THE SCAVENGERS

 

            The ship was in a hurry. It flashed through the frigid upper reaches of the atmosphere like a great silvery dart. A dart whose needle prow and stabilizers glowed with the furious, angry red of air resistance, and whose flight path was drawn across the dark blueprint of the sky by a thin, perfectly straight white line of vapor condensation. Far below it the planetary surface slid by with deceptive slowness.

 

            In the ship's tiny control room a loud-speaker clicked, hummed, and said, "Flagship to S-Five-Three—" The eyes of the three-man crew flickered briefly towards it, then switched back to their respective instrument panels. A tightness about their mouths and an involuntary jerk of their heads towards the sound betrayed the strain they were under. They relaxed, a little, when it merely stated, This is the commander. Your ETA over target is nine minutes, fifteen seconds from—now. What have you in mind, captain?"

 

            Spence, the ship's captain, reached out quickly—too quickly—and fumbled the switch to the Transmit" position. But his voice was quite steady as he replied.

 

            The usual thing, sir. Direct, high-level approach to within fifty miles, dive, level off at five thousand, spray them, then decelerate and land. Normal procedure from there on in. It should take about two hours."

 

            There was silence for a long moment, broken only by the faint, back-ground hum from the speaker. The miles fled by, a large number of miles. Then the commander spoke again.

 

            "That seems satisfactory, but we are taking too long over this, captain. Hurry it up, please. Have you looked at a clock recently? Off."

 

            Beside the captain, the engineer and servomech officer, Bennett, moved restively. He looked straight at Spence, then at the now quiescent speaker, and inclined his close-cropped, grayish-blond head at two dials on the wide panel before him. The dials showed the hull temperature and the output of the cooling units. They each bore a conspicuous red mark, and their indicator needles seemed to be glued to these marks. Bennett gave a short, interrogatory grunt. It was his way of saying that if they hurried it up any faster they'd probably vaporize themselves, but it was for the captain to decide one way or the other. Bennett was a man of few words.

 

            Spence shook his head curtly. There would be no increase in speed. Then he turned abruptly to the third member of the crew, Harrison, the gunnery officer.

 

            Harrison was muttering angrily, "What did he mean by that last crack? Have we looked at anything else but clocks recently? Just who does he think he is—?"

 

            "That's enough," said Spence sharply, as a light flashed urgently on his panel, "I haven't time to listen to you. We dive in three seconds. Brace yourselves." His hands flickered about, checking, then settled on the twin grips of a lever that grew solidly from the floor between his feet. He began to edge it slowly forward.

 

            The great ship curved smoothly downwards info a steep dive. Straining against the straps, the crew hung forward in their seats, their faces pop-eyed, dark red masks of mounting blood pressure. The dive lasted eight seconds, then the pull-out flattened them back into the padding. That was much easier to take, thought Spence. The seats were designed to swing to compensate for any sudden change in direction, but on a planetary operation like this they had, of course, to be in a fixed up-down position.

 

            But it wasn't the ill-treatment his body was being subjected to that was worrying him. No, that was the least of his troubles. It was Harrison.

 

            Harrison was going soft.

 

            Captain Spence couldn't altogether blame him. Harrison had been under a killing pressure, both physical and mental these last few days, but this was certainly not the time to develop a hypersensitive conscience.

 

-

 

            Harrison had joined the ship only a week ago, just two days before the current emergency, as a replacement for Walters who was still recuperating with a leg graft after that mess on Torcin Eight. He was a new boy, just out of Basic Training, and like all the freshly-qualified entrants to the Force, he'd worn the dedicated, near-exalted look that sometimes took months to wear off. The great motto of the Force, implying the ultimate in selfless service to humanity, was practically written in letters of light across his forehead as well as being traced in gold thread on cap and shoulder badges. It said, in a language long dead before the motto was even coined, "There is nothing more important than a human life," and Harrison was intensely eager to start saving lives. He was going to save lives if he had to kill himself doing it. Spence had felt the same way at the start, but that idea had been soon knocked out of him. There was no future in it; besides, it was wasteful of highly-trained technicians.

 

            All this did not mean that Harrison had been naive or unrealistic about things. He'd known that the Force must, by its very nature, be called on to do an occasional little job that was just a shade off-color—for the greatest common good, of course. It was a pity, thought Spence, that his first job had been a five-star alarm, a very big one and the grimmest the captain had ever encountered in his twelve years of service. It was one way of finding out whether a man had what it took, but it was a rather drastic way.

 

            Now Harrison was sitting hunched forward in his seat, staring at the screen which showed the surface ahead and below. From five thousand feet the ground was a dull, reddish-brown carpet unrolling monotonously below the furiously speeding ship. Occasionally there would be a stain on the carpet—an ugly black stain five miles across that had been the site of one of the Crawler cities. The ship had been directly responsible for quite a few of those. There was nothing like a medium-sized H-bomb exploded well underground to really reduce a city. The shock-wave left the resultant rubble looking like fine gravel. The placing and detonation of the bombs was the gunnery officer's department, so he was sitting there beginning to hate himself.

