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Trigger couldn't keep from staring at the subspace station. It wasunbelievable.
One could still tell that the human construction gangs had put up astandard type of armored station down there. A very big, very massiveone, but normally shaped, nearly spherical. One could tell it only bythe fact that at the gun pits the original material still showedthrough. Everywhere else it had vanished under great black masses ofmaterial 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, perhapshundreds of different types. It looked like a wet, black, rotten stumpswarming with life inside and out.
Neither she nor the two men had made much mention of its appearance. Allyou could say was that it was horrible.
The plasmoids they could see ignored the ship. They also gave nonoticeable attention to the eight space flares the Commissioner had setin a rough cube about the station. But for the first two hours aftertheir arrival, the ship's meteor reflectors remained active. Anoccasional tap at first, then an almost continuous pecking, finally atwenty-minute drumfire that filled the reflector screens with madlydancing clouds of tiny sparks. Suddenly it ended. Either the kingplasmoid had exhausted its supply of that particular weapon or itpreferred to conserve what it had left.
"Might test their guns," the Commissioner muttered. He looked veryunhappy, Trigger thought.
He circled off, put on speed, came back and flicked the ship past thestation's flank. He drew bursts from two pits with a promptness whichconfirmed what already had been almost a certainty--that the guninstallations operated automatically. They seemed remarkably feebleweapons for a station of that size. The Devagas apparently had had senseenough not to give the plasmoid every advantage.
The Commissioner plunked a test shot next into one of the blackprotuberances. A small fiery crater appeared. It darkened quickly again.Out of the biggest opening, down near what would have been the foot ofthe stump if it had been a stump, something, long, red and wormlikewriggled rapidly. It flowed up over the structure's surface to thedamaged point and thrust the tip of its front end into the crater. Blackmaterial began to flow from the tip. The plasmoid moved its front endback and forth across the damaged area. Others of the same kind came outand 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 sleptfor 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 VishniFleet people and any other human beings who might have been on thestation when it was turned over to the king plasmoid were no longeralive. Unless, of course, something had been done to them much moredrastic than had happened to the Aurora's crew. The ship had passed bythe biggest opening, like a low wide black mouth, close enough to makeout that it extended far back into the original station's interior. Thestation was open and airless as Harvest Moon had been before the humansgot there.
"Some of those things down there," the Commissioner said, "hadattachments 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 nomaneuverability to speak of. If the termites didn't get to us before wegot inside. Suits won't do it here." He was a gambler, and a gamblerdoesn'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. Scratchingaround on the surface with them would just mark the thing up. We canwiden that opening by quite a bit, and once it's widened, I can flip inthe bomb. But it would be just blind luck if we nailed the one we'reafter that way. With a dozen bombs we could break up the station. But wedon't have them."
They nodded thoughtfully.
"The worst part of that," he went on, "is that it would be completelyobvious. The Council's right when it worries about fumbles here. Tranestand the Devagas know the thing is in there. If the Federation can'tproduce it, both those outfits have the Council over a barrel. Or wecould be setting the Hub up for fifty years of fighting among the memberworlds, 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 justcan'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 betrying the guns and the bomb finally, and then see what else we cando.... Now look, we've got--what is it?--nine or ten hours left. Thefirst of the boys are pretty sure to come helling in around then. Ormaybe something's happened we don't know about, and they'll be here inthirty minutes. We can't tell. But I'm in favor of knocking off now andjust grabbing a couple of hours' sleep. Then we'll get our brainstogether again. Maybe by then somebody has come up with something likean 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'tworry! I'll put her on a wide orbit and I'll stick out every alarm onboard. I'll also sleep in the control chair. But in case somebody getshere early, we've got to be around to tell them about that space termitetrick."
* * * * *
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 theway 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. Aftera moment, she got out of the bunk and went up the passage toward thelounge and the control section.
Holati Tate was lying slumped back in his chair, eyes closed, breathingslowly and evenly. Trigger put out a hand to touch his shoulder andthen drew it back. She glanced up for a moment at the plasmoid stationin the screen, seeming to turn slowly as they went orbiting by it. Shenoticed 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. Shelooked away quickly again, turned and went restlessly back through thelounge, and up the passage, toward the cabins. She went by the two suitsof space armor at the lock without looking at them. She opened the doorto Mantelish's cabin and looked inside. The professor lay sprawledacross the bunk in his clothes, breathing slowly and regularly.
Trigger closed his door again. Lyad might be wakeful, she thought. Shecrossed the passage and unlocked the door to the Ermetyne's cabin. Thelights 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 fora moment. She frowned intensely at nothing. Then she closed and lockedthe cabin door, went back up the passage and into the control room. Shesat down before the communicator, glanced up once more at the plasmoidstation in the screen, got up restlessly and went over to theCommissioner's chair. She stood there, looking down at him. TheCommissioner slept on.
Then Repulsive said it again.
"No!" Trigger whispered fiercely. "I won't! I can't! You can't make medo it!"
There was a stillness then, In the stillness, it was made very clearthat nobody intended to make her do anything.
And then the stillness just waited.
She cried a little.
So this was it.
"All right," she said.
* * * * *
The armor suit's triple light-beam blazed into the wide, low, black,wet-looking mouth rushing toward her. It was much bigger than she hadthought when looking at it from the ship. Far behind her, the fireneedles of the single gun pit which her passage to the station hadaroused still slashed mindlessly about. They weren't gea
red to stopsuits, and they hadn't come anywhere near her. But the plasmoids lookedgeared to stop suits.
