James H. Schmitz

“ The tunnel's hidden station entrance was beneath the tool room floor, the other opening out of the polished rock base of the hangar twenty feet from one of the interstellar drones. The most careful human scrutiny would hardly have read any significance there into the hairline crack which formed an irregular oval on the rock; and since Troy hadn't been found out, he could assume that the Hammerheads' powers of observation were no more acute.
It had been night in the surrounding desert for some hours by now, but the hangar was brightly lit—a very unusual occurrence at such a time. ”

“ Troy switched off the screen, started back to the door, fighting down his nausea. Self-blame was a luxury for which he had no time. He couldn't help Newland, and there was not an instant to lose. Within a few hours, he could still be in space and take his chances alone at getting the warning to Earth.
But first the search for him must be directed away from the Tareeg hangar. ”

“ Human, he thought, with a blaze of hatred beyond anything he'd ever felt for the Tareegs. Traitor human! The gun, still somehow in his hand, snarled its answer.
Then the stungun found him again, in three quick, hammering blows, and consciousness was gone.
There came presently an extended period of foggy, groping thoughts interspersed with sleep and vivid nightmares. After a time, Troy was aware that he was in a section of the sick bay on the Atlas, and that the great carrier was in interstellar flight. So the operation on Cassa One was over. ”

“ Possibly it amused them; though Clingman had told Troy once, rather complacently, that his research already had proved to be of some usefulness to the Tareegs in answering certain questions they had had about themselves. That might also be true. On several occasions, at any rate, Troy had found either the Low Dsala or another Hammerhead officer in Clingman's office, answering the scientist's questions in high-pitched, reedy voices which always had the suggestion of a whistle in them. All of them apparently had been taught human speech, though they rarely chose to use it. ”

“ Troy felt sweat start out on his face. Should he say anything? He hesitated, then reached quietly into the tool kit.
"... and only then"—Clingman's voice returned suddenly to his consciousness—"will the word be prepared to go back, and the messenger ships filled with the sacred water so that it can be blended at the same moment with the twin worlds' oceans, to show that Cassa One has become jointly a part of each...." ”

“ Newland blinked, said slowly, "How's that? You'd think that might tip their hand. We'll be missed, won't we?"
"Sure we'll be missed," Troy said. "But when? We were to stay here eight years ... don't remember that either, eh? The Hammerheads will have all the time they need to be set for whoever comes looking for us eventually."
"But would they know that?"
Troy said bitterly, "They know everything about Earth that our top brass scientists of the Cassa Expedition were able to tell them. Pearson and Andrews—those names mean anything? They were the Expedition Chiefs when we were captured. ”

“ War is the best part of living as far as they're concerned, and they're plenty good at it. So far they've only been fighting among themselves but they're itching for a chance at another race, and now we're it. Capturing an Earth expedition in the Cassa System was only part of the plan to take Earth by surprise. ”

“ The worst for Victor Clingman. It would be impossible, Troy thought, to trust Clingman, but he could make very good use of him in spite of that.
He came quietly along the passage, his attention as much on the closed doors about him as on the one which was open. The guard's gun unfortunately wasn't a noiseless type, but he had wrapped a small cushion around its muzzle and across it, which should muffle reports satisfactorily if it came to that. Words became distinguishable.
"It is not a parasite in the ordinary sense," Clingman's tired voice said. "It is a weapon. It kills and moves on. ”

“ It was an indication, he thought, that Clingman had grown increasingly hungry for human companionship of any kind. He could hardly fail to know that the majority of the station's human component was aware he had originated the suggestion made by the leading scientific group to the Hammerheads concerning the possibility of turning Cassa One into a Tareeg water world, and that he was generally despised for it. Troy's noncommittal attitude might have led him to believe that Troy either had not been informed of the fact or happened to be a man who saw nothing very objectionable in such an act. ”

“ He stepped out from behind the screen as the door on his right opened. Dr. Clingman stood in the door, mouth open, eyes bulging in surprise and alarm at the gun in Troy's hand. Then his gaze shifted to Troy's face, and his expression slowly changed.
"Mister Gordon," he murmured, smiling very cautiously, "you are really the most difficult man to keep stopped!"
Troy pointed a shaking finger at the speaker. "That!" he cried. "That ... it said a thousand years in the ice!"
Clingman nodded. "Yes." His eyes returned, still rather warily, to the gun. ”

“ Clingman said. "We've been on our way back to Earth for more than two days."
"To Earth," Troy muttered. "And I...."
Clingman jabbed a stubby finger down on a control switch at the table, and the wall-speaker went silent. "It will be easier to tell you directly," he said. "You've already grasped the essential fact—our Tareeg captors, for the most part, are dead. They were killed, with some careful assistance from the men in charge of this expedition, by a weapon developed approximately twelve centuries ago on their ancestral world. ”

“ Troy chewed his lip anxiously, the moisture-conserving suits they wore for outside duty on Cassa One, which concealed the two sets of swim flippers along their sides and left the top pair of upper limbs ... short, sturdy brown arms with hands larger than human hands, quite as capable and rather unpleasantly human in appearance ... free for use. The transparent, inverted-triangle helmets were clamped down. As he looked on, one of their big atmospheric personnel carriers came gliding into sight behind the immobile ranks. ”

“ It is life which has no existence, and cannot exist, except as a weapon. Unlike a parasite, its purpose is simply to kill, quickly and efficiently, and go on at once to another victim. Having exhausted the store of victims—a short process, obviously, even in an area of planetary dimensions—it dies of something like starvation within days. ”