 

            Good thing, thought Spence, that the Crawler civilization was concentrated in large, widely-separate cities. It was less wasteful of bombs and made the cleanup job a lot simpler. There were no farms or villages to deal with, but there were groups of survivors, who had somehow managed to evade the first sweep, holing up in various places. It was towards one of these groups, one of the few remaining on the planet, that Spence's ship was splitting the air.

 

-

 

            A low range of mountains crept gradually over the horizon. The aliens were behind them. The ship had chosen this course so that the mountains would shield it from radar until the last possible moment, always supposing the Crawlers had radar. There was no sense in taking chances. Spence's voice was harsh as he said sharply, "Five seconds to target. Gunnery Officer stand by!"

 

            And, thought the captain, if he flunks it now that he's gone this far, I shall certainly kick him to a bleeding pulp.

 

            The aliens had not got radar, but from bits and pieces of mining machinery they had somehow fashioned a multi-barreled antiaircraft weapon. It didn't make the slightest difference, they hadn't a chance. A gray blur streaked across the sky. For a split second they were bathed in a wide cone of invisible radiation. The effect was instantaneous. The group of Crawlers around the gun jerked convulsively as their voluntary muscles reacted to the radiation, then they rolled flabbily to the ground.

 

            And when the lagging thunder of the ship's passage across the sky beat down on the Crawler mining settlement, the ship itself was a shrinking dot on the horizon, and nothing on the ground was moving. It was as easy as that.

 

            The ship decelerated furiously to subsonic and circled back. It hung motionless over the settlement. From the projector under its nose the radiation again flared out; this time it was maintained for fully two seconds, then the ship settled slowly towards the ground.

 

            That second dose was unnecessary, Spence thought, as the surface expanded below them. It was merely another added precaution. There was not a race known in the galaxy immune to that radiation. It really was the nearest thing to the Perfect Weapon ever discovered; it did not harm the body at all, but struck directly at the brain in such a way that the mind affected was rendered completely unconscious, all the voluntary muscles were paralyzed, and the metabolic rate was slowed to almost nothing. Its beauty lay in the fact that it was reversible. If you potted a friend by mistake, he could be revived. On the other hand, if it was an enemy, you could come back at leisure and bum him, or blow holes in him—he was helpless. The easy way was just to leave him and he'd starve to death.

 

            The trend of the captain's thoughts was becoming too morbid. He pulled himself out of it to find the ship about to touch down. He started doing rapid, complicated things with the controls before him. When he looked up they were down and he hadn't felt it.

 

            "Locks One to Six open. Holds A and B ready for loading," he announced crisply, "Go to it, Mr. Bennett." He sat back tiredly. For the time being he had nothing to do.

 

-

 

            Up to this moment the servomech officer had been little more than a passenger, but now he went to work. A stream of robots, functionally specialized, began to walk, roll, or fly out of the opened locks. Some were merely camera pickups, others consisted of a cluster of extensible grabs of various sizes mounted on caterpillar treads, the rest were simply remote-controlled wheelbarrows. The grabs spread out, each trailed by an attentive trio of barrows. When they came to a limp alien, it would be lifted, dumped into a barrow, which would whisk it back to the ship where other types of special machinery would stow it carefully away where it would be sure to keep. Meanwhile, the grab had moved on to the next alien, and the first barrow, now empty, hurried back to wait for a refill.

 

            At various heights above all this activity hovered the camera pickups, constantly sending pictures and pertinent data back to the semicircle of screens around Bennett's control panel. And Bennett, by glancing at a screen and fiddling with a few knobs, would send several tons of highly-complex machinery where it would do the most good. The robots were almost fully automatic, needing only the minimum of guidance, but keeping his eyes on over fifty of the things was a nerve-racking job.

 

            The captain, watching with approval, thought how efficient it was, and how quick. Bennett was good at this. Suddenly he started forward and snapped a reproof.

 

            "Careful there. Take it easy. What do you think you're doing? They're not sacks of flour, you know. Watch it."

 

            One of the grabs in dropping a Crawler into a barrow had misjudged. Its flaccid burden had fouled a sharp-edged projection on its way in. A great, three-foot gash appeared in its side and the treacly goo it used for blood welled out, making a dirty, ever-widening stain on the beautiful, iridescent fur.

 

            "Sorry," Bennett muttered abstractedly, "I was in a hurry." Which was a pretty good excuse, all things considered.

 

            The captain kept quiet. A tricky piece of work had come up and he didn't want to distract the other.

 

            It was one of the Crawler gunners. It had been manning the gun when the projector had caught it, and it was practically tied to its post. The Crawler method of operating their machinery was either to wrap themselves around it or to insinuate themselves right into it, or preferably both, so as to use to the best advantage the five pairs of hands and feet which made them so closely resemble the centipede. This one was so mixed up with the gun that Bennett had brought up another grab to help untangle it. But it wasn't until another specialized servo arrived from the ship and partially dismantled the gun that they were able to draw the alien free. While it was being carted back to the ship the two grabs wheeled about and went hunting again.

