James White (ed), page 14
"Later, because of the bare ground we were able to see the exact extent of our success, to count their dead, in other words. Well, we got less than one shipload altogether. The others escaped." Nolan breathed heavily. "And in wooded areas a much higher percentage must get away. We aren't winning, believe me. Of course, neither are the Bugs."
The lieutenant paused then, obviously expecting the sergeant to make some comment. But MacFall kept his mouth shut and saved his breath for the hill, silently observing to himself that Nolan was certainly taking a long time to answer a simple question.
Nolan continued, "The best brains have arrived at the same conclusion. Our offensive weapons are ineffective and our defensive measures impractical; we can't go through life choking on Deedee or in scaled plastic coveralls, or even in undersea buildings like the Bug research labs — which aren't, by the way, Bug-proof. One was killed while leaving the Bermuda lab. Nobody knows how it got in, but it was found by a technician going on leave — while she was combing her hair."
MacFall shuddered in spite of himself. He wondered what the poor girl's face looked like now. Nolan went on, "We've reached about the limit of efficiency with anti-Bug weapons, while they are just beginning to learn ways to harry us. We're terribly vulnerable, you know. I expect you read of that disaster when two three-hundred-seater jetliners collided over London Airport killing the occupants, and thirty-eight officers with falling wreckage. You didn't read that it was caused by three Bugs loose in the control tower. And there are many similar incidents, all hushed up because they show how dangerous the Bugs really are.
"Of course, I don't believe that they could wipe us out completely," Nolan said reassuringly, "but they can certainly make it impossible for us to maintain our present level of civilization."
-
MacFall had the shocked, angry and embarrassed feeling of one who overhears someone preaching sedition and who is not in a position to do anything about it. But then he began to wonder, Nolan was only a lieutenant, but these professors had ways of knowing things, and could sometimes bypass even a full general if they needed men or equipment for a job. Suppose Nolan was telling the truth?
The thought that the Bug war was really a life or death struggle for his race, but played down for propaganda purposes, made MacFall feel angry, uncomfortable and just a little sick. He forced it grimly from his mind, then stolidly repeated his earlier question. "What are you going to do when we find the Bug ship?"
"I thought you might have guessed by now," Nolan said impatiently. His eyes said that MacFall was not a very bright specimen.
If it wasn't for the business with the lion, and the fact that you're an officer, MacFall thought angrily, I'd put my boot in your skinny —
"I'm going to examine the ship," Nolan went on suddenly. "We are hoping that it is damaged in some way and may not be able either to discharge all its occupants or destroy itself. If my main job turns out to be a flop then maybe we can learn something from the ship.
"But the chief purpose of this operation is to try to make peace with the Bugs." MacFall knew that his face was not pretty. Too many Bugs had left their marks on it. But his expression when the lieutenant's words registered could not have helped it any. Nolan moved away from him in involuntary self-defense.
"Be realistic, Sergeant," he said hastily. "Neither side can win, most of the big brass admit that now, and approve of this. And remember, we killed a lot of Bugs before they started attacking us. And they very seldom molest civilians unless there is a lot of anti-Bug activity in the neighborhood. I think we started off on the wrong foot from the beginning —"
"Are you forgetting my men back there?" MacFall burst out despite himself; he did not normally interrupt officers, but this crazy specimen ..."Look what the Bugs did to them. Look what they did even after the big cat had finished with them —"
"Unpleasant things happen in war," Nolan put in quickly. "On both sides."
MacFall ignored that; he found it impossible to feel that objective about the Bugs. He said, "Look at me, then! Nice, aren't I? I'll have this bogey-man kisser for the rest of my life — the Bug-shots are too deep for plastic surgery. But that doesn't matter so much, there are plenty of others the same. It's what it feels like.
