But where the image’s great hand came down there was a bundle of greenery, and when the solid-seeming but immaterial hand moved upward the bundle followed it, kept in position at the apex of three delicately manipulated pressor beams. The fresh, moist bundle of plants and palm fronds was placed close to the still uneasy dinosaur, apparently by the hand which then withdrew. After what seemed like an eternity to the waiting Conway the massive, sinuous neck arched downward. It began poking at the greenery. It began to nibble …
Conway went through the same motions again, and again. All the time he and his fifty-foot image kept edging closer.
The brontosaur, he knew, could at a pinch eat the vegetation which grew around it, but since Dr. Hardin’s sprayer had gone into operation it wasn’t very nice stuff. But it could tell that these tidbits were the real, old stuff; the fresh, juicy, sweet-smelling food that it used to know which had so unaccountably disappeared of late. Its nibbles became hungry gobbling.
Conway said, “All right. Stage Two..
Using the tiny viewer which showed his image’s relationship to the dinosaur as a guide, Conway reached forward again. High up and invisible on the opposite wall of the hull another pressor beam went into operation, synchronizing its movements with the hand which was now apparently stroking the patient’s great neck, and administering a firm but gentle pressure. After an initial instant of panic the patient went back to eating, and occasionally shuddering a little. Arretapec reported that it was enjoying the sensation.
“Now,” said Conway, “We’ll start playing rough.”
Two great hands were placed against its side and massed pressors toppled it over with a ground-shaking crash. In real terror now it threshed and heaved madly in a vain attempt to get its ponderous and ungainly body upright on its feet. But instead of inflicting mortal damage, the great hands continued only to stroke and pat. The brontosaur had quieted and was showing signs of enjoying itself again when the hands moved to a new position. Tractor and pressor beams both seized the recumbent body, yanked it upright and toppled it onto the opposite side.
Using the anti-gravity belt to increase his mobility, Conway began hopping over and around the brontosaur, with Arretapec, who was in rapport with the patient, reporting constantly on the effects of the various stimuli. He stroked, patted, pummeled and pushed at the giant reptile with blown-up, immaterial hands and feet. He yanked its tail and he slapped its neck, and all the time the tractor and pressor crews kept perfect time with him …
Something like this had occurred before, not to mention other things which, it was rumored, had driven one engineer to drink and at least four off it. But it was not until the size factor had been taken into consideration as it had today with this monster tri-di projection that there had been such promising results. Previously it had been as if a mouse were manhandling a St. Bernard during the past week or so — no wonder the brontosaurus had been in a frenzy of panic when all sorts of inexplicable things had been happening to it and the only reason it could see for them was two tiny creatures that were just barely visible to it!
But the patient’s species had roamed its home planet for a hundred million years, and it personally was immensely long-lived. Although its two brains were tiny it was really much smarter than a dog, so that very soon Conway had it trying to sit and beg.
And two hours later the brontosaurus took off.
It rose rapidly from the ground, a monstrous, ungainly and indescribable object with its massive legs making involuntary walking movements and the great neck and tail hanging down and waving slowly. Obviously it was the brain in the sacral area and not the cranium which was handling the levitation, Conway thought, as the great reptile approached the bunch of palm fronds which were balanced tantalizingly two hundred feet above its head. But that was a detail, it was levitating, that was the main thing. Unless—“Are you helping?” Conway said sharply to Arretapec.
The reply was flat and emotionless by necessity, but had the VUXG been human it would have been a yell of sheer triumph.
“Good old Emily!” somebody shouted in Conway’s phones, probably one of the beam operators, then, “Look, she’s passing it!”
The brontosaur had missed the suspended bundle of foliage and was still rising fast. It made a clumsy, convulsive attempt to reach it in passing, which had set up a definite spin. Further wild movements of neck and tail were aggravating it.
“Better get her down out of there,” said a second voice urgently. “That artificial sun could scorch her tail off.”
And that spin is making it panicky,” agreed Conway. “Tractor beam men …!”
But he was too late. Sun, earth and sky were careening in wild, twisting loops around a being which had been hitherto accustomed to solid ground under its feet. It wanted down or up, or somewhere. Despite Arretapec’s frantic attempts to soothe it, it teleported again.
Conway saw the great mountain of flesh and bone go hurtling off at a tangent, at least four times faster than its original speed. He yelled, “H sector men! Cushion it down, gently.”
But there was neither time nor space for the pressor beam men to slow it down gently. To keep it from crashing fatally to the surface — also through the underlying plating and out into space outside — they had to slow it down steadily but firmly, and to the brontosaurus that necessarily sharp braking must have felt like a physical blow. It teleported again.
“C-sector, it’s coming at you!”
But at C it was a repetition of what happened with H, the beast panicked and shot off in another direction. And so it went on, with the great reptile rocketing from one side of the ship’s interior to the other until …
“Skempton here,” said a brisk authoritative voice. “My men say the pressor beam mounts were not designed to stand this sort of thing. Insufficiently braced. The hull plating has sprung in eight places.”
“Can’t you—”
“We’re sealing the leaks as fast as we can, Skempton cut in, answering Conway’s question before he could ask it. “But this battering is shaking the ship apart …
Dr. Arretapec joined in at that point.
“Doctor Conway,” the being said, “while it is obvious that the patient has shown a surprising aptitude with its new talent, its use is uncontrolled because of its fear and confusion. This traumatic experience will cause irreparable damage, I am convinced, to the being’s thinking processes …
“Conway, look out!”
The reptile had come to a halt near ground level a few hundred yards away, then shot off at right angles toward Conway’s position. But it was traveling a straight line inside a hollow sphere, and the surface was curving up to meet it. Conway saw the hurtling body lurch and spin as the beam operators sought desperately to check its velocity. Then suddenly the mighty body was ripping through the low, thickly-growing trees, then it was plowing a wide, shallow furrow through the soft, swampy ground and with a small mountain of earth-uprooted vegetation piling up in front of it, Conway was right in its path.
Before he could adjust the control of his anti-gravity pack the ground came up and fell on him. For a few minutes he was too dazed to realize why it was he couldn’t move, then he saw that he was buried to the waist in a sticky cement of splintered branches and muddy earth. The heavings and shudderings he felt in the ground were the brontosaurus climbing to its feet. He looked up to see the great mass towering over him, saw it turn awkwardly and heard the sucking and crackling noises as the massive, pile-driver legs drove almost knee deep into the soil and underbrush.