His soldiers would not have recognized Jesus Pietro, but they would have understood. All but two or three of the men and women around him were purebred crew. Their chauffeurs, including his own, had prudently stayed in their cars. Jesus Pietro Castro was obsequious, deferential, and very careful not to joggle an elbow or to step on a toe or even to find himself in somebody's path.
As a result, his vision was blocked when Millard Parlette, a real descendant of the first Captain of the Planck, opened the capsule and reached in. He did see what the ancient held up to the sunlight, the better to examine it.
It was a rectangular solid with rounded edges, and it had been packed in a resilient material which was now disintegrating. The bottom half was metal. The top was a remote descendant of glass, hard as the cheaper steel alloys, more transparent than a windowpane. And in the top half floated something shapeless.
Jesus Pietro felt his mouth fall open. He looked harder. His eyelids squinted, his pupils dilated. Yes, he knew what this was. It was what the maser message had promised six months ago.
A great gift, and a great danger.
"This must be our most carefully guarded secret," Millard Parlette was saying in a voice like a squeaky door. "No word must ever leak out. If the colonists saw this, they'd blow it out of all proportion. We'll have to tell Castro to--Castro! Where the Mist Demons is Castro?"
"Here I am, sir."
Polly fitted the camera back in its case and began to work her way deeper into the woods. She'd taken several pictures, and two were telescopic shots of the thing in the glass case. Her eyes hadn't seen it clearly, but the film would show it in detail.
She went up a tree with the camera about her neck. The leaves and branches tried to push her back, but she fought through, deeper and deeper into the protecting leaves. When she stopped, there was hardly a square inch of her that didn't feel the gentle pressure. It was dark as the caves of Pluto.
In a few minutes the police would be all through here. They would wait only until the crew was gone before converging on this area. It was not enough that Polly be invisible. There must be enough leaves to block any infrared fight leaving her body.
She could hardly blame herself for losing the capsule. The Sons of Earth had been unable to translate the maser message, but the crew had. They knew the capsule's worth. But so did Polly--now. When the eighteen thousand colonists of Mount Lookitthat knew what was in that capsule ...
Night came. The Implementation police had collected all the colonists they could find. None had seen the capsule after it came down, and all would be released after questioning. Now the police spread out with infrared detectors. There were several spots of random heat in Polly's grove, and all were sprayed with sonic stunners. Polly never knew she'd been hit. When she woke next morning, she was relieved to find herself still in her perch. She waited until high noon, then moved toward the Beta-Gamma Bridge with her camera hidden under the mushrooms.
CHAPTER 2
THE SONS OF EARTH
FROM THE bell tower of Campbelltown came four thunderous ringing notes. The sonic wave-fronts marched out of town in order, crossing fields and roads, diminishing as they came. They overran the mine with hardly a pause. But men looked up, lowering their tools.
Matt smiled for the first time that day. Already he could taste cold beer.
The bicycle ride from the mine was all downhill. He reached Cziller's as the place was beginning to fill up. He ordered a pitcher, as usual, and downed the first glassful without drawing breath. A kind of bliss settled on him, and he poured his second glass carefully down the side to avoid a head. He sat sipping it while more and more freed workmen poured into the taproom.
Tomorrow was Saturday. For two days and three nights he could forget the undependable little beasties who earned him his living.
Presently an elbow hit him in the neck. He ignored it: a habit his ancestors had brought from crowded Earth and retained. But the second time the elbow poked him, he had the glass to his lips. With beer dripping wetly down his neck, be turned to deliver a mild reproof.
"Sorry," said a short dark man with straight black hair. He had a thin, expressionless face and the air of a tired clerk. Matt looked more closely.
"Hood," he said.
"Yes, my name is Hood. But I don't recognize you." The man put a question in his voice. Matt grinned, for he liked flamboyant gestures. He wrapped his fingers in his collar and pulled his shirt open to the waist. "Try again," he invited.
The clerkish type shied back, and then his eyes caught the tiny scar on Matt's chest. "Keller."
"Right," said Matt, and zipped his shirt up.
"Keller. I'll be d-damned," said Hood. You could tell somehow that he saved such words for emergencies. "It's been at least seven years. What have you been doing lately?"
"Grab that seat." Hood saw his opportunity and was into the stool next to Matt before the occupant was fully out of it. "I've been playing nursemaid to mining worms. And you?" Hood's smile suddenly died. "Er-you don't still hold that scar against me, do you?"
"No!" Matt said with explosive sincerity. "That whole thing was my fault. Anyway it was a long time ago." It was. Matt had been in the eighth grade that fall day when Hood came into Matt's classroom to borrow the pencil sharpener. It was the first time he'd ever seen Hood: a boy about Matt's size, though obviously a year older, an undersized, very nervous upperclassman. Unfortunately the teacher was out of the room. Hood had marched the full length of the room, not looking at anyone, sharpened his pencil, and turned to find his escape blocked by a mob of yelling, bounding eighth graders. To Hood, a new arrival at the school, they must have looked like a horde of cannibals. And in the forefront was Matt, using a chair in the style of an animal trainer. Exit Hood, running, wild with terror. He had left the sharpened point of his pencil in Matt's chest. It was one of the few times Matt had acted the bully. To him, the scar was a badge of shame.
"Good," said Hood, his relief showing. "So you're a miner now?"
"Right, and regretting it every waking hour. I rue the day Earth sent us those little snakes."
"It must be better than digging the holes yourself."
"Think so? Are you ready for a lecture?"
"Just a second." Hood drained his glass in a heroic gesture. "Ready."
"A mining worm is five inches long and a quarter inch in diameter, mutated from an earthworm. Its grinding orifice is rimmed with little diamond teeth. It ingests metal ores for pleasure, but for food it has to be supplied with blocks of synthetic stuff which is different for each breed of worm-and there's a breed for every metal. This makes things complicated. We've got six breeds out at the mine site, and I've got to see that each breed always has a food block within reach."
"It doesn't sound too complicated. Can't they find their own food?"
"In theory, sure. In practice, not always. But that's not all. What breaks down the ores is a bacterium in the worm's stomach. Then the worm drops metal gains around its food block, and we sweep them up. Now, that bacterium, dies very easily. If the bacterium dies, so does the worm, because there's metal ore blocking his intestines. Then the other worms eat his body to recover the ore. Only, five times out of sit it's the wrong ore."
"The worms can't tell each other apart?"
"Flaming right they can't. They eat the wrong metals, they eat the wrong worms, they eat the wrong food blocks; and when they do everything right, they still die in ten days. They were built that way because their teeth wear out so fast. They're supposed to breed like mad to compensate, but the plain truth is they don't have time when they're on the job. We have to keep going back to the crew for more."