 

            But game was becoming scarce. On a large screen in front of the servomech officer a dim gray picture of the mining settlement as seen from the air appeared. Here and there on the picture a hot orange spark burned. Each spark showed the position of one of the Crawlers. It didn't matter if they were out in the open or coiled in some dark corner of their low, dome-shaped shelters. They weren't quite dead, so their brainwaves were detectable and their positions showed plain.

 

            It was another one of the advantages of using the projector—one was able to find the victims without any trouble. When the ship had landed, more than fifty glowing sparks had dotted the screen. Now there were fourteen. Bennett brought thirty of the robots back to the ship, where they automatically sorted and stored themselves away. The job was almost finished and they were only cluttering up the place.

 

            Less than an hour of his estimated two had passed, Spence thought. We've made good time. We should do it comfortably. He began to relax.

 

 

-

            Suddenly the wall speaker burst into life again. The harsh voice of the fleet commander pervaded the room.

 

            "Flagship to Scavenger Five-Three. How is it going, captain? Report, please."

 

            Spence took a deep breath, then recited briskly, "Everything going according to plan, sir. We found a sort of mining settlement—the first I've seen here that hadn't a city built over it—with between fifty and sixty Crawler survivors. They had a gun of sorts rigged up but didn't get a chance to use it We're loading in the last few stiffs now."

 

            He stopped. Bennett was waving at him urgently, trying to attract his attention. Harrison, white-faced, was bending over the other's shoulder and staring at the servo panel as if he didn't believe it. Spence nodded curtly and said into the nuke, "Excuse me, sir. Something has come up." He turned impatiently to the others. "Well?"

 

            Bennett didn't say anything. He didn't need to. His finger indicated five lights burning on the screen before him. A graduated dial showed the depth of the objects which caused the lights to be two hundred feet. Another gave the information that the objects were in fairly rapid motion. He let his hands fall to his lap and looked gloomy.

 

            There were five aliens on the loose.

 

            This was too much to take. Of all the blind, senseless, bad luck. Spence was too angry to be frightened—yet. He'd expected to be clear of this stinking planet in another ten minutes. Now this.

 

            The five Crawlers must have been down the mine both times the ship had passed over. The projector lacked the power to penetrate two hundred feet of solid, ore-bearing rock, so the radiation hadn't touched them. They were down there now, five alien snakes with beautiful, shimmering pelts, each of whose bodies measured two feet thick and eight feet wide. Their feelings towards the beings in the ship were probably indescribable, but they were certainly hostile. Spence's voice shook a little as he related this latest development to the waiting fleet commander. When he finished he was sweating.

 

            It was all right while I was busy, he thought, there was no time to be afraid—not really afraid. But this sitting around while the clock ticked off the seconds—He felt almost like asking if the commander had gone to sleep or something, it was taking him so long to answer. He tapped his foot rapidly, nervously against his seat support. When the voice came again he leaned forward anxiously.

 

            "That is bad, captain. Very bad," it said gravely, "but whatever means you use to deal with it, remember that speed must be the first consideration. I will remain in this orbit for exactly fifty-three minutes. You have until then to clear things up." The commander stopped, but he hadn't quite finished. When he went on his tone was just a little warmer and more human.

 

            He said, "I'd better tell you that, if circumstances warrant it, I'll have to leave before the expiration of the time-limit I've just given you. Also, we can't send you any help as you are now the only ship remaining on the planet. When you're through we can all go home. You are last man in, captain. I'll leave you to it. Luck. Off."

 

-

 

            Spence had often wondered how it felt to be last man in from one of these clean-up jobs. Now that he knew, he wished that he didn't. But he had only fifty minutes to get something done. He'd have to think, hard.

 

            But he couldn't think of anything but the fact that far below him crawled the last living things native to this planet, and that his ship was all alone on its whole wide, poisonous surface. He almost felt like blasting off right now, but he had a duty. None of his thoughts showed on his face, they never did unless he wanted them to. His voice was even as he turned to the other two and asked, "Has anyone an idea?"

 

            Harrison shook his head.

 

            Bennett said, "I've already activated a couple of diggers. They're on the way to the mine shaft now. They will be able to widen the tunnel enough to allow the grabs to get to the aliens. There aren't any lifts to worry about—the main shaft is in the form of a descending spiral with branching tunnels leading off it at different levels. It's very confusing—"

 

            He stopped talking to snap down a few switches on his panel. On a screen before him a monster of flashing and rotating blades mounted on caterpillar treads nosed over into a small hole in the ground. Soil flew skyward. When it had sunk from sight the hole was much bigger. Other machines hurried in and came out filled with loose earth, then went back for more. Two grabs stood aloofly by, waiting for them to finish.

 

            Bennett went on, a little apologetically, "This isn't such a hot idea, it may take too much time. Unless, of course, we can get them trapped in a dead end, and I don't think they'll let us do that. But I can't think of any other way of doing the job. How about you?"

 

            Spence shook his head, then asked, "How many entrances are there?" He wanted the overall picture before he started making suggestions. Time was too short.

