“Pid,” the Invasion Chief had said at their last interview, “we need this planet desperately.”
“Yes, sir,” Pid had said, standing at full attention, never quivering from Optimum Pilot’s Shape.
“One of you,” the Chief said heavily, “must get through and set up a Displacer near an atomic power source. The army will be standing by at this end, ready to step through.”
“We’ll do it, sir,” Pid said.
“This expedition has to succeed,” the Chief said, and his features blurred momentarily from sheer fatigue. “In strictest confidence, there’s considerable unrest on Grom. The Miner caste is on strike, for instance. They want a new digging shape. Say the old one is inefficient.”
Pid looked properly indignant. The Mining Shape had been set down by the Ancients fifty thousand years ago, together with the rest of the basic shapes. And now these upstarts wanted to change it!
“That’s not all,” the Chief told him. “We’ve uncovered a new Cult of Shapelessness. Picked up almost eight thousand Grom, and I don’t know how many more we missed.”
Pid knew that Shapelessness was a lure of The Shapeless One, the greatest evil that the Grom mind could conceive of. But why, he wondered, did so many Grom fall for His lures?
The Chief guessed his question. “Pid,” he said, “I suppose it’s difficult for you to understand. Do you enjoy Piloting?”
“Yes, sir,” Pid said simply. Enjoy Piloting! It was his entire life! Without a ship, he was nothing.
“Not all Grom feel that way,” the Chief said. “I don’t understand it either. All my ancestors have been Invasion Chiefs, back to the beginning of time. So of course I want to be an Invasion Chief. It’s only natural, as well as lawful. But the lower castes don’t feel that way.” The Chief shook his body sadly. “I’ve told you this for a reason. We Grom need more room. This unrest is caused purely by crowding. All our psychologists say so. Another planet to expand into will cure everything. So we’re counting on you, Pid.”
“Yes, sir,” Pid said, with a glow of pride.
The Chief rose to end the interview. Then he changed his mind and sat down again.
“You’ll have to watch your crew,” he said. “They’re loyal, no doubt, but low-caste. And you know the lower castes.”
Pid did indeed.
“Ger, your Detector, is suspected of harboring Alterationist tendencies. He was once fined for assuming a quasi-Hunter shape. Ilg has never had any definite charge brought against him. But I hear that he remains immobile for suspiciously long periods of time. Possibly, he fancies himself a Thinker.”
“But, sir,” Pid protested. “If they are even slightly tainted with Alterationism or Shapelessness, why send them on this expedition?”
The Chief hesitated before answering. “There are plenty of Grom I could trust,” he said slowly. “But those two have certain qualities of resourcefulness and imagination that will be needed on this expedition.” He sighed. “I really don’t understand why those qualities are usually linked with Shapelessness.”
“Yes, sir,” Pid said.
“Just watch them.”
“Yes, sir,” Pid said again, and saluted, realizing that the interview was at an end. In his body pouch he felt the dormant Displacer, ready to transform the enemy’s power source into a bridge across space for the Grom hordes.
“Good luck,” the chief said. “I’m sure you’ll need it.”
* * * *
The ship dropped silently toward the surface of the enemy planet. Ger the Detector analyzed the clouds below, and fed data into the Camouflage Unit. The Unit went to work. Soon the ship looked, to all outward appearances, like a cirrus formation.
Pid allowed the ship to drift slowly toward the surface of the mystery planet. He was in Optimum Pilot’s Shape now, the most efficient of the four shapes alloted to the Pilot caste. Blind, deaf and dumb, an extension of his controls, all his attention was directed toward matching the velocities of the high-flying clouds, staying among them, becoming a part of them.
Ger remained rigidly in one of the two shapes alloted to Detectors. He fed data into the Camouflage Unit, and the descending ship slowly altered into an alto-cumulus.
There was no sign of activity from the enemy planet.
