“As long as necessary,” Boyle said through his teeth.
Sandy mulled that over for a minute. “There’s one other possibility you haven’t mentioned,” he pointed out. “You could just tell them they had to go visit some other star. Would I be correct if I thought you had considered that and decided it wouldn’t work?”
“You would,” Boyle said shortly, but Marguery spoke up, ignoring his angry look.
“They can’t, Sandy,” she told him. “Remember, we said they were desperate. Their drive systems are beginning to wear out. Polly told us that; something about radiation-induced weaknesses in the support structure. She says it’s beginning to get serious. The supports might hold up for a few hundred years yet, or they might go in ten.”
“So they’re stuck here,” Boyle added.
“I see,” Lysander said, nodding. And then he said, “Poor bastards. Well. Is there anything else we need to talk about right now?”
“Only to make sure you know what you’re supposed to do—”
“I do know, Boyle. You think there’ll only be two of the party in the landing craft itself?”
“Usually there are two. They take turns. Two come out and talk to us, two stay in the ship.” Boyle hesitated. “At least,” he said, “I hope so. There’s one little problem.”
“Something else you haven’t told me?” Lysander inquired politely.
“Something I’m telling you now,” Boyle said sharply. “They’ve been out of communication with the interstellar ship for about ten hours now. Interference.”
“What do you mean, interference?”
“We’ve got a high-altitude blimp up there, broadcasting jamming signals,” Boyle explained. “They can’t talk to the ship; the ship can’t talk to them. Don’t give me that kind of look, Lysander! We had to do it. We didn’t want them stirring up trouble when they couldn’t get an answer from Hippolyta or you. It’s possible that they’ll be so concerned about that that they’ll all be in the ship, but probably they’ll take it to be some natural thing, like sunspot effects.”
“You hope,” said Lysander. “Well, it can’t be very comfortable for them in there, so maybe they’ll get out when they can anyway.” He thought for a moment, then added, “I can do what you want me to, I think, although it would be easier if I went in by myself.”
“No. It’s going to be the way I say. Marguery goes with you.”
Sandy shrugged. “And you’ll take them prisoner as they come out?”
“Of course.”
“All right,” said Sandy. “Then there’s just one thing left. I’ll need one of those.” He pointed to the gun at Boyle’s belt.
Boyle raised an eyebrow in surprise. “For what? You said yourself you couldn’t threaten a Hakh’hli.”
Sandy gave him a pleasant smile. “You can kill one,” he said. “And now I’d appreciate it if you’d get me a pencil and paper. And don’t talk to me for a while, please. I think I’d like to write a poem.”
They couldn’t see the little settlement that had grown up around the lander as the jet came down; in that heat-drenched, almost windowless jet they had nothing useful to see out of. Only the pilot had any real visibility.
Peering past the pilot’s head, Lysander caught a glimpse of cloud, sky, mountain, cloud again; and then the aircraft was bouncing along a runway, the jets screaming louder than ever as the reversed thrust slowed them down. The deceleration threw Sandy against his straps.
Then they stopped rolling.
Lysander unbuckled quickly and reached to open the hatch, but Boyle put a hand on his shoulder. “You asked for this,” he said, offering the gun from his holster.
Lysander turned the flat, heavy thing over in his hand, wonderingly. It was so small and so sinister. “This could kill a person?”
“You mean could it kill a Hakh’hli? It could kill an elephant, Sandy. It’s got a shaped charge in the load.”
“Show me how to use it,” said Sandy. Grudgingly Boyle led him around the far side of the ship, toward the open runway. Sandy got only a glimpse of the lander, fully erected, with its brightly colored shrapnel shroud already in place. More than anything else the lander looked like a praying mantis gift-wrapped for Christmas.
It didn’t take long for Boyle to explain safety, sights, and trigger to Sandy. Warned, he braced his arm when he fired it for the first time. Even so the recoil was a surprise. It wasn’t noisy, though. The sound of firing was only a sharp thwuck, rather than the violent explosion he had imagined, but it made a second, louder sound when the charge struck what it was aimed at (or anyway, where it happened to go by courtesy of his inexpert marksmanship). It blew craters a foot deep in the runway as it hit.
Lysander shook his head, turning to Boyle. “That’s no good. I could blow the lander up if I hit the wrong place.”
Boyle said, “Well, I suppose we could give you solid rounds instead of the h.e., but I don’t know if they would kill a Hakh’hli.”
“They won’t know that,” Lysander said. “Give me the rounds.”
Even a dedicated Hakh’hli would not spend days and weeks in the lander if he could help it; it was too cramped, too bare, too uncomfortable—certainly too boring. The humans had obligingly airlifted a sort of cabin in. It was smaller than the common room the cohort had shared back on the big ship. But then, Sandy thought somberly, the cohort was a lot smaller now, too. He saw Bottom peering out of the lander hatch, just above the rodded stick they used for a ladder. Sandy waved to him but didn’t speak. He walked to the door of the Hakh’hli dorm and stood there, looking in.
Tanya and Helena were huddled over a television set. Fortunately it wasn’t in communications mode; they were simply watching the bland Earth networks, long since censored of any news that might disturb the Hakh’hli. Tanya turned to look at Sandy with surprise. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ll show you,” he said in Hakh’hli, putting a finger to his lips.
“Show us what? And what was that noise we heard a little while ago?” Helena grumbled.
Sandy said secretively, “I don’t know. Something the Earth humans were doing, I guess. Don’t waste time.” He peered out the door. “Follow me, and don’t attract attention. All of you. You too, Tanya. Don’t even use the communicator, just come on.”
He didn’t wait for a response. He went out of the cabin, conspicuously nonchalant as he walked toward the tail of the rocket. It cast a long shadow in the hot, late summer day; and he could see by the shadows beside him that the two Hakh’hli were following him.
Marguery was standing at the tail of the rocket, gazing upward as instructed. Tanya stopped short beside Sandy. “Why have you brought the Earth-female here?” she demanded, licking her tongue out suspiciously.
Sandy said easily, “Look and see.” He pointed to a perfectly featureless point on the shroud, and said, “There.”
“There what?” Helena grumbled.
Tanya grunted in annoyance, stretched as high as she could on her long, thick legs, and said peevishly, “I don’t see any—”
That was as far as she got. She toppled forward on her face even before Sandy heard the thwick of the gas gun. Helena managed to whirl long enough to catch sight of Boyle’s sharpshooters, but not in time to do herself any good. It was a fast-acting anesthetic. Both she and Helena were unconscious a moment later.
Sandy signaled to the gunners, crouched at the side of the ship, to take them away and then nodded toward the climbing stick. “Come on then, if you have to,” he ordered Marguery.
As they climbed toward the hatch Bottom popped his head out of the door again, staring curiously but without suspicion at Sandy. Then he caught sight of Marguery coming up behind him. In Hakh’hli Bottom called, “Why are you bringing Earth-female aboard?”