on the control deck and to alert defenders; but staging a final fight here was no part of their plan. Time to move—

The first shift was a short one, to the far side of the deck, beyond the control stands. Looking back toward the entrance, Grant saw four big biped forms on the floor, one struggling to rise. Weapons lay about them.

"The last one had a body screen!"

"Did he transport in?"

Jill shook her head. "Came in from the hall with the others!"

So the counterattack wasn't organized yet. But it couldn't be long in coming. Grant slung the Suesvant over his shoulder, took the biped heat weapon from his belt. At close range, it should complete the wreckage caused by the rifle.

It did. Great gouts of white fire crashed through the stands. There were renewed explosions and arcing energy bolts about the consoles. Through the racket, Grant heard Jill's shout again, glanced quickly over at her, saw Crowell standing beside her, a heavy shock gun in his hands. Jill caught Crowell's arm, said something, yelled to Grant, "Three just transported in—other side of the deck! Witter can follow us."

She was gone. Grant snapped the fire weapon back on his belt, took the Suesvant in his left hand, the transporter in his right.

Fog washed in, cleared away. Jill there, on his left—and Crowell materializing abruptly a few steps to the right. The gigantic biped Jill had described, arms like shaggy brown tree trunks braced against the table before it, was leaning forward, attention on a screen from which rose a blurred gabbling. The guns lashed out together.

It was like assaulting a god, an animal deity.

The huge body staggered. The head, swinging toward the intruders, was instantly blinded. The giant took a swaying step and began turning. An arm flailed, smashed into the screen. The great biped kept turning, falling, went down.

"Let's go—" And Jill was gone again.

* * *

Four more vulnerable points struck, briefly, ruinously. Surprise still on their side—no other armed bipeds had appeared to dispute their presence, prevent what they were doing. Then a sixth shift; and Crowell said, "Why here?" Jill had guided them to a narrow gallery above a wide hallway. They heard biped voice sounds, though no biped was in sight.

Jill said, "They won't look for us here."

"But there's nothing to—"

"When that engine went, I felt something else! The ship might be beginning to go."

"The ship?" Crowell said. "This is a ship?"

Jill nodded. "A very big one. But we may have hurt it enough. That was like a series of explosions on the decks beneath us—or some distance away."

Grant said, "We'd better be sure! I didn't notice anything." They looked at one another a moment, faces pale and taut. Grant asked Crowell, "How did you find us?"

Crowell grunted. "Mental fix on your Suesvant. Easy to visualize! Where it was, you'd be. You seemed to have an idea on how we could use their gadgets. You did. But shouldn't we—"

He broke off. A biped had materialized in the hall beneath them. It lifted its great arms in the air, uttered blaring cries, turning this way and that. Other voices responded. A group of aliens ran past. Somewhere not far off, an intercom cut in. What they heard then might have been the voice of the giant they had brought down—a huge ululating; mournful noise. It ended abruptly.

Now the hall below suddenly filled with the alien creatures. They seemed to be pouring out of other passages, went streaming by in both directions, milling aimlessly, squalling, clasping their heads.

The gallery swayed. The tumult below swelled up. Jill caught her breath. "Stronger now!" she said. "But that's what it felt like!"

There was a distant thudding of explosion. Shrieks rose from the hall. Crowell said shortly, "They seem to believe the ship's going!"

Another explosion came, heavier or more close than the previous one. Grant said, "All right. Let's get out!" He looked at Crowell. "We'll meet you at the Base. Jill and I have one more stop to make."

"Huh?"

"Frank Farquhar's aircruiser," said Grant. "We can go to it now wherever he hid it. He had a store of message drones there."

* * *

The alien ship went five minutes later. There might have been frantic work on board to contain the chain of destructive reactions surging through it. If so, they were unsuccessful. The remaining defenders of the Star Union Base saw a sheet of brilliant purple light leap from the northern mountain ranges to the sky. Kulkoor's surface shuddered. Presently there came the faraway thunderings of a great explosion.

Grant and Jill had returned by then with the sack of drones they'd scooped up in Farquhar's cruiser. The Base remained on alert. The biped group attacking it apparently had been recalled to the stricken ship; but others could have been left on Kulkoor. Survivors might seek revenge.

Then Grant made a discovery. He'd decided to transport back to the cruiser and fly it in to the Base. Farquhar could have had records of deductions he'd made about the bipeds. Grant found that the transporting instrument would no longer transport him. It did nothing, seemed dead. They tried out the other two devices and had the same experience with them. Evidently they'd been powered by the ship and wouldn't operate now it was gone.

That ended any concern about bipeds who might still be around. If they were, they had no more mobility now than that provided by their legs. They couldn't become a problem. A guncar sent to check reported that the whole hump of mountain inside which the great ship had been concealed had vanished with it.