“ He drew on the cigarette, coughed, then tossed the case back to Troy who caught it and put it in his pocket.
"Have you got back any recollection at all of what the aliens that caught us are like?" Troy asked.
Newland shook his head.
"Well," Troy said, "they're downright cute, in a way. More like big penguins than anything else. Short little legs. The heads aren't so cute ... a hammerhead shark would be the closest thing there, which is why we call them Hammerheads—though not when we think some of them might be listening.
"They don't belong here any more than we do. ”

“ But to have stayed instead, silently to have assumed personal responsibility for the creation of a new world fit for Tareeg use—that assured them honor and power beyond belief when the giant task was over and the announcement went out....
The awareness that Clingman was speaking again broke into Troy's thoughts.
"Almost everything they do," the scientist observed musingly, "is filled with profound ceremonial meaning. It was a long while before we really understood that. You've heard, I suppose, that cloud formations have appeared on this side of the planet?" ”

“ A part of almost every night was spent in the darkened hangar, assembling, checking and testing one section or another, then disassembling everything and taking it back down into the tunnel before the moment came when the Tareeg watch-beams would sweep again through the hangar.
The beam-search was repeated each three hours and twenty-seven minutes throughout the night. Within that period of time, Troy would have to carry out a final complete assembly, let the drone roar into life and send it flashing up through the force-screen and into space. ”

“ Their weapons systems are as good or better than ours. In other ways, they're behind us. They've got a fair interstellar drive but can't make the same use of it we do, because they've still a lot to learn about inertial shielding. They have a couple of robot-directed interstellar drones standing in a hangar a few hundred yards from here which can hit half the speed of your courier, but no Hammerhead or human being could ride 'em up and live. The two big carriers that brought them to Cassa One are dead-slow boats compared to the Atlas. ”

“ The Hammerheads are water animals. They can waddle around on land as long as they keep themselves moist, but they don't like it. They've got a religion based on a universal struggle between water and land. Cassa One's nothing but hot desert and rock and big salt beds, so it's no good to them. And the other two planets in the system have no oxygen to speak of.
"Now here's the thing that's hard to swallow. There's a huge lumped-up asteroid swarm in the system. The Atlas stopped for a few days on the way in to look around in it. ”

“ These Hammerheads are a tough breed, and we're in a bad spot."
Newland nodded. "I understand that much. Go ahead."
"Well," Troy said, "whatever that first Earth survey ship had to report about the Cassa system looked good enough so that the administration put Cassa down for a major expedition some day. Twenty years later, we got here again—the interstellar exploration carrier Atlas with eight hundred men on board. I'm one of her engineers. And we found the Tareegs—that's what the Hammerheads call themselves—waiting for us. Not another bunch of scientists and assistants but a war-party. ”

“ Long before this ship reaches Earth again, the agent will have been introduced to the twin worlds, and except for the specimens we carry on board, the Tareeg species will be extinct. It may not be a pleasant thing to have a pair of ghost worlds forever a little on our conscience—but one does not have to fight uncertain wars with ghosts."
Troy studied him in silence for some seconds. ”

“ In that time it would become clear whether Newland was going to recover sufficiently to be able to play a part in his plans. Only two sections of the shattered courier ship, the inertial shielding and the autonav, had been needed to transform the Hammerheads' interstellar drone twenty feet from the tunnel exit into a spaceship which men could ride and direct. Both those sections had been repairable, and everything else Troy had been able to steal or build in the station. ”

“ Dexter and Clingman, after we'd been captured, volunteered the information to the Hammerheads that a lot of that stuff was solid H2O and that if they wanted Cassa One fixed up the way they'd like it—wet—the Atlas could ferry enough asteroid ice over here in billion-ton loads to turn most of the surface of the planet into a sea.
"You understand it wasn't the Hammerheads who had the idea. They don't have anything resembling the ship power and equipment to handle such a job ”

“ A biological weapon limited to attack one species: the enemy. It is insidious. There is no warning and no defense. Unconsciousness and death occur painlessly within an hour after contact, and the victim has not realized he is being destroyed. ”

“ RELAX AND TAKE IT EASY, JERRY! YOU WERE IN A BAD SMASH-UP, AND YOU'VE JUST FINISHED A LONG STRETCH IN THE EMERGENCY TANK OF YOUR SHIP. EVERYTHING'S BOUND TO SEEM A LITTLE FOGGY, BUT YOU'RE GOING TO BE OKAY. DON'T TRY TO LEAVE THE ROOM. IT HAS TO BE KEPT LOCKED, BUT SOMEONE WILL BE ALONG TO SEE YOU IN TWO OR THREE HOURS AT THE MOST.
Troy said, "Your memory will start coming back fast enough. You've made a good start." He sat down, took his cigarette case from his pocket. "I'll go over some of the things that have happened with you. That tends to bring them ... ”

“ It means the boys on the Atlas have as many of those mountains of ice riding on orbit as are needed, and they've started shoving them down into the atmosphere to break up and melt. So we ... Jerry, wake up!"
Troy Gordon paused, watching Newland, then shrugged, stood up and went over to take the butt of the cigarette from the pilot's slack fingers. Newland had slid back into catatonic immobility; he offered no resistance as Troy swung his legs up on the bunk and straightened him out on his back. ”

“ It is confined to water, but its method of dispersion within that medium is not understood at all. At one instant, it is here; at the next, it apparently will have moved to a point perhaps several hundred miles away. ”

“ And there is still a minor war in progress on the Atlas. Oh, nothing to worry about now—it's almost over. I heard less than twenty minutes ago that the last of the Tareeg guards on board had surrendered. About fifty of them have become our prisoners. Then there is a rather large group of armed men in spacesuits in one section of the ship with whom we have been unable to communicate. They regard us as traitors to the race, Dr. ”