 

            "Just the one," Bennett answered, and waited.

 

            There was probably a very simple answer to this problem, Spence thought, but the terrible urgency of finding that answer so clouded his brain that he couldn't think at all. Performance data of the armaments carried by the ship, together with all the odd items of the Crawler physiology that they'd been able to pick up, tumbled through his mind like a pack of spilled cards, but nothing would make sense. Nothing fitted. And always there was the clock ticking—like a mouse scratching and nibbling away at their dwindling store of time.

 

            He put his finger and thumb to the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes tightly. Steady now, he thought intensely, this is getting you nowhere. Take it easy. Think.

 

            Question. How to catch five aliens hiding underground. Answer. Send robots to dig them out. That was logical, and the servomech officer had done the right thing. But any of the robots capable of taking the aliens were too big to traverse the tunnels. If, however, the tunnels were widened, and if the aliens stayed put until the grabs arrived, and if they were unarmed or incapable of damaging the grabs sent after them, then that solution might work out. Spence shook his head impatiently. There were too many "ifs".

 

            Harrison had been figuring out something on his scratch-pad. He straightened up, looked at Bennett, then bent over his calculations again and began to check them carefully.

 

            Finally he said, "This isn't going to work. The farther down we dig the slower we'll go. The way I figure it we won't even be able to reach the level the aliens are occupying before it's too late." He jerked his head upwards slightly. The movement took in their great flagship hovering impatiently out in space as well as the chronometer on the wall. There was something about the way he said the words, Spence thought. As if he'd been thinking about an entirely different matter.

 

            Spence wondered if the other was getting an idea, and kept silent. Dragging it out of him half-formed wouldn't do any good, he'd spit it out himself if it amounted to anything. Meanwhile, how to get at five aliens two hundred-odd feet underground in a tunnel four feet wide?

 

            All over the ship automatic machinery made small furtive, clicking noises, but the clock above his head sounded the loudest,

 

-

 

            Harrison broke the silence. Strain made his first few words an almost unintelligible croak.

 

            "We're going about this the wrong way. Robots are no good for this job. We—We—" He hesitated, then blurted, "We'll have to go after them ourselves."

 

            Nobody said anything for a moment. Spence's mind raced ahead. It might work at that. It just might.

 

            The tunnels were wide enough. They had suits, guns, means of detecting their prey, and this way they might even have enough time. But the crew, or any part of it, wasn't supposed to leave the ship during operations, especially if the ship was a Scavenger Fleet cruiser.

 

            The crew on these boats was small, specialized, and interdependent to a high degree. They carried a thousand-odd cubic yards of near-human machinery which was designed to cope with anything that could conceivably turn up in the way of emergencies, so that the crew need never leave the ship at all.

 

            But this particular situation was without precedent, Spence thought angrily, he'd just have to break the rules. He had a brilliant record up to now. He hoped desperately that nothing would go wrong.

 

            But it was the job that mattered, not the individuals taking part in it. The problem now, he thought, was which member or members of the crew was the most dispensable.

 

            Bennett spoke up, low-voiced and unhurried. He mentioned just how irregular was Harrison's suggestion, but seconded it. He also pointed out that when the robots could not be made to function efficiently, the job of servomech officer automatically became superfluous, or words to that effect. He ended by confessing to a yen to stretch his legs outside the ship.

 

            Bennett's volunteering for the job beat Harrison's by split seconds. The gunnery officer also gave reasons, good ones—the same ones in fact.

 

            Spence sighed. He'd expected this. He said quietly, "We all volunteer, naturally, but someone will have to stay in the ship. Now," he argued, "two people will stand a better chance out there than one, but we've got to increase that chance as much as possible. The way I see it, Mr. Harrison and myself will attend to the Crawlers, while you, Mr. Bennett, will support us whenever possible with your servos. That way we will all be gainfully employed."

 

            The captain wanted to go, too.

 

            But Bennett had an objection. Supposing something should happen to the captain when he was outside. If he was killed, or injured maybe, what about the ship? The servomech officer couldn't handle it, that he was sure of. The cargo was far too valuable to risk leaving it stranded on the planet in the face of what was coming, or to lose in space because of an untrained pilot. The captain shouldn't go out.

 

            He was right, of course. On a job like this the cargo came first, always. But Spence was annoyed. He showed it by being very sarcastic at first, but the mood left him quickly. This was no time to lose his temper.

 

            "All right, heroes," he said, "get going. You'll need suits. The light-weight type will do here—the pressure is nearly Earth-normal. I'll give you the details while you're climbing in. Hurry it up."

 

-

 

            The suits arrived. With rapid, practiced movements Bennett and Harrison dropped onto their backs, wriggled their legs into the lower half, then flipped over and began pushing in their arms. It looked like the donning of long flannel underwear, the hard way. Then came the fish bowls. In eighty seconds they were dressed. Pretty good going. Spence kept talking all the time.