They were swarming in clusters in the black mouth like maggots in arotting skull. Part of the swarms had spilled out over the lips of themouth, clinging, crawling, rippling swiftly about. Trigger shifted theflight controls with the fingers of one hand, dropping a little, thenstraightening again. She might be coming in too fast. But she had to getpast that mass at the opening.
Then the black mouth suddenly yawned wide before her. Her left handpressed the gun handle. Twin blasts stabbed ahead, blinding white,struck the churning masses, blazed over them. They burned, scattered,exploded, and rolled back, burning and exploding, in a double wave tomeet her.
"Too fast!" Repulsive said anxiously. "Much too fast!"
She knew it. But she couldn't have forced herself to do it slowly. Thearmor suit slammed at a slant into a piled, writhing, burning hardnessof plasmoid bodies, bounced upward. She went over and over, yanking downall the way on the flight controls. She closed her eyes for a moment.
When she opened them again, the suit hung poised a little above blackuneven flooring, turned back half toward the entrance mouth. A blackceiling was less than twenty feet above her head.
The plasmoids were there. The suit's light beams played over the massed,moving ranks: squat bodies and sinuous ones, immensities that scrapedthe ceiling, stalked limbs and gaping nutcracker jaws, blurs of motionher eyes couldn't step down to define into shapes. Some still blazedwith her guns' white fire. The closest were thirty feet away.
They stayed there. They didn't come any closer.
She swung the suit slowly away from the entrance. The ring was closedall about her. But it wasn't tightening.
Repulsive had thought he could do it.
She asked in her mind, "Which way?"
She got a feeling of direction, turned the suit a little more andstarted it gliding forward. The ranks ahead didn't give way, but theywent down. Those that could go down. Some weren't built for it. The suitbumped up gently against one huge bulk, and a six-inch pale blue eyelooked at her for a moment as she went circling around it. "Eyes forwhat?" somebody in the back of her mind wondered briefly. She glancedinto the suit's rear view screen and saw that the ones who had gone downwere getting up again, mixed with the ones who came crowding after her.Thirty feet away!
Repulsive was doing it.
So far there weren't any guns. If they hit guns, that would be her joband the suit's. The king plasmoid should be regretting by now that ithad wasted its experimental human material. Though it mightn't have beenreally wasted; it might be incorporated in the stuff that came crowdingafter her, and kept going down ahead.
Black ceiling, black floor seemed to stretch on endlessly. She kept thesuit moving slowly along. At last the beams picked up low walls ahead,converging at the point toward which the suit was gliding. At the pointof convergence there seemed to be a narrow passage.
Plasmoid bodies were wedged into it.
* * * * *
The suit pulled them out one by one, its steel grippers clamping downupon things no softer than itself. But it had power to work with andthey didn't, at the moment. Behind the ones it pulled out there werepresently glimpses of the swiftly weaving motion of giant redworm-shapes sealing up the passage. After a while, they stopped weavingeach time the suit returned and started again as it withdrew, draggingout another plasmoid body.
Then the suit went gliding over a stilled tangle of red worm bodies. Andthere was the sealed end of the passage.
The stuff was still soft. The guns blazed, bit into it, ate it away,their brilliance washing back over the suit. The sealing gave way beforethe suit did. They went through and came out into....
She didn't know what they had come out into. It was like a fog ofdarkness, growing thicker as they went sliding forward. The light beamsseemed to be dimming. Then they quietly went out as if they'd switchedthemselves off.
In blackness, she fingered the light controls and knew they weren'tswitched off.
"Repulsive!" she cried in her mind.
Repulsive couldn't help with the blackness. She got the feeling ofdirection. The blackness seemed to be soaking behind her eyes. She heldthe speed throttle steady in fingers slippery with sweat, and that wasthe only way she could tell they were still moving forward.
After a while, they bumped gently against something that had to be awall, it was so big, though at first she wasn't sure it was a wall. Theymoved along it for a time, then came to the end of it and were moving inthe right direction again.
They seemed to be in a passage now, a rather narrow one. They touchedwalls and ceiling from time to time. She thought they were movingdownward.
There was a picture in front of her. She realized suddenly that she hadbeen watching it for some time. But it wasn't until this moment that shebecame really aware of it.
The beast was big, strong and angry. It bellowed and screamed, shakingand covered with foam. She couldn't see it too clearly, but she had theimpression of mad, staring eyes and a terrible lust to crush anddestroy.
But something was holding it. Something held it quietly and firmly, forall its plunging. It reared once more now, a gross, lumbering hugeness,and came crashing down to its knees. Then it went over on its side.
The suit's beams flashed on. Trigger squeezed her eyes tight shut,blinded by the light that flashed back from black walls all around. Thenher fingers remembered the right drill and dimmed the lights. She openedher eyes again and stared for a long moment at the great graymummy-shape before one of the black walls.
"Repulsive?" she asked in her mind.
Repulsive didn't answer. The suit hung quietly in the huge blackchamber. She didn't remember having stopped it. She turned it nowslowly. There were eight or nine passages leading out of here, throughwalls, ceiling, floor.
"Repulsive!" she cried plaintively.
Silence.
She glanced once more at the king plasmoid against the wall. It stayedsilent too. And it was as if the two silences cancelled each other out.
She remembered the last feeling of moving downward and lifted the suittoward a passage that came in through the ceiling. She hung before it,considering. Far up and back in its darkness, a bright light suddenlyblazed, vanished, and blazed again. Something was coming down thepassage, fast....
Her hand started for the gun handle. Then it remembered another drilland flashed to the suit's communicator. A voice crashed in around her.
"Trigger, Trigger, Trigger!" it sobbed.
"Ape!" she screamed. "You aren't hurt?"