So then it was time at last to count the dead and missing. There were almost no wounded. Where biped weapons had struck, they'd killed.

It was a long, long list of names.

* * *

"Most of the stuff may not be too important," Crowell remarked late that night. He was in his office with Ilken and the Galestrals, and the assortment of articles which had been found in the furred biped vest were spread out on a table. They'd been going over them together. "I'm hardly much of a physicist, but I doubt any very significant new discoveries will be made when specialists take the things apart."

There were thoughtful nods. Ned said, "That seems probable. Nothing too exciting there."

"These, of course," Crowell went on, touching one of the three lifeless transporters lying aside from the rest, "should be a different matter . . ."

"Quite different!" Ned agreed again, dryly.

Crowell regarded his companions. They gazed reflectively back at him. Jill, relaxed in a chair, knees crossed, seemed unaware of the Suesvant laid casually across her lap. Grant's and Ned's rifles were slung as casually from their shoulders. Of course, Galestrals reputedly rarely were seen separated from their deadly pets. Ilken's pale eyes were alert and she carried her brace of tarsh knives well forward on her belt. But there was nothing really unusual about that either.

Crowell tilted back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head.

"One thing we do know about the bipeds," he observed, "is that they came a long way to reach Kulkoor. A civilization like theirs couldn't exist in an area touched by our exploration ships without being noticed. It's reasonable to assume they wouldn't have come that far on a mining operation unless the range and efficiency of their warp drive makes anything we've developed look pathetic."

"That does seem a quite reasonable assumption," Jill told him.

"You think so, too, eh?" Crowell brought his chair forward, nudged the transporters. "Would you say the warp drive and these gadgets should operate on the same basic principles?"

Jill nodded. "Uh-huh. Except for range, they must do much the same thing. And range might depend mainly on controllable power."

Crowell remarked to Grant, "You took the transporters from the biped you killed. Technically, they're yours, you know—spoils of war!"

Grant smiled briefly. "Except for another technicality! I'm an employee-shareholder of the Galestral Company and obtained those items on a Company assignment. That makes them Company property."

Crowell grunted. "What do you think the Company will do with them?"

Jill said judiciously, "Well, to begin with, of course, it will clamp on complete secrecy. Then try to work out the principles. Apply them to ship drives. Build a few ships. Keep on improving the drives."

"What kind of ships?"

She studied him, shrugged. "Battlewagons, with at least the mass the bipeds had here. If they happen to come back in force, the Galestral Company will want to be ready for them."

"Cencom would figure it like that," Crowell agreed. "And Cencom will be breaking its neck to get at those principles!"

"I imagine it will," Jill said. "If a warp drive is developed, the Company won't want it to become generally available within any foreseeable time. It'll limit its use to support its own overall policies.

Ned said mildly, "The drive's existence in itself would force those policies to change, Jill!"

"In three, four decades, yes. It needn't change them basically then."

"Captain Witter," Grant said, "what would Cencom do if it had possession of the transporters?"

"Oh, about the same!" Crowell leaned back in his chair again. "Just about the same thing. Try to develop the warp drive and keep control of it. As long as possible. If Star Union citizens could warp away out of contact whenever they felt like it, what would become of Cencom's authority?"

"Then isn't this a somewhat theoretical discussion?" Ned asked him. "Of the two, naturally, I'd prefer the Galestral Company to wind up with the transporters. Everyone left alive on the Base knows we have them. Unless they're destroyed—which would make no sense at all—who actually does get control of them should depend primarily on whose relief expedition manages to get here first. That could turn into a rather close race!"

"It won't matter who wins it," Crowell said, "if we send the transporters off by message drone tonight."

No one spoke for a few seconds. "One to the Company, one to Cencom?" Ned said then. "And let both know it's been done? It would put them in another race against each other—but it should avoid any head-on trouble." He added, "But it still won't make the warp drive available to individual Star Union citizens or Galestral employees. You won't have affected that."

"They'd keep it from us by tacit agreement," Crowell acknowledged. "So a third drone and the third transporter go simultaneously to the headquarters of the Swimmer League on Varien. A three-way race then—one the swimmers should win. They have the newest and most sophisticated technology, but so far they haven't had a drive good enough to make their mobile cities independent of the Star Union and Cencom. They'll work hard to get it. When they have it, they'll start moving out. And they have the same motive for wanting a warp drive to become generally available that Cencom and your Company have for not wanting it. It will break up the present systems of control. Everything becomes fluid again; and Cencom and the Company have to go along with a new situation. The swimmers will broadcast those principles as soon as they know what they are!" Crowell looked around the group. "Well?"

Ned Brock shook his head. "Everything becomes fluid again . . .  If I acted as a Company man should about this, I'd simply find myself outvoted. I won't bother to do it. Let's set the drones up to go out!"

 

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