 

            "The air contains about thirty per cent oxygen. It isn't poisonous, exactly, but you'd strangle or burst your hearts through coughing if you had to breathe it for more than a few seconds, it irritates the breathing passages so much. Gravity is point six five Gee, so be careful—" He broke off and said sharply to Harrison, "Check that seam at your shoulder. Is it tight? Slap some cement on it and make sure. No, give it to me. I'll do it. Get the walkie-talkie strapped on."

 

            Dressed, the two men began stretching and bending vigorously, testing for leaks. The captain continued.

 

            "For weapons, better take gas guns and pistols firing nonexplosive bullets. Use the pistols only as a last resort. The reports will probably bring down the tunnel roof, and we've got to avoid damaging the things if possible. Concentrate on gassing them, we know enough about their body chemistry now to do that. There are a couple of gases in stock that will knock them out like a light. But if something should come up and you have to shoot, aim for the center of the twin flaps of muscle which cover their retractable eyes. These are at the top of their heads, which are very heavily boned, almost armor-plated, so don't miss them, the brain is located just behind the flaps. If you should come at them from the side, shoot at their hearts. They have two, located just above the second pair of gripping limbs and the fifth pair of walking limbs respectively. To do a good job you'll have to get both." He paused for breath as the weapons arrived via robot from the armory, then he went on.

 

            "These three spots are their only vital ones. They are nearly all muscle, and you can make them look like sieves without slowing them down very much. Gas is best, anyway.

 

            "Now git, and keep your suit radios on all the time. I'll be listening and I want to know everything as it happens."

 

-

 

            Harrison and Bennett ducked out of the control room and made their way through massed piles of machinery to the tiny personnel lock in the great ship's outer skin. Two knights in shining plastic armor, thought Spence bitterly. He wondered if he would ever see them again. It was times like this that made him have doubts about the Force, and the Force's purpose, and whether it was all worth it.

 

            The commissioning plaque on the wall said that it was. The clock beside it said it was twenty-five minutes before blast-off time, which was more important at the moment.

 

            The captain took the servomech officer's seat. One of the plates showed a tiny picture of the two men sprinting for the mine opening. The sound of their breaths, amplified, came through the speaker. They paused on the brim for a moment without speaking, then dropped from sight.

 

            Suddenly the commander's voice burst in on the silence. He sounded harassed, strained.

 

            "Hello Fifty-Three. What progress?"

 

            The captain jerked nervously. Then began to give his chief an account of the present state of affairs on the planet. The commander interrupted only once to ask incredulously, "The men are of the ship?" Then he let him finish.

 

            Spence waited for the other's reaction. He supposed judgment would be deferred until the successful completion of the operation. But if it wasn't successful—He mustn't even think of that.

 

            "You have exceeded your authority, captain. You had no business risking the ship like this, especially with fifty Crawlers aboard," began the commander harshly.

 

            But before he could get warmed up Spence interrupted him with a level-voiced, "My orders were not to leave a live Crawler on the planet."

 

            "I know that, captain. But let's not be greedy." Craig's tone was quiet, almost conversational, but Spence wasn't fooled a bit. The commander was about ready to blow up as he continued, "I've been looking at your record. It's a very good one. Somehow you've always managed to bring home the bacon, if you'll excuse the expression. This time it's different Don't get overzealous, captain, that's bad. I am leaving shortly. You have another nineteen minutes. This had better work out, captain. Off."

 

-

 

            Spence sat up at the mention of the time left to him. The rest of it he could worry about later, if there was a later. Nineteen minutes! What was the matter with Bennett and Harrison, struck dumb or something? Had the aliens sprung a trap, maybe? He was about to call them when Harrison's voice issued angrily from the speaker.

 

            "Stay farther behind, Bennett You're stabbing me with your suit antenna."

 

            Subdued bumping and scraping noises came from the speaker, and an answering grunt. Very much relieved, Spence joined in with a faintly sarcastic reproof.

 

            "Bennett. Please refrain from stabbing the gunnery officer. And isn't it about time you told me what was going on down there?"

 

            "Nothing much, sir," Bennett's voice was uneven and a trifle breathless. He was wriggling at top speed along a tunnel and trying to talk at the same time. "We are well past the point in the tunnel at which the digger was stopped. It was a tight squeeze at first, but the tunnel is beginning to widen out a lot. We are about thirty feet above the alien positions. The detector shows four, close-grouped points of mind radiation about one hundred feet to our right and a single point almost directly below us. I expect it's a guard, but I'm nearly certain it isn't aware of us. The tunnel is widening out a lot now, we can stand up. We're going as fast as we can. Harrison is getting ready to knock over the Crawler."

 

            Bennett stopped to get his breath back. Then he went on quickly, "I'll have to shut up in a minute. We're closing in on him fast, and I don't know if these things can hear or not. But seeing as the tunnel is wide enough for robots down here, wouldn't it be a good idea to start the digger again? With all of the tunnel as wide as this we could get some of the bigger 'mechs down here and speed things up a bit. Do you know how to control the digger?"

 

            A little sarcastically, Spence said yes, he'd been able to pick up a few little things in his twelve years in the Force. He'd manage to do that all right. He pressed the necessary number of buttons and asked was there anything else.