Ilg located an atomic power source, and fed the data to Pid. The Pilot altered course. He had reached the lowest level of clouds, barely a mile above the surface of the planet. Now his ship looked like a fat, fleecy cumulus.
And still there was no sign of alarm. The unknown fate that had overtaken twenty previous expeditions still had not showed itself.
Dusk crept across the face of the planet as Pid maneuvered near the atomic power installation. He avoided the surrounding homes and hovered over a clump of woods.
Darkness fell, and the green planet’s lone moon was veiled in clouds.
One cloud floated lower.
And landed.
“Quick, everyone out!” Pid shouted, detaching himself from the ship’s controls. He assumed the Pilot’s Shape best suited for running, and raced out the hatch. Ger and Ilg hurried after him. They stopped fifty yards from the ship, and waited.
Inside the ship a little-used circuit closed. There was a silent shudder, and the ship began to melt. Plastic dissolved, metal crumpled. Soon the ship was a great pile of junk, and still the process went on. Big fragments broke into smaller fragments, and split, and split again.
Pid felt suddenly helpless, watching his ship scuttle itself. He was a Pilot, of the Pilot caste. His father had been a Pilot, and his father before him, stretching back to the hazy past when the Grom had first constructed ships. He had spent his entire childhood around ships, his entire manhood flying them.
Now, shipless, he was naked in an alien world.
* * * *
In a few minutes there was only a mound of dust to show where the ship had been. The night wind scattered it through the forest. And then there was nothing at all.
They waited. Nothing happened. The wind sighed and the trees creaked. Squirrels chirped, and birds stirred in their nests. An acorn fell to the ground.
Pid heaved a sigh of relief and sat down. The twenty-first Grom expedition had landed safely.
There was nothing to be done until morning, so Pid began to make plans. They had landed as close to the atomic power installation as they dared. Now they would have to get closer. Somehow, one of them had to get very near the reactor room, in order to activate the Displacer.
Difficult. But Pid felt certain of success. After all, the Grom were strong on ingenuity.
Strong on ingenuity, he thought bitterly, but terribly short of radioactives. That was another reason why this expedition was so important. There was little radioactive fuel left, on any of the Grom worlds. Ages ago, the Grom had spent their store of radioactives in spreading throughout their neighboring worlds, occupying the ones that they could live on.
Now, colonization barely kept up with the mounting birthrate. New worlds were constantly needed.
This particular world, discovered in a scouting expedition, was needed. It suited the Grom perfectly. But it was too far away. They didn’t have enough fuel to mount a conquering space fleet.
Luckily, there was another way. A better way.
Over the centuries, the Grom scientists had developed the Displacer. A triumph of Identity Engineering, the Displacer allowed mass to be moved instantaneously between any two linked points.
One end was set up at Grom’s sole atomic energy plant. The other end had to be placed in proximity to another atomic power source, and activated. Diverted power then flowed through both ends, was modified, and modified again.
Then, through the miracle of Identity Engineering, the Grom could step through from planet to planet; or pour through in a great, overwhelming wave.
It was quite simple.
But twenty expeditions had failed to set up the Earth-end Displacer.
What had happened to them was not known.
For no Grom ship had ever returned to tell.
* * * *
Before dawn they crept through the woods, taking on the coloration of the plants around them. Their Displacers pulsed feebly, sensing the nearness of atomic energy.
A tiny, four-legged creature darted in front of them. Instantly, Ger grew four legs and a long, streamlined body and gave chase.
“Ger! Come back here!” Pid howled at the Detector, throwing caution to the winds.
Ger overtook the animal and knocked it down. He tried to bite it, but he had neglected to grow teeth. The animal jumped free, and vanished into the underbrush. Ger thrust out a set of teeth and bunched his muscles for another leap.
“Ger!”
Reluctantly, the Detector turned away. He loped silently back to Pid.
“I was hungry,” he said.
“You were not,” Pid said sternly.
“Was,” Ger mumbled, writhing with embarrassment.