"You've never been attacked by a swarm of Bugs, have you, Lieutenant? You don't know what it feels like when they come at you and their little bullets are exploding on your face armor half an inch away from your eyes, wearing it through. Maybe you're lucky and they get through somewhere else. They start blasting little pieces out of your cheek, neck or ear opening. It hurts, Lieutenant. It hurts horribly."
MacFall knew that his voice was rising in pitch, becoming strident with the intensity of his emotions, but he could not control it. He was not so much describing an incident as being forced to live through it again.
"It's worse in the nose. It hurts and you feel you can't breathe. When you do you bubble blood over the inside of your face armor and then you can't see, or it goes down your throat and you think you're drowning in it. What the head-shrinkers call panic reaction takes over then. You want to quit, you want to run away, you can't stand it anymore. So you start tearing off your face armor."
MacFall shut his eyes and clenched his jaws tight. A few seconds later, in a more normal voice he added, "That's when the Bugs really go to work on you."
"I have my orders, Sergeant," Nolan said. The lieutenant's face through his armor looked a peculiar gray color, MacFall thought, suddenly ashamed of himself. Scaring Nolan half to death would help nobody. He fell slightly behind the lieutenant and kept silent, thinking about the unpleasant implications of the news that the big brass were so worried that they were suing the Bugs — mere insects! — for peace!
-
They found the Bug ship half an hour later. It was a stubby, ten-foot, gray torpedo, not the mass of fluffy rust which the Bugs usually left for human investigators.
But close inspection — it seemed empty of life — revealed a hole which went in about eighteen inches back of its rounded nose and came out amidships on the other side. The lieutenant muttered something about a meteoric collision, and the mass of the Bug ship being so small that it had offered no more resistance to the body than a cobweb, so that it had merely suffered a simple puncture without attendant damage from heat transference. Mac-Fall who had no idea what the lieutenant was talking about, said that he supposed that was so.
Nolan bent closer to study the hole which had been ripped in the ship. It was about six inches in diameter, MacFall saw when Nolan motioned him forward to look at it, and it gave a clear but bewildering view of the construction of the ship. Everything was too small to mean anything.
"Spider webs covered in tinsel paper," MacFall said, feeling disappointed. He did not see how anything could be learned from this ship, and said so.
"I suppose you're right," Nolan said. "But the strength of those spider webs ...!" He straightened up, sighed, then went on. "Let's not be defeatist about this. I'm an entomologist, not an engineer or physicist. We've got to have experts examine this, and with greater magnification than that of my pocket lens."
MacFall hefted the walkie-talkie transmitter in his hand and looked a question. "No," the lieutenant said quickly. "We won't send for them yet. First we've got to move this ship as far away from here as possible, then camouflage it with branches. This is the first time one of these has remained whole after landing, probably because its self-destructive mechanism suffered in the collision. But I'm afraid that the Bug swarm which attacked us was not merely abandoning it, they may have been on the way to get help to destroy it and will return. If we hide it they might not be able to find and destroy it before our technicians arrive to do their stuff."
MacFall had not been thinking that far ahead; it sounded like a sensible idea. But as they lifted the large torpedo shape between them — it was incredibly light in weight — MacFall couldn't resist another dig at the lieutenant.
"How about the peace talks?" he said.
A mixture of emotions pulled at the lieutenant's face, but the strongest of them seemed to be disappointment. He really wanted to try that suicidal stunt, MacFall saw with amazement. Nolan was silent for several minutes while they settled the ship onto their shoulders, then he said shortly, "There isn't anyone to talk to."
But he was wrong, very wrong.
-
On the surface of the torpedo between them a small dark opening had appeared no larger than a postage stamp. From it crawled a Bug at least two inches long. Nolan gave a warning hiss. "Let it down," he whispered. "Slowly."
They eased the ship gently to the ground. MacFall hastily checked his armor fastenings, then looked up to find Nolan bent over with his face not more than six inches from the still slowly moving Bug. His face armor was open.