 

            Bennett didn't speak for several minutes. The scuffling noises from the speaker seemed to increase in volume. Then he said, with exaggerated lightness, "Yes, when the tunnel is wide enough you could send down a barrow for this alien. He looks untidy lying here."

 

            Spence was in no mood for levity. "Right, So you got one. Was there any trouble?"

 

            "No, but the vibration from the digger is shaking down a lot of dust. The other Crawlers must know we're here by now. They'll be waiting for us."

 

            "Can't be helped, I'm afraid, but it will be over any time now. The digger is almost through," said the captain. He was about to ask how they were standing conditions down there generally when Harrison's voice cut in. It sounded, thought Spence, decidedly uneasy.

 

            "This looks bad, sir. I'm looking down the tunnel which the alien was guarding. It is perfectly straight, fairly roomy, and it widens to form a sort of room at the other end. The room is artificially lit and there are aliens in it. I can only see two, but the detector says they are all there. They are working at some kind of machine. I don't like the look of it," he ended and waited for the captain to speak.

 

            Machines, thought Spence, it did look bad. He asked, "Can you tell if the thing is completed or still a-building, or guess at what it's for?"

 

            "No, they're crowding round it. I can't even tell what it looks like. Only parts of it show."

 

            A small pickup drifted into the tunnel beside Harrison and stared glassily over his shoulder. Back in the control room Spence saw the Crawler machine, too. It seemed to be a lot of queerly twisted plates built on four wheels. Baffled, he shook his head. He was beginning to wonder if it wouldn't be better to just pull out and forget the last handful of aliens when Bennett's voice came again.

 

            "The digger's through. I turned it into a side passage and shut it off. And I hear the barrow coming for the stiff. You'd better send a few more down, we might need them in a hurry. Time is getting short, so we're just going to walk down this passage abreast until their room is in range of our gas guns. There's nothing else to do. Judging by the intensity of the lighting they use we might be able to get close enough without them seeing us. I hope so, anyway. Here we go."

 

            The voice stopped. Over the speaker came the measured tread of two pairs of feet, slightly out of step.

 

-

 

            Twelve minutes to go, thought Spence. The barrow carrying the Crawler guard rolled out of the mine opening and headed for the ship. He sent two others down to replace it. After that he never took his eyes off the scene being relayed from the tunnel. But there wasn't much to see, just two shadowy figures outlined by the light at the other end. The image wavered a little as the pickup moved to keep pace behind them.

 

            Despite the intensity of his concentration, the screen couldn't fully occupy his mind. Not enough was happening on it. He kept thinking back. Back an hour, back two days, back a week. But, Spence realized with a start, a week ago he hadn't even heard of this planet. Nobody but a few obscure astronomers had even an inkling of its existence. Then everybody knew. In the same way as some quiet, unassuming neighborhood is brought suddenly into the limelight by a couple of juicy ax murders.

 

            Five days ago the alarm had been given. Every unit of the Force in this sector had lifted itself from its base and made the twist into subspace. When it returned to the normal continuum it was eighty million miles from the Crawler planet and it was part of a fleet of two thousand.

 

            It had been smooth. Not a single hitch anywhere, Spence knew. First had come the heavies. Twelve hundred fat silver cigars, each half a mile long, had hit the planet in a wave and washed around it twice. The first time they passed, not a single thing moved in the great Crawler cities. The second time took longer—but when they swept by, the cities were empty. Then, their holds crammed with the dominant life of the planet, they had disappeared en masse into subspace.

 

            Then had come the clean-up squad, the Scavenger Fleet. The ships landed in cities which had been cleared of alien life by the heavies. When they took off again the cities blew themselves to pieces in their wake. It was a bit wasteful, Spence thought, using bombs on empty cities, but they had to keep the Crawler survivors from returning to shelter in them. There wouldn't be time to search them twice, because a common enemy would be along very shortly which would lap up Crawlers and humans alike with the finest impartiality.

 

            With the cities out of the way, the Scavenger ships had scattered to route out the stragglers. It wasn't a very difficult fob, but they had to hurry it a lot. There was no trouble in finding them. Any Crawler whose mind was working, even if he was asleep, registered on the detectors carried by the ships. Whether they cowered singly in caves or stood defensively at bay a hundred strong in some fortified position, it was just the same. A ship would flash over. Its projector would flicker invisibly down, then it would land and load the aliens aboard. Dead easy, thought Spence. Nothing to it. Routine.

 

            Up to now, that is, the captain thought bitterly.

 

-

 

            He was dragged out of his deepening mood of self-pity by the sight of Bennett and Harrison throwing themselves flat on the ground. Simultaneously the pickup showed the Crawlers moving their machine into the tunnel mouth. Muffled plops came from the speaker. The range was still too great, but the men were using their gas guns. A dirty brown fog grew in the tunnel as the gas combined with the alien atmosphere, blurring the view, but not before Spence saw that the enigmatic machine had started working.

