Chapter 28

Trigger couldn’t keep from staring at the subspace station. It was unbelievable.

One could still tell that the human construction gangs had put up a standard type of armored station down there. A very big, very massive one, but normally shaped, nearly spherical. One could tell it only by the fact that at the gun pits the original material still showed through. Everywhere else it had vanished under great black masses of material which the plasmoids had added to the station’s structure.

All over that black, lumpy, lavalike surface the plasmoids crawled, walked, soared and wriggled. There were thousands of them, perhaps hundreds of different types. It looked like a wet, black, rotten stump swarming with life inside and out.

Neither she nor the two men had made much mention of its appearance. All you could say was that it was horrible.

The plasmoids they could see ignored the ship. They also gave no noticeable attention to the eight space flares the Commissioner had set in a rough cube about the station. But for the first two hours after their arrival, the ship’s meteor reflectors remained active. An occasional tap at first, then an almost continuous pecking, finally a twenty-minute drumfire that filled the reflector screens with madly dancing clouds of tiny sparks. Suddenly it ended. Either the king plasmoid had exhausted its supply of that particular weapon or it preferred to conserve what it had left.

“Might test their guns,” the Commissioner muttered. He looked very unhappy, Trigger thought.

He circled off, put on speed, came back and flicked the ship past the station’s flank. He drew bursts from two pits with a promptness which confirmed what already had been almost a certainty--that the gun installations operated automatically. They seemed remarkably feeble weapons for a station of that size. The Devagas apparently had had sense enough not to give the plasmoid every advantage.

The Commissioner plunked a test shot next into one of the black protuberances. A small fiery crater appeared. It darkened quickly again. Out of the biggest opening, down near what would have been the foot of the stump if it had been a stump, something, long, red and wormlike wriggled rapidly. It flowed up over the structure’s surface to the damaged point and thrust the tip of its front end into the crater. Black material began to flow from the tip. The plasmoid moved its front end back and forth across the damaged area. Others of the same kind came out and joined it. The crater began to fill out.

They hauled away a little and surfaced. Normal space looked clean, beautiful, homelike, calmly shining. None of them except Lyad had slept for over twenty hours. “What do you think?” the Commissioner asked.

They discussed what they had seen in subdued voices. Nobody had a plan. They agreed that one thing they could be sure of was that the Vishni Fleet people and any other human beings who might have been on the station when it was turned over to the king plasmoid were no longer alive. Unless, of course, something had been done to them much more drastic than had happened to the Aurora’s crew. The ship had passed by the biggest opening, like a low wide black mouth, close enough to make out that it extended far back into the original station’s interior. The station was open and airless as Harvest Moon had been before the humans got there.

“Some of those things down there,” the Commissioner said, “had attachments that would crack any suit wide open. A lot of them are big, and a lot of them are fast. Once we were inside, we’d have no maneuverability to speak of. If the termites didn’t get to us before we got inside. Suits won’t do it here.” He was a gambler, and a gambler doesn’t buck impossible odds.

“What could you do with the guns?” Trigger asked.

“Not too much. They’re not meant to take down a fortress. Scratching around on the surface with them would just mark the thing up. We can widen that opening by quite a bit, and once it’s widened, I can flip in the bomb. But it would be just blind luck if we nailed the one we’re after that way. With a dozen bombs we could break up the station. But we don’t have them.”

They nodded thoughtfully.

“The worst part of that,” he went on, “is that it would be completely obvious. The Council’s right when it worries about fumbles here. Tranest and the Devagas know the thing is in there. If the Federation can’t produce it, both those outfits have the Council over a barrel. Or we could be setting the Hub up for fifty years of fighting among the member worlds, sometime in the next few hours.”

Mantelish and Trigger nodded again. More thoughtfully.

“Nevertheless--” Mantelish began suddenly. He checked himself.

“Well, you’re right,” the Commissioner said. “That stuff down there just can’t be turned loose, that’s all! The thing’s still only experimenting. We don’t know what it’s going to wind up with. So I guess we’ll be trying the guns and the bomb finally, and then see what else we can do ... Now look, we’ve got--what is it?--nine or ten hours left. The first of the boys are pretty sure to come helling in around then. Or maybe something’s happened we don’t know about, and they’ll be here in thirty minutes. We can’t tell. But I’m in favor of knocking off now and just grabbing a couple of hours’ sleep. Then we’ll get our brains together again. Maybe by then somebody has come up with something like an idea. What do you say?”

“Where,” Mantelish said, “is the ship going to be while we’re sleeping?”

“Subspace,” said the Commissioner. He saw their expressions. “Don’t worry! I’ll put her on a wide orbit and I’ll stick out every alarm on board. I’ll also sleep in the control chair. But in case somebody gets here early, we’ve got to be around to tell them about that space termite trick.”

Trigger hadn’t expected she would be able to sleep, not where they were. But afterwards she couldn’t even remember getting stretched out all the way on the bunk.

She woke up less than an hour later, feeling very uncomfortable. Repulsive had been talking to her.

She sat up and looked around the dark cabin with frightened eyes. After a moment, she got out of the bunk and went up the passage toward the lounge and the control section.

Holati Tate was lying slumped back in his chair, eyes closed, breathing slowly and evenly. Trigger put out a hand to touch his shoulder and then drew it back. She glanced up for a moment at the plasmoid station in the screen, seeming to turn slowly as they went orbiting by it. She noticed that one of the space flares they’d planted there had gone out, or else it had been plucked away by a passing twister’s touch. She looked away quickly again, turned and went restlessly back through the lounge, and up the passage, toward the cabins. She went by the two suits of space armor at the lock without looking at them. She opened the door to Mantelish’s cabin and looked inside. The professor lay sprawled across the bunk in his clothes, breathing slowly and regularly.

Trigger closed his door again. Lyad might be wakeful, she thought. She crossed the passage and unlocked the door to the Ermetyne’s cabin. The lights in the cabin were on, but Lyad also lay there placidly asleep, her face relaxed and young looking.

Trigger put her fist to her mouth and bit down hard on her knuckles for a moment. She frowned intensely at nothing. Then she closed and locked the cabin door, went back up the passage and into the control room. She sat down before the communicator, glanced up once more at the plasmoid station in the screen, got up restlessly and went over to the Commissioner’s chair. She stood there, looking down at him. The Commissioner slept on.