“It would be interesting,” said Howell sardonically, “to know what they’re so pleased about!”
“My father will know,” said Karen. “Or Ketch.”
More tumult in the distance. Breen and Ketch came through the jungle, with an escort of the miniature men. Some members of the escort carried parcels. All wore grins wide enough to cut their throats. But Breen and Ketch didn’t seem to share their hilarity.
“You’re all right,” said Breen heavily, when he stood beside Karen in the exit-port. “I was pretty badly worried. I thought something had blown out in the engine room.”
Ketch said somewhat displeased, “What did happen? We thought you’d run into a slug-ship! The small-folk thought so too. They’d arranged to take us aboard, because they knew this fleet would be coming. They were ready to lift off, happy about something but disturbed about something else. Then Karen called. Then everything changed. Everybody was happy! Nobody was disturbed any more. They brought us here. Then—”
The small-men who’d escorted Ketch and Breen turned and made their way back toward their ships. But they turned and grinned happily and waved exuberantly. Then they disappeared.
Howell swore suddenly, under his breath. Ketch said suspiciously, “What’s the matter? What’s the program? What do we do?”
“I’ve got to sink the Marintha! We can’t let it be examined by the slug-beasts! You three have to go off in the globe-ships! Karen! Call the small-folk. It doesn’t matter what you say. Just talk urgently so they’ll come to find out what we want before they lift off!”
Karen disappeared into the yacht. Howell clenched and unclenched his hands. Ketch had daydreamed of heroism in the drama-tape mode, complete with dramatic gestures and posturings.
Breen had apparently taken everything that had happened on this planet in a completely matter-of-fact fashion, equally unsurprised and un-alarmed. Only Howell had seen the successive situations realistically, and only he had come to the conclusion that he must dive the Marintha to the depths of the sea until its hull was crushed by the pressure. From an abstract viewpoint, his decision might have seemed highly noble and heroic. But he didn’t feel that way. He was irritated. He didn’t feel even faintly satisfied with the idea of dying. And he couldn’t insist that the others join him in something he didn’t like himself.
Karen came back. She looked pale.
“They don’t answer, But—there are lots of whining sounds…”
Howell started up to try to call himself. But then Ketch uttered an angry cry, “Look there! They’re lifting off!”
And it was true. Above the jungle, a globe-ship rose. It cleared the giant trees that had hidden it. It hung motionless for a space, and then the second globe-ship came clear of the feathery, leafy branches that had concealed it and appeared also against the sky. The two ships swung forward, barely a hundred feet above ground-level. They floated over the intervening jungle and came to a stop above the Marintha.
The four of the Marintha’s company stared upward, incredulous. Ports in the two globe-ships opened. Small figures appeared and waved. Howell shouted furiously. Ketch bellowed.
The small-men, waving cordially, disappeared again. The two globe-ships went swiftly, serenely, confidently up into the sky. They dwindled. They became dots. Specks. They vanished.
“They took my ideas,” said Ketch darkly, “and now they’ll try to carry them out! But they won’t make it!”
He referred, of course, to his grandiose notions of space-battles in ships yet to be built, with armaments yet to be designed, which he would lead with splendid gestures.
Breen said querulously, “They brought all my botanical specimens. But—”
Karen said, “He thinks—” and she meant Howell, unmistakably, “he thinks he should sink the Marintha. Leaving us marooned—for those creatures to find! And—he intends to go down to the sea-bottom in the Marintha!”
Howell said with surpassing bitterness, “That was when I thought the small-folk would take you aboard. Not now! Now it would be murder, since they’ve gone. Get inside!”
Breen lifted his botanical specimens up into the port. Ketch, it appeared, had made something of a collection of the handmade weapons of the small-men. He got them aboard the yacht. Once within the small spaceship, the peevish, whining sound of slug-ship solar-system drives was loud and insistent from the all-wave receiver. There were many, many slug-ships in the fleet come to avenge the destruction of a scout-ship.
Howell went into the engine room. He changed the settings of the overdrive generator. He adjusted them to produce again the highest possible overdrive speed of which the Marintha was capable. He went back to the control room.
“Ketch! ” he called.
Ketch came indignantly.
“We’ve got one ingot in the fuel-chamber,” said Howell. “There’s room for more. Fill it up. And hurry!”
“But it’s not safe!” protested Ketch. “Do you want to take a chance on blowing up the ship?”
“Yes,” said Howell. “I do. Hurry up with it.”
He set the Marintha’s detectors to maximum gain. Tiny specks appeared on the radar-screen. The slug-fleet was an incredible thing. Howell had no idea how many of the small-humans there were, nor how many ships they could gather together in their furtive, desperate assemblies on worlds they could only hope the slug-ships would not find before they’d gone away. But this fleet must outnumber them many times over. It could have no purpose other than the hunting-down and extermination of the small-man race. It was a horde. Such a fleet could turn the whole surface of a planet into flame. It could sterilize a world, destroying all life upon it. If it came upon a human-occupied planet…
Karen came to the control room and stood beside Howell.
“If anything happens to you now,” she said evenly, “it happens to me too!”
“And the other way about,” growled Howell.
She nodded. He searched her features. Then much of the grimness left his own. He smiled very faintly.
“I haven’t acted very—romantically,” he said wryly. “Not since it turned out that we—feel as we do. Want to know why?”
“It might make me feel better,” admitted Karen.
“Because I figured the Marintha had to be destroyed,” he told her. “Which meant I’d have to go with it. And if I’d acted—romantically, I wasn’t sure I could.”
“That’s silly!”said Karen.
He stood up. He reached for her. She did not retreat. Minutes later Ketch called from the engine room. The fuel-chamber was filled to a dangerous degree. A glancing lightning-bolt had hit the Marintha once. It did damage, but no more than damage. If such a bolt hit the yacht now, there would be literally nothing left of it at all—which was still preferable to a less complete destruction.
Howell kissed Karen again and sat down at the instrument board. He said, “Lifting off!” and threw a switch. The Marintha lurched and lifted toward the sky. The horizon retreated while nearby objects—trees, the dead space about the booby trap, the shores on the peninsula, the sea itself and presently another continent showing at the edge of what was then visible—all things flowed toward and underneath the space-yacht.