 

            Strangely enough, nothing much seemed to be happening. The machine was being pushed slowly down the passage towards the crouching men, with the aliens sheltering behind it as it crept long. The gas still obscured everything.

 

            Suddenly Harrison's voice crashed out from the wall speaker as he shouted, "It's a fan. We're sunk. They're blowing our gas back at us."

 

            "Stop shouting, Mr. Harrison," Spence said sharply, "I can hear you." The suit mikes were capable of picking up the lowest whisper. When Harrison had raised his voice it had been like sounding the heart of a volcano with a stethoscope. So now the aliens had a fan. That meant his men were powerless to use gas, and using anything else would be too risky, now that they knew of the shaky construction of the tunnel roof.

 

            He'd had about enough of this, Spence decided, It was time to get out.

 

            "Pull out, you two. Back to the ship."

 

            "Captain, I've got an idea." It was Bennett's voice.

 

            Low, unhurried, completely sure of himself he went on, "We can still pull it off. If we wait until they're real close and aim for the rotors, we could disable the fans and—"

 

            "No shooting," the captain interrupted harshly, "You'd bring the roof down. And that's an order—"

 

            A loud, vicious, crack came from the speaker. The sound was unmistakable. Spence gripped the edge of the panel before him and paled as he saw a few tiny rocks drop from the tunnel roof beside the two men. In a voice that shook with fury he exploded, "Mr. Harrison, I told you not to use your gun down there. If you've—"

 

            "It wasn't us," Bennett cut in. "One of the Crawlers has a sort of gun. It's sniping at us. And the fan is speeding up, there's a small gale blowing in here now. I think they mean to rush us."

 

            Bennett's tone wasn't quite so unruffled now. Talking rapidly, Harrison took up the troubled tale.

 

            "The way I see it they mean to kill us and get out before the roof comes down completely from the gunfire. It's their mine so I suppose they know better than we do what the tunnel will stand. They're going to risk the shooting and—Down!"

 

-

 

            There was another sharp report and simultaneously the screen blanked out. A direct hit on the camera pickup, thought Spence wildly, what a time to go blind. But that wasn't all. There was a close-spaced series of dull crashes from the speaker and the horrible gasping, choking sound of somebody strangling.

 

            "Bennett. Bennett." Harrison was shouting again. A continuous, racking cough, unbearably amplified, drowned out his words.

 

            Spence was reaching hurriedly to turn down the volume when the noise shut off and the gunnery officer's voice returned, low and urgent.

 

            "Bennett's helmet cracked—a rock, I think. I've shut off his transmitter and slapped cement on the break. He's partly buried in the fall. I'm trying to get him free now, but the Crawlers are coming up fast." Harrison stopped as another explosion shook the tunnel. "Will you send a barrow here so's I can load him aboard. His suit is switched to pure oxygen now, but he looks bad. He's coughing a lot. And can I use my pistol? That Crawler is getting ready to pick me off."

 

            "I can't see down there now. Do what you think is best. You're on your own." Spence answered.

 

            He was beginning to kick himself for sending the men down there in the first place. It looked as if he was going to lose both of them. He thought briefly of cutting his losses and ordering Harrison back immediately, but he knew it would be no use. Harrison was the altruistic type. Besides, he wasn't so sure he could bring himself to abandon Bennett like that anyway. Maybe he was going soft, too.

 

            Two more reports boomed from the speaker in rapid succession, Harrison's voice came again.

 

            "That Crawler's finished. So is the fan, he fell into it when I shot him. It's ... it's made an awful mess. I'm gassing the others now. There wasn't much of a fall this time, though our guns make a bigger racket than theirs." He paused, his breath coming loud over the speaker. Then he said, "I can hear the barrow coming for Bennett. Send the other one in here while I get him onto this one. Maybe we can get a few Crawlers out after all."

 

            The captain began talking rapidly. He told the gunnery officer not to be a dope. He used even stronger language. Harrison was to forget about the Crawlers. When the barrow arrived he was to pile in with Bennett and come up at once and not be a complete fool. Spence was beginning to repeat himself when a low, ominous rumble sounded, and the floor beneath him quivered slightly. Only then did he realize that Harrison had his transmitter turned off, and possibly his receiver, too.

 

            "I'll break every bone in his body for this," Spence fumed helplessly. "What a stupid trick to pull. What if he had been calling the other names, it was for his own good." Spence was very worried about Harrison. He was new, he might do something very foolish, his voice had sounded funny just then, come to think of it.

 

            When Harrison switched on his set and spoke, the captain knew that he hadn't been worrying for nothing.

 

            "Bennett is on the way up. I want to stay here for a bit.

 

            There's been another fall, a bad one. The Crawlers are all mashed up. It would take a bucket to load them onto anything, they're all over the place." For a moment Harrison sounded as if he was going to be sick. Then he recovered and went on, "But the detector shows one of them to be still alive, and I'm going to get it if I have to drag it out myself. You see, these last few days have gotten me down, captain. I'm sick of this job. I keep remembering things. All those cities we bombed, and that time the Crawlers came out of that cave and tried to contact us by drawing math symbols on the ground, and the way we gassed them without even acknowledging their signals."