"What a really handsome insect," the lieutenant said in a tone of pleased wonder. It had a shiny brown back with pink spots on it and a yellow underbelly — MacFall thought it loathsome. He tried to tell the lieutenant to cover his face, but he could only mouth silently.
"A species similar to the Hymenoptera, you notice," Nolan went on excitedly, "and like the other Bugs we know." He paused thoughtfully, then went on, "Although the dead Bug specimens which I've examined were badly damaged by the effects of Deedee, I think I can state definitely that this one is a female of the species."
MacFall croaked, "Lieutenant, your face arm —"
"It's all right, Sergeant. It isn't wearing the gray protective membrane used by the males, and I'm positive that it isn't armed, either. We're in luck, Sergeant! Reach me the packet of plastic counters marked 'A' and a roll of tape."
MacFall, still unconvinced that the Bug — the biggest he had yet seen — was harmless, moved to obey.
"Hurry it up!" Nolan said. "And get base on the radio. Tell them to record everything I say, and to re-broadcast it if possible just in case I'm not able to finish this."
It took a few minutes to get the CO. on the set, then Colonel Dawson barked that they would be ready to record and retransmit in ten minutes. Nolan filled the time by taping several of the plastic counters upright onto the hull surface, nudging the Bug in front of them with a gentle forefinger and talking, mostly to himself. MacFall did get some of it, however.
It appeared that in certain species the female insect was little more than an egg-laying machine, and even among this intelligent insect race she would tend to be cowlike, stupid. But not too stupid, Nolan was hoping. He could not understand why the Bug swarm which had attacked them earlier had left her behind. She was equipped with wings and could have traveled with them, and a female would, he was sure, be a very important individual in their culture. Why had she stayed behind?
"We'll be ready for you in three minutes," the base operator's voice said in MacFall's ear. He leaned forward and held the transmitter mouthpiece above the lieutenant's face, relayed the message to him, then asked quickly, "What are those plastic things?"
"There are very small pictures and symbols on them," Nolan answered abstractedly. "I don't know what exactly they show." He grinned suddenly. "That's etymology, a somewhat different field. But if I present them in a certain sequence, and tap my fingers a certain way afterwards, I should get a reaction of some sort ..." He trailed off into silence.
In the phones a voice said, "We're ready now, Sergeant. But Colonel Dawson says that if this thing goes bad on you for any reason, you're to get a specimen of the unrusted metal of the Bug ship. We'll have that much, at least."
MacFall moved the mike nearer to the lieutenant's mouth and nodded for him to go ahead.
-
It seemed like a senseless game to MacFall, but despite that he felt the tension mounting within himself as the lieutenant coaxed and edged the Bug in front of one square of plastic after another, then minutely described each movement of its six hairy legs and every twitch of its near-invisible wings. Nolan went over the same sequence seven times, sighed, and began again.
"If it understands the symbology printed on these counters," the lieutenant muttered aside to MacFall, "and if it understands from them that we want peace with the Bugs as a primary step before less simple concepts are attempted, and if the Bugs are peacefully inclined too ..." He took a deep breath. "... then when I go tap, tap-tap, tap-tap-tap with my finger it should move a leg or wriggle quickly four times to show that it understands and is agreeable — if it doesn't happen to be some Bug halfwit who doesn't know what's going on at all."
MacFall found himself grinning. "Try it again," he said. "Dees dames is all stoopid ..." MacFall could have bitten his tongue out. Unthinkingly he had mimicked Calleria's Bowery accent — the one the corporal had used to tell his most outrageously funny jokes in, because Corporal Calleria had once been a radio actor. MacFall swore under his breath then, thinking of how the corporal had looked a little over half an hour ago after the lion and later the Bugs had finished with him. The two stripes on his arm had been MacFall's only means of identifying him. He felt a sudden surge of sheer hate. His fist clenched and he felt an uncontrollable urge to smash it down on the two-inch long horror crawling about among the bits of plastic, to mash out its stinking life. He didn't want to think of consequences, or weigh pros and cons like the lieutenant. He just wanted to ...
