Robert Silverberg - Those Who Watch

“I know. The photon screens are going crazy.” Bar-48-Codon-adf ran his fingers over the Kranazoi ship’s sensor inputs, while Bar-51-Codon-bgt began to check the roster of known Dirnan watcher ships in the vicinity. By the time she-it had identified the particular ship on the master chart, he had found the bit of information he most feared to find: three shapes of approximately Dirnan mass, bailing out and dropping Earthward.

This is some kind of trick,” he muttered. “They’re staging a landing. Three of them just dropped from that ship before it blew!”

“Are you sure they’re alive?” Bar-51-Codon-bgt asked.

He scowled at her-it. “They got away moments before the explosion. It’s a deliberate landing! They’re violating all the covenants! We’ve got to get after them and trace them, or we’re in the stew!”

Calmly, calmly. You aren’t making sense. If they were pulling a deliberate landing, why would they let their ship explode? That splash might be registered on every screen the Earthmen have. If you’d been ordered to land on Earth, would you do it so publicly?”

Bar-48-Codon-adf subsided. “Even so, deliberate or not, they’ve landed.”

“Dead on landing, possibly.”

“Possibly. Possibly not. You want to risk it? I wouldn’t. They’ll brainburn us at Headquarters if we mess this up. We’ve got to land and track those damned Dirnans, and find out what they’re up to!”

Bar-51-Coden-bgt looked horrified. “ Land? On Earth? We’re watchers!”

“The covenants permit landing in case of questionable behavior by the other side. If a couple of Kranazoi happened to drop down on Earth like that, don’t you think the Dirnans would have a swarm of their watchers following us right away? We can’t afford to let them get a jump on us. At least, I can’t. Wake the others up.”

She-it objected. The other two had had a successful mating a few hours earlier; they were entitled to their sleep. But Bar-48-Codon-adf was insistent, and when he got into a mood like that, there was no refusing him. Shortly, the remaining two members of the mating unit came stumbling from their sleep compartments, looking disgruntled and resentful, and not at all perturbed by the apparent landing of three members of the rival power on the neutral territory of Earth. It perturbed them much more that Bar-48-Codon-adf had intruded on their sleep, and they let him know about it. The bickering continued for several minutes, during which time Bar-48-Codon-adf altered the ship’s course to take it south toward the site of the Dirnan landing. He allowed the others to purge themselves of their hostilities.

When they were reasonably rational again he said, “We’ll bring the ship down to cruising altitude and I make a jump. Notify Headquarters of what we’re doing, and stay within pickup range until you hear from me again.”

“You’re going down there alone?” Bar-51-Codon-bgt asked fearfully.

“I won’t get into trouble. No one harms a fat man. I’ll look around, track the Dirnans, try to get some angle on what they’re up to. When I know something, I’ll have you come and get me.”

Bar-79-Codon-zzz said scornfully, “Hero! Medal-hunter!”

“Cut it out. Where’s your sense of responsibility? Where’s your patriotism?”

Bar-79-Codon-zzz, who was a total-female in the mating unit and also wore the disguise of a female Earthman, glowered at him. “Don’t talk to me of patriotism, will you? We’re a long way from home, doing a dull, pointless, idiotic assignment for purely ritualistic reasons, and I’ll be fried if I’ll take it as seriously as you do. Cops-and-robbers! Skimming around over this hideous planet like filthy snoops! Why don’t we just let the Dirnans have it, and—”

Bar-51-Codon-bgt gave her a nudge. “Save it,” she-it mur-mured. “His mind’s made up. Anyway, it might just be important. Let him go down there, if he wants/

The matter was settled. The Kranazoi ship dipped Earthward, slicing through the night sky on full opaquers. Bar-48-Codon-adf was annoyed by the attitude of his shipmates, but he had no wish to get into a prolonged argument with them now. Duty was duty. They were posted here not only to keep watch over Earth, but over the activities of their rivals, the Dirnans, as well. Duty required him to land and pursue — and, if necessary, to arrest the three on violation of the covenants.

With the ship at an altitude of thirty-thousand feet, Bar-48-Codon-adf filed a formal notice of his intent to land, and his reasons for so doing. At an altitude of twenty-thousand feet he donned his drop equipment, which he had never expected to use. At an altitude of ten-thousand feet he stepped through the hatch with supreme confidence and let himself fall.

The landing was bumpy, but not really bad. Bar-48-Codon-adf removed his drop gear and twisted the self-destruct stud. It ignited satisfyingly and moments later was wholly atomized. Now he wore the garments as well as the body of a heavy-set Earthman of middle years. He activated his identity training and discovered that his Earthman name was David Bridger, that he was forty-six years old, unmarried, a native of Circleville, Ohio, and a resident of San Francisco, California. He had landed several miles from the city limits of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Dawn was still four or five hours away; he would be safely within the city by morning, and he could begin his quest.

If those three Dirnans were up to anything illegal, he vowed, they’d pay for this. He’d get them before the Covenant Commission and denounce them as meddlers! He’d have them brainburned! Who did they think they were, landing on Earth as though the planet belonged to them?

Scowling, David Bridger of San Francisco — until recently the Kranazoi agent and watcher Bar-48-Codon-adf — trudged briskly toward nearby Albuquerque, thinking dark thoughts about the planet Dirna and all its misbegotten citizens.

For three days Glair hovered on the threshold of consciousness. Her limbs throbbed with fiery pain; her entire body felt bloated and puffy. She knew she was hideous now, and that appalled her. That was harder to take than the pain itself.

A kind of feedback oscillation kept her moving along the border of awareness. When she was awake, the pain was severe, and she began to use her conscious control to knock out any nerve ganglion that she could dispense with. When she had knocked out enough, she began to relax and slide into the non-pain of unconsciousness. But she did not trust herself to go under with her nervous system shut down, and so when she felt herself sliding she would open the ganglia again, and draw back from the gray haze of nothingness in renewed pain. The pain brought a kind of unconsciousness of its own, when she allowed it to go unchecked. Not only the nerves of her outer housing but the nerves of her Dirnan body within were affected by the impulses, which at times were so strong that the neural channels tended to overload.

Dimly, Glair knew that she had been found in the desert and brought to some Earthman dwelling. Dimly, she realized that her suit and even her waistband had been taken from her. She sensed the succession of night and day. She had the idea that she was being given pain-killing drugs — a useless gesture; she couldn’t respond to them — and that something had been done to set her injured legs, which was more useful. But she did not rise fully to consciousness, and took no surveys of her surroundings. She remained quiet in her bath of pain.

Had Vorneen survived the explosion? Had Mirtin lived?

She had been too busy trying to counteract her own faulty jump to pay any attention to what was happening above her. Glair assumed that her two mates had jumped in time, but she had no way of being certain. Again and again she relived her jump — that stupidly akward stumble, that moment of total paralysis as terror invaded her soul, that horrid unbroken plummeting fall. And then the recovery, after a drop of thousands of feet, and the feeling of relief as the deployment screen took hold and broke her descent. Of course, there was no hope of a smooth landing by then; she had already built up a ferocious velocity, and the screen couldn’t possibly decelerate her in time. The best it could do was keep her from being smashed to jelly. She had landed — though she had choked off consciousness before the moment of impact came. She had been badly hurt. She had been found. Glair was sure of nothing else.