 

            "But we hadn't time," Spence argued. "You know that. And the only telepaths good enough to mesh with them were halfway across the galaxy, and couldn't have reached here in time to do any good. We had to make it a surprise attack or nothing."

 

            "I know, I know. But we didn't even—" Harrison couldn't put it into words. He knew he was right, but the captain was right, too. He changed the subject "How are we for time, sir?"

 

            "Six and a half minutes," replied Spence, and thought incredulously, six and a half minutes!

 

-

 

            Just then Bennett came into the control room, still wheezing and smothering an occasional cough. He wasn't much the worse for his near strangulation. Spence nodded at him without turning, and thought angrily that this was mutiny. All he said was, "Harrison. Bennett's here. Come back at once."

 

            Harrison apparently didn't hear him. He said, "That's good." Whether he meant the time or Bennett was an open question. Then he went on in a low, conversational tone, "More stuff is corning down, mostly in the side tunnels which aren't very strongly built. I'm standing beside the alien which the detector says is alive. Funny thing. I tried to drag it out just now and it came to pieces in my hands. I don't get it. The detector says it is alive, but which piece of it is alive? I'm going to have a closer look-"

 

            Harrison was beginning to talk to himself, thought Spence. That was bad. Next thing he'd begin to scream or laugh, and then he'd want to take off his helmet for a smoke. Quietly, coaxingly, the captain began repeating over and over the command to return to the ship, trying desperately to get hypnotic control over the mind that was so far gone that an appeal to reason was useless.

 

            Suddenly Harrison said in a pleased voice, "Well, what d'you know," and burst out laughing.

 

            The captain's eyes looked bleak. He signaled for Bennett to warm up the drive elements. He would try just once more.

 

            But he didn't get the chance. The fleet commander's harsh voice burst in on them, wavering and fading in the way peculiar to a signal that is being transmitted from a ship in subspace.

 

            "Flagship to Scavenger Five-Three. Report please—" The voice broke off as the commander gasped in unbelief, then he shouted urgently, "You're still on the planet, captain. Get off! Get off at once!"

 

            The captain jumped to obey, but his hand froze on the firing key as Harrison's voice came again. It said simply, "I'm coming now, sir."

 

            For seconds that seemed like an eternity the captain fought to reach a decision. Voices were shouting in his head about Service discipline, common sense, safety. Urging him to take off. Other voices were telling him to be a human being for once, instead of a soulless machine. He looked appealingly at Bennett, but the servomech officer wouldn't meet his eyes.

 

            Bennett pointed suddenly at one of the screens. It showed the tiny figure of Harrison emerging from the mine shaft and sprinting for the ship. On one arm, from wrist to elbow, Harrison wore a beautiful, iridescent fur muff.

 

            When Harrison burst into the control room the great ship was already climbing. He had time to get to his couch and settle his burden gently on his stomach before the acceleration started building up, then he couldn't move.

 

            "Seventy-five seconds," Spence whispered, "Oh, come on, Come on." It sounded almost like a prayer.

 

            Slowly the air around the ship thinned. The huge, pock-marked sun, its corona clearly visible, glared in at them through the starboard screen. The sky was black. They were in space, the warp drive could take over.

 

            Twelve seconds after they had twisted themselves into the safety of subspace, the furiously expanding sphere of annihilation brought about by the detonation of the system's sun vaporized the Crawler planet.

 

-

 

            Harrison lifted the furry bundle and shook it in the air. "I found it underneath one of the dead Crawlers. It's a youngster. Cute, isn't he?"

 

            "Cute, he says," said Bennett in disgusted tones. He choked, and a fit of coughing took him.

 

            Spence said, "Better put it in suspended animation with the others. This air of ours is bad for it"

 

            He was pleased with Harrison. The gunnery officer was going to turn out all right. Unavoidably, they'd had to kill a few aliens, but Harrison had been able, personally, to rescue one of their young, so that more than made up for it. He had no intention of resigning now, Spence knew; he probably felt quite a knight in shining armor.

 

            The captain had felt that way when he was a new boy, he remembered. Somehow, the feeling never quite wore off. It came of belonging to an organization dedicated to the job of protecting, assisting, and keeping the noses clean generally of every race in the galaxy that walked, wriggled, or flew and had intelligence. We're just a flock of space-going guardian angels, he thought a little cynically, all we need are halos.

 

            He came down out of the clouds with a start to hear Bennett saying, "You know, I'd hate to have the job of explaining all this to the Crawlers when they wake up on their new planet. I wouldn't be a telepath for anything, too dangerous, for one thing—"

 

            If a planet of the pre-nova stage sun is found to contain intelligent life, the Force will assemble an adequate number of transport units to evacuate the planet in question, having first informed the natives of their danger through operatives of the Department of E-T Communications.

 

            Should no ETCOM telepaths be available at the time, the natives must be evacuated forcefully and taken to the planet assigned them by the Department of Colonization, where the situation will be explained to them when they are revived.

 

            From the "Force Handbook," section on Special Duties.