He glanced down at the planet face below them. Was it really the one? If it were, in one way it would be a relief.
But if it were, what violence could go shooting down at it!
His sigh was very deep.
Chapter 2
Terl was purring. He was moving into his office today!
There had been a few bad moments. This morning he had sent Lars into it to make sure it was not booby-trapped– better Lars blew up than he.
The compound in general had been in a bit of a turmoil. General Snith had come down and commandeered all the dead bodies of the slaughtered commando and had had a fight with a couple of his officers, apparently concerning mess table allocations. But Snith had resolved all that. There were twenty-eight bodies, eighteen active commandos. So he had hit on the masterful solution of one body to be issued to each commando, two to the officer's mess, six to the women and children, and two to his own table. So that had died down.
The thirteenth commando had cleaned the place up and the fifth commando had taken over the duty, all very smooth and military. They were all very polite to Terl and so it was obvious they knew who their boss was.
But right after things had smoothed out, Lars came screaming back to the cage to tell Terl that the place was booby-trapped. Worse, he didn't have a clue how to disarm a booby trap.
Knowing he had better not let any of these Brigantes loose in the place-they'd stink it up and maybe blow it up-Terl himself had had to go in to handle the trap.
It was right inside the kneehole of the desk. Knowing that one booby trap could have another under it to explode when the top one was removed, he had taken a lot of care to remove it.
When he had disarmed it, he was about to throw it out when he saw that it had hairs stuck in it. They were gray Psychlo wrist hairs! Ker's fur was orange. And somebody had broken a claw tip while pushing the plastic explosive down around the edges: it was too big a tip for it to be Ker's.
On hearing about this booby trap the first time, Terl had supposed it would be the animal's doings. According to what he had learned, the animal had remained behind after the other two left and probably had planted this trap.
The fact that the animal had not come up and killed him too when the animal had wiped out this commando had troubled Terl. This was the second or third time the animal had had a chance to kill him but had not done so. Eerie. Unnatural. So he had figured out that the animal, having planted this booby trap, thought it was all cared for.
These bits of fur and the claw tip changed that. Once more, the animal had not killed him or tried to. Very abnormal behavior. Terl finally came to a conclusion, however. The animal had been so beaten about by Terl that the animal was afraid of him. That was the right answer!
Terl was comfortable with this until he realized that it was the Psychlos down
In the lower dormitory who had sneaked up here and planted the trap.
Instantly he demanded their slaughter. He didn't want them around anyway. But Lars had come back and said that that very morning all thirty-three of them had been removed under cadet guard and had been shipped overseas– and here was the requisition for goo-food, kerbango, breathe-gas, etc., to prove it. So Terl got over his fright and began to collect the odd bits such as the dictionary and extra breathe-gas vials from the cage, walked out of it forever, and went back to his office.
What a relief to be out of the sun and air of this accursed planet!
He locked the door and turned on the breathe-gas circulator and soon he could take off his mask. What a relief to have a mask off.
Terl looked around. Some things had been moved out. No drone recorders. Who wanted them? No radio links. So what? Compound intercoms all dead. Who cared?
But the place was all set up to work. He thought one table was out of position and sought to move it and found it was welded down. Even welded down with an armor weld! Ho, ho! Somebody wanted that table in exactly that place! Ah, ha! That was why the animal remained behind. The place was bugged!
They hadn't moved his clothes out. Later, he would dress and become civilized again. But just now he wanted his green dress boots. There they were. They even had dust on the floor around them and hadn't been moved an inch. He turned the right boot upside-down, twisted the heel, and the cabinet keys fell out.
He went back into the main office room. Ah, hah! They had tried to jimmy the cabinets. There were the jimmy marks and one door slightly bent. But Terl knew you couldn't jimmy security cabinets open. He unlocked them all. Everything all in its same old place! Better and better.
He picked up the bug detector, inspected it. He turned it on. And right away a buzz! Lights flashing! Devils but this place was really bugged!
For a solid hour, Terl did nothing but remove bugs. Micro-microphones, button cameras, scanners. All in very hidden places, all focused to zero in on the key work areas.
Thirty-one of them. He had been tossing them, when found, onto his desk. He counted again.
Thirty-one. Oh, that animal had been busy! And stupid! Terl bet every other detector had been removed from the
compound.
Finally he put on a tunic. Somebody had stacked a whole crate of kerbango pans against the wall and he was eyeing it. He was about to indulge when he thought, “Just one more sweep,” and passed the bug detector around again. It whined!
For fifteen minutes he searched and searched. And then he found it. It was a micro set into the design of the top tunic button. He was wearing it.
Thirty-two. He checked out all his other clothes. No more. He thought he had better look into the ducts visually. They didn't register on the detector but who knew? But when he tried to steady himself on a chair by touching the duct frame it was wobbly. No more of that! He could let air into this place. Shoddy work. But what could one expect?
He surveyed the place again. He stood and laughed when he saw the components rack. Every assorted type of component, each with a big label above the box. And one of the button cameras he'd found hidden in a light fixture had been trained straight on it. Stupid animal!
Then he suddenly realized there must be a planted feeder unit to power these bugs and relay their coverage.
He put a mask on and got Lars. They went up and down the passageways. And there it was! A whole feeder unit, all wired up, right inside a recess closet for fire apparatus. He pulled it out and turned it off. Such a thing could run for half a year.
And recorders? It must have been relaying to recorders. Within a few hundred feet. He went back and got a mine radio, turned the feeder on, and very shortly ran down the recorder.
Just inside the garage door where anyone could pass in and out to change its discs without much observation. Stupid animal!
He turned the thing off and took it away. Who cared about any others? They were blind now that they had no bugs to feed or record.
Happily, he went back into his office, barred it, rechecked with his detector. Beautiful silence. No lights. Wonderful.
Privacy at last.
He put on some pants and boots. He opened up a pan of kerbango and sank back in his chair, luxuriating.
Home to wealth and power. That's where he was going now. And this time he would set such a trap that the animal would be gobbled up if he even came near it.
After nearly an hour, he thought he had better get to work.
But first things first. He had better calculate how much time he had to get this job done. And then start on the construction of a weapon so lethal and deadly that the company never used it except in the extreme emergency of planet destruction. After he fired, this place would be just a smudge in the sky.