"You promise not to get into the fray?" Jack said.
She nodded. He hoped she would keep her promise.
The Integrator glanced around at the war party, seemed to be satisfied with what he saw, and blew three long blasts and one short one.
"The war cry," Tappy said.
The shaman went into the next room, Jack, Tappy, and Candy in single file behindn. The others followed. A moment later, the Integrator began climbing the ladders set up by an advance party. Most honkers were armed with blowguns and poisoned darts, bows and arrows, flint-tipped knives and short spears, and i'lint axes. Jack and Candy and two honkers carried beamers.
Three of them and their batteries had been stolen over the years from Gaol expeditions. They were in soft thick bags strapped to their back. If a beamer should be banged against the shaft wall, it would make no sound.
Jack's big beamer and the small one in his holster had been brought with him from the Gaol ship captured before he came to the honker planet. He would have preferred the weapon he had used against the Gaol in their first encounter, the shadow-death weapon built 'nto Tappy's leg brace. During their flight from the Gaol, he had wondered sometimes about the persons who had installed the radiator in the brace. Also, where had they gotten this weapon?
He had also speculated, fruitlessly as usual, on why Tappy had muttered about it while sleeping. How had the words gone?
"Alien menace ... only chance is to use the radiator."
In what way could this weapon be the only thing to vanquish the Gaol?
He had asked Tappy about her other dream-begotten phrase, "Reality is a dream." She did not know what either meant.
Behind him were a dozen or so honkers with glass cages full of flies strapped to their backs. Behind them would be the rest of the party, including some bearing more cages. These would be swarming with insects with other deadly functions than poison.
And some Latest were carrying boxes crammed with fungus.
Air was moving downward over Jack as he went up. According to the shaman, who was only guessing, the ventilating mechanism was part of the shaft wall and had no moving parts. Something magnetic in the metal kept the air moving. That was why the Makers' ventilation system never wore out. But the Integrator was great on magnetism. It explained just about everything for him.
The shaft was dark. Not until Jack got near the top of the shaft did he see illumination, and that was dim. When he was helped out of the shaft, he was in a large but crowded room, the hollow interior of a huge tree. The light was from the full moon, but it came through a big hole far up the trunk.
He was pushed gently forward until he was out of the tree trunk and in a grove of trees. He could see better now, though the moonbeams were filtered by the tangle of heavily leafed branches overhead.
Finally, the last warrior came out of the trunk. Tappy was behind him. In a low voice, he told her to go back into the hollow. "And if tlgs go wrong for us, get the hell down the shaft as fast as you can."
I she said softly. She kissed him on the mouth. "God
"I will," bless you. May He keep you safe."
He hugged her quickly, then turned away, tears bluffing his vision. He might never see her again.
"Forget that," he told himself. "Concentrate on what must be done if she's going to be safe."
Nobody except the humans had spoken. It was difficult for onkers to whisper, if very soft honks could be called whisthe h pers. But everything had been planned; everybody had his or her instructions. They could make all the noise they wanted to when hell broke loose.
Straight in front of him, he could see a slice of the Gaol camp.
Lights streamed from the windows of dark domed structures.
some of the light fell on a massive shadowy bulk some yards to the east of the camp. That would be the landing structure, a small section of it, anyway. He stepped out to a point just beyond two trees. Their branches kept him deep in their shade. Now he could see about thirty of the domes. They were so large they must be barracks. He could also hear human voices. A door opened in one of the domes, and a man stood in the doorway, the light strong behind him.
He was smoking a pipe, the pleasant but untobaccolike odor of which drifted to Jack. After a few minutes, the man stepped back and closed the door.
A group of machines, their function indeterminate at this distance, was parked in the center of the camp.
Unexpectedly, the camp had no walls. The Gaol did not fear attack. Besides, the landing structure, a vast ring from which pylons rose a hundred feet to the main body of the vessel, formed a very high wall. No lights came from the landing structure or the spheroid body of the spaceship.
The honker spies had reported that the Gaol had not as yet sent out scouts or exploratory parties. Whatever they were up to, they were taking their time. Probably, the technicians in the vessel were probing with their cavity detectors and also with the instruments that assumedly could detect the presence of the Imago. The latter instruments, he hoped, were directed outside of the radius of the landing structure. They would never imagine that the Imago and its host could be inside the structure. If, at the time of landing here, they had probed directly beneath the ship, they would have detected only a hollow beneath the huge meteorite fragments. If, that is, their instruments could penetrate through the nickel-iron pieces.
Jack stepped out to the edge of the shadows of the trees. Honkers followed him. Then the Integrator was standing by his side, I his hip tentacles waving languidly I'ke seaweed in a current.
The Integrator watched for a while. Then he bleeped softly, and He moved out into the moonlight. Jack and Candy and the two honkers ran swiftly to the doors of four domes near them.
Each pulled out of a bag a small creature the bottom of which I was a flesh suction pad. A long tuft of hair serving as a handle for the warriors projected from the back of each. Jack stuck his suckerbug, as it was called, onto the center of the door. Using his beamer, he cut a circular hole in the door. When he was close to completing the circular section, another warrior grabbed the creature's hair tuft. He pulled it and the section away from the door as soon as Jack had finished.
Another honker stuck the front of a glass cage against the hole.
He pulled up a slide for a second or two, then closed it. At least two hundred flies, maybe more, had gone through the hole. Jack ran on to the next house while another honker put back the cut section and applied tape across it to hold it to the door.
Meanwhile, some honkers had gone to the parking lot. They had to make sure that none of the motionless machines there were actually cyborgs. In a few seconds, the Latest held clenched hands overhead. That was the signal that all was well in the lot.
Jack and Candy and the two honkers worked swiftly. Already, the first of the parties to enter the domes behind the cutters had made sure no one was alive in them. Now they were going into other domes, and most of them were carrying beamers appropriated from the dead Gaol.
Jack was on edge. He expected an automatic alarm to sound at any time or a Gaol in his death agonies to scream out. That did not happen. After an estimated fifteen minutes, the last warrior had reported to the Integrator. He held one hand up, turning this back and forth, a signal that he had completed his assignment.
Jack's beamer sliced through the thick outer wall of the curving landing structure. Three others also cut several large entrances near the one Jack had made. Then a number of suckers were applied to the wall sections just before they were completely cut.