Pid remembered what the Chief had told him. Ger certainly did have Hunter tendencies. He would have to watch him more closely.
“We’ll have no more of that,” Pid said. “Remember—the lure of Exotic Shapes is not sanctioned. Be content with the shape you were born to.”
Ger nodded, and melted back into the underbrush. They moved on.
At the extreme edge of the woods they could observe the atomic energy installation. Pid disguised himself as a clump of shrubbery, and Ger formed himself into an old log. Ilg, after a moment’s thought, became a young oak.
The installation was in the form of a long, low building, surrounded by a metal fence. There was a gate, and guards in front of it.
The first job, Pid thought, was to get past that gate. He began to consider ways and means.
From the fragmentary reports of the survey parties, Pid knew that, in some ways, this race of Men were like the Grom. They had pets, as the Grom did, and homes and children, and a culture. The inhabitants were skilled mechanically, as were the Grom.
But there were terrific differences, also. The Men were of fixed and immutable form, like stones or trees. And to compensate, their planet boasted a fantastic array of species, types and kinds. This was completely unlike Grom, which had only eight distinct forms of animal life.
And evidently, the Men were skilled at detecting invaders, Pid thought. He wished he knew how the other expeditions had failed. It would make his job much easier.
* * * *
A Man lurched past them on two incredibly stiff legs. Rigidity was evident in his every move. Without looking, he hurried past.
“I know,” Ger said, after the creature had moved away. “I’ll disguise myself as a Man, walk through the gate to the reactor room, and activate my Displacer.”
“You can’t speak their language,” Pid pointed out.
“I won’t speak at all. I’ll ignore them. Look.” Quickly Ger shaped himself into a Man.
“That’s not bad,” Pid said.
Ger tried a few practice steps, copying the bumpy walk of the Man.
“But I’m afraid it won’t work,” Pid said.
“It’s perfectly logical,” Ger pointed out.
“I know. Therefore the other expeditions must have tried it. And none of them came back.”
There was no arguing that. Ger flowed back into the shape of a log. “What, then?” he asked.
“Let me think,” Pid said.
Another creature lurched past, on four legs instead of two. Pid recognized it as a Dog, a pet of Man. He watched it carefully.
The Dog ambled to the gate, head down, in no particular hurry. It walked through, unchallenged, and lay down in the grass.
“H’m,” Pid said.
They watched. One of the Men walked past, and touched the Dog on the head. The Dog stuck out its tongue and rolled over on its side.
“I can do that,” Ger said excitedly. He started to flow into the shape of a Dog.
“No, wait,” Pid said. “We’ll spend the rest of the day thinking it over. This is too important to rush into.”
Ger subsided sulkily.
“Come on, let’s move back,” Pid said. He and Ger started into the woods. Then he remembered Ilg.
“Ilg?” he called softly.
There was no answer.
“Ilg!”
“What? Oh, yes,” an oak tree said, and melted into a bush. “Sorry. What were you saying?”
“We’re moving back,” Pid said. “Were you, by any chance, Thinking?”
“Oh, no,” Ilg assured him. “Just resting.”
Pid let it go at that. There was too much else to worry about.
* * * *
They discussed it for the rest of the day, hidden in the deepest part of the woods. The only alternatives seemed to be Man or Dog. A Tree couldn’t walk past the gates, since that was not in the nature of trees. Nor could anything else, and escape notice.
Going as a Man seemed too risky. They decided that Ger would sally out in the morning as a Dog.
“Now get some sleep,” Pid said.
Obediently his two crewmen flattened out, going immediately Shapeless. But Pid had a more difficult time.
Everything looked too easy. Why wasn’t the atomic installation better guarded? Certainly the Men must have learned something from the expeditions they had captured in the past. Or had they killed them without asking any questions?
You couldn’t tell what an alien would do.
Was that open gate a trap?
Wearily he flowed into a comfortable position on the lumpy ground. Then he pulled himself together hastily.