MacFall's arm moved out, fist upraised. Nolan looked up at him, startled. Then they both froze. A distant, high-pitched whine filtered through the trees toward them, barely perceptible as yet but growing in volume with every second which passed. Bugs!
Nolan pointed suddenly through a break in the foliage where the curve of the hilltop showed. A dark gray patch of mist writhed in the air above it, and as MacFall watched, began curling down the slope toward them, expanding and already resolving itself into separate gray specks. "Look!" Nolan cried. "There's thousands of them!"
"At least," MacFall said shakily. There must have been a secret Bug colony in Madagascar — one ship could not have contained one tenth of that sky-darkening swarm. Silently he went to work.
"Quickly," Nolan said, his voice strained. "Get away from the ship. Get well back. They mustn't think that we intend harm to it — Sergeant! What are you doing?"
MacFall had one gauntleted hand gripping the edge of the hole which the meteor had made and was tugging hard. The stuff was unbelievably tough for its weight. Panting slightly, he said, "Colonel Dawson wants a metal specimen before they get a chance to rust it "
At that moment a two-foot strip of the ship's skin came away with a sound like tearing canvas. Underneath was ..."Ugh," MacFall said, hastily turning his head away.
"What ...?" began Nolan, then, "Grubs! The Bug young! That explains ..." He broke off again. "Why had you to do that, dammit? We're trying to make peace, and now they'll think we're wrecking the ship — a ship with their young in it. If you'd half the brains God gave a louse ..."
The Bugs were almost on them, MacFall had never known them to sound so loud. He shouted angrily, "I was acting on orders, dammit. And cover your face!"
"To blazes with my face!" Nolan swore. He reached up and tore his head and face armor off and flung it to the ground. "Orders," he spat out. "You stupid, senseless robot. Give me your Deedee gun! I don't trust you. Give it to me!"
Mad, MacFall thought wildly. These professors were all the same. Cracked to begin with ..."I can handle it better than you," MacFall protested as Nolan literally tore the sprayer and its connected high-pressure tank off his back. It was no use talking. He groped in the long grass for the lieutenant's discarded face armor, found it, then the Bug swarm was all over them.
He saw Nolan holding the Deedee gun high above his head. Heard him shout, "Look! You know what this is!" and hurl the sprayer away from him with all his strength. Then he saw a tiny spurt of red appear on the lieutenant's cheek, and another. Two little red explosions burst on his forehead and another on his ear. He saw Nolan shrug his shoulders desperately as high around his ears as he could, clap a hand to his eyes and try to wrap as much as possible of his other hand and arm around his head for protection. In that particularly contorted position the lieutenant rolled to the ground. He seemed to be trying to wriggle into it like a worm. Mac-Fall turned away quickly. He had troubles of his own.
The Bugs hung so thickly around him that he could barely see the jungle, and the outer surface of his face armor was a continual sparkle as Bug explosive bullets wore at it, pitting it deeply and making it even harder to see. Where the plastic touched his skin, the shocks of the tiny explosions were transmitted through as a succession of tiny, stinging slaps. At this rate MacFall knew that he had about five minutes before he would be in the same position as the lieutenant.
Desperately he lashed out at the almost solid swarm with Nolan's discarded helmet, which was still in his hand. Some of the Bugs dropped spiraling to the ground — but it was nothing, a cupful of water out of an ocean. Never had he known them to attack so viciously, so suicidally and in such numbers.
He felt panic rising in him, and a feeling of choking — something had happened to his air filter. He was boiling in his own sweat and he couldn't breathe! Grimly Mac-Fall fought these feelings, knowing that they were in his mind only, lies. He had to think, keep his head. He was startled to find that he was repeating a phrase over and over to himself, sometimes whispering it, sometimes shouting it. "Don't take off your face armor. Don't take off your face armor ..."
