James White - Double Contact

It held up its hands with the fingers loosely spread.

“… But I can’t do it with clumsy digits like these,” it went on. “It would need much more sensitive hands, yours, and the small, specialized members that the shape-changer can grow to get into and support the awkward corners. You and Danalta would perform the surgery. I could only assist and advise.”

“Thank you, friend Murchison,” said Prilicla, wishing that the other could feel its gratitude and relief. “We will prepare at once.”

“Before we open Jasam up…” it began, and broke off because all around them the loose equipment in the room was vibrating to the increasing subsonic growl that indicated Rhabwar

was making its low-level approach. Irritably, and without even looking at the ships closing on the beach, it raised its voice.

“I would like to make a closer, hands-on examination of both patients,” it went on, “for purposes of comparison and to obtain physical confirmation of the scanner findings.”

“Of course,” said Prilicla. “But first give me a few minutes so that Naydrad can render them unconscious.”

“But why?” it asked. “We’re very short of time.”

“I’m sorry, friend Murchison,” he replied, “but unlike the Terragar officers, the Trolanni would take no pleasure in the sight of your body.”

From the deeply upholstered comfort of his control couch, which felt about as soft as a wooden plank due to the body tension required to make him appear relaxed to his subordinates, Captain Fletcher watched the image of the ships and aircraft of the spider landing force as it expanded in his forward vision screen.

Rhabwar was not a large vessel by Monitor Corps standards, but it was a little longer and its delta wing configuration gave it more width than the big, flattened, turtlelike ships of the opposition. The approach he had originally planned would certainly have caused maximum non-offensive confusion, if not utter havoc and demoralization, to the opposition. But he had remembered the words of Pathologist Murchison as she had been telling him how he should do his job.

His idea had been to go in low and fast and drag a sonic Shockwave along the length of the beach. He didn’t think that the ships would suffer or — except psychologically — their crews, but the thought of what the air turbulence created by a supersonic fly-past would do to those ridiculously flimsy gliders made it a bad idea. It wouldn’t be like shooting ducks, he thought, but more like blasting butterflies out of the sky.

“Decelerate,” he said, “and bring us to a halt one hundred meters above the beach midway between the station and the water-line. Deploy three tractor beams in pressor mode at equal strength in stilt configuration and hold us there.”

“Sir,” said Haslam, “the slower approach is going to give them time to begin landing their people on the beach.”

The captain didn’t reply because he could see everything that was happening as well as the lieutenant could and had arrived at the same conclusion.

“Dodds,” he said. “The opposition’s ships are highly flammable. When we’re in position, swing around so that our tail flare will be directed inland. Then put out one forward tractor to discourage the spider advance. Focus it to about ten meters’ surface diameter and change the point of focus erratically for maximum turbulence as you play it back and forth along the beach across their path. The idea is to create a localized sandstorm down there.”

“Understood, sir,” said Dodds.

“Power room,” he went on briskly. “We’ll be supporting the ship’s mass on pressor beams with no assist from the thrusters for a while. How long can you give us? A rough estimate will do.”

“A moment, please,” said the engineering officer; then, “Approximately seventy-three minutes on full power drain, reducing by one-point-three percent per minute until exhaustion and an enforced grounding seventeen-point-three minutes later.”

“Thank you, Chen.” said Fletcher, smiling to himself. The power-room lieutenant was a man who disliked giving rough approximations. “I’m putting this operation on your repeater screen. Enjoy the, ah, battle.”

The misty-blue light given off by their three immaterial stilts as well as that of the forward tractor beam would be difficult for the spiders to see in the bright sunlight, so it would seem that the ship drifting to a stop above them was virtually weightless, or at least very lightly built like one of their own flying machines.

“A suggestion, sir,” said Chen suddenly. “If your intention

is to make a blatant demonstration of power that will discourage, and probably scare hell out of the enemy without inflicting actual physical injury, this is the way to do it___”

“The spiders aren’t our enemy, Lieutenant,” said Fletcher dryly, “they just act that way. But go on.”

“But if they don’t discourage easily,” the other continued, “we could be faced with a siege situation so that balancing ourselves up here on power-hungry stilts would be a short-term activity as well as running down our power reserves. My suggestion is that we land and modify the meteorite shield to provide hemispherical protection widely enough to cover the station and ourselves. That way we can maintain the shield for a much longer period. Once we’ve made the point, which we have, that we are large, dangerous, and, if necessary, can float motionless in the air, there’s no reason to continue doing so. With respect, sir, I think we should land sooner rather than later.”

Exactly the same thoughts had been going through Fletcher’s mind, but saying so to Lieutenant Chen would have made the captain sound petty-minded in the extreme. But a development that the other had not foreseen, at least not yet, was that if a spider aircraft should fly into one of the pressor beams supporting Rhabwar’s weight, it and its pilot would be smashed flat into the ground.

“Thank you, Chen,” he said instead. “Your suggestion is approved. Haslam, take us down. Dodds, kill the pressors but maintain the forward tractor to keep that sandstorm going. Chen, how soon will the meteorite-shield modification be ready?”

“It’s difficult to be precise,” said Chen. “Fairly soon.”

“Try to make it sooner than that,” he said.

The gliders had sheared off at Rhabwar’s approach but now they were circling back again, possibly thinking that the grounding of the ship was a sign of weakness. All three of the spider vessels had run their prows up onto the beach and the nearest one had its landing-ramp lowered. The first few spiders were already crawling ashore with crossbows held at the ready. Dodds took a moment to check the focus of his tractor beam. The landing party now numbered close on twenty, with more of them coming down the ramps at intervals of a few seconds.

Directly in front of them a carpet of sand twenty meters in diameter and aboutthree inches deep rose high into the air and exploded into a cloud as the tractor’s point of focus was vibrated erratically in and out. A thick curtain of fine, powdery sand dropped in front of and a little on top of the spiders.

For a moment they milled about uncertainly. Then Fletcher saw a spider with a large speaking trumpet climb onto the superstructure of it ship to chitter loudly at them. At once they split into two groups that crawled rapidly along the beach in opposite directions. The sandstorm, its effect only slightly diminished by the fact that the line of targets was lengthening, followed them.

The other two ships were also disgorging spiders while the gliders were flying in tight circles above Rhabwar and the station, although fortunately not low enough for them to hit the meteorite shield when it came on.