He had gone Shapeless!
Comfort was not in the line of duty, he reminded himself, and firmly took a Pilot’s Shape.
But a Pilot’s Shape wasn’t constructed for sleeping on damp, bumpy ground. Pid spent a restless night, thinking of ships, and wishing he were flying one.
He awoke in the morning tired and ill-tempered. He nudged Ger.
“Let’s get this over with,” he said.
Ger flowed gaily to his feet.
“Come on, Ilg,” Pid said angrily, looking around. “Wake up.”
There was no reply.
“Ilg!” he called.
Still there was no reply.
“Help me look for him,” Pid said to Ger. “He must be around here somewhere.”
Together they tested every bush, tree, log and shrub in the vicinity. But none of them was Ilg.
Pid began to feel a cold panic run through him. What could have happened to the Radioman?
“Perhaps he decided to go through the gate on his own,” Ger suggested.
Pid considered the possibility. It seemed unlikely. Ilg had never shown much initiative. He had always been content to follow orders.
They waited. But midday came, and there was still no sign of Ilg.
“We can’t wait any longer,” Pid said, and they started through the woods. Pid wondered if Ilg had tried to get through the gates on his own. Those quiet types often concealed a foolhardy streak.
But there was nothing to show that Ilg had been successful. He would have to assume that the Radioman was dead, or captured by the Men.
That left two of them to activate a Displacer.
And he still didn’t know what had happened to the other expeditions.
* * * *
At the edge of the woods, Ger turned himself into a facsimile of a Dog. Pid inspected him carefully.
“A little less tail,” he said.
Ger shortened his tail.
“More ears.”
Ger lengthened his ears,
“Now even them up.”
They became even.
Pid inspected the finished product. As far as he could tell, Ger was perfect, from the tip of his tail to his wet, black nose.
“Good luck,” Pid said.
“Thanks.” Cautiously Ger moved out of the woods, walking in the lurching style of Dogs and Men. At the gate the guard called to him. Pid held his breath.
Ger walk
ed past the Man, ignoring him. The Man started to walk over. Ger broke into a run.
Pid shaped a pair of strong legs for himself, ready to dash if Ger was caught.
But the guard turned back to his gate. Ger stopped running immediately, and strolled quietly toward the main door of the building.
Pid dissolved his legs with a sigh of relief…and then tensed again.
The main door was closed!
Pid hoped the Radioman wouldn’t try to open it. That was not in the nature of Dogs.
As he watched, another Dog came running toward Ger. Ger backed away from him. The Dog approached and sniffed. Ger sniffed back.
Then both of them ran around the building.
That was clever, Pid thought. There was bound to be a door in the rear.
He glanced up at the afternoon sun. As soon as the Displacer was activated, the Grom armies would begin to pour through. By the time the Men recovered from the shock, a million or more Grom troops would be here, weapons and all. With more following.
The day passed slowly, and nothing happened.
Nervously Pid watched the front of the plant. It shouldn’t be taking so long, if Ger were successful.
Late into the night he waited. Men walked in and out of the installation, and Dogs barked around the gates. But Ger did not appear.
Ger had failed. Ilg was gone. Only he was left.
And still he didn’t know what had happened.
* * * *
By morning, Pid was in complete despair. He knew that the twenty-first Grom expedition to this planet was near the point of complete failure. Now it was all up to him.
He saw that workers were arriving in great number, rushing through the gates. He decided to take advantage of the apparent confusion, and started to shape himself into a Man.
A Dog walked past the woods where he was hiding.
“Hello,” the Dog said.
It was Ger!
“What happened?” Pid asked, with a sigh of relief. “Why were you so long? Couldn’t you get in?”
“I don’t know,” Ger said, wagging his tail. “I didn’t try.”
Pid was speechless.
“I went hunting,” Ger said complacently. “This form is ideal for Hunting, you know. I went out the rear gate with another Dog.”
The Robert Sheckley Megapack Page 27
