There was only one quarrel on the way requiring the adjudication of the Keysman, and Kator found reason to execute both men involved. The hint was well taken by the rest of the Expedition and there were no more disputes. They backtracked along the direction calculated on their Homeworld to have been the path of the artifact, and found themselves after a couple of nine-day weeks midway between a double star with a faint neighbor, Star Unit 439LC&W—and a single yellow star which was almost the twin of the brighter partner of the double star. Star 440L.
The Ruml investigations of the artifact had indicated the Muffled People’s Homeworld to be under a single star. The ship was therefore turned to the yellow sun.
Traces of artificially produced radio emissions were detected well out from the system of the yellow sun. The ship approached cautiously—but although the Ruml discovered scientific data-collecting devices in orbit as far out as the outer fringes of the planetary system surrounding the yellow sun, they found no warning stations or sentry ships.
Penetrating cautiously further into the system, they discovered stations on the moons of two larger, outer planets, some native ship activity in an asteroid belt, and light settlements of native population on the second and fourth planets. The third planet, on the other hand, was swarming with aliens.
The ship approached under cover of that planet’s moon, ducked around to the face turned toward the planet, at nightfall, and quickly sealed itself in, a ship’s length under the rock of the moon’s airless surface. Tunnels were driven in the rock and extra workrooms hollowed out.
Up until this time the ship’s captain had been in some measure in command of the Expedition. But now that they were down, all authority reverted to the Keysman. Kator spent a ship’s-day studying the plan of investigation recommended by the Ruml Homeworld authorities, and made what changes he considered necessary in them. Then he came out of his quarters and set the whole force of the expedition to building and sending out collectors.
These were of two types. The primary type were simply lumps of nickel-iron with a monomolecular surface layer sensitized to collect up to three days worth of images, and provided with a tiny internal drive unit that would explode on order from the ship or any attempt to block or interfere with the free movement of the device. Several thousand of these were sent down on to the planet and recovered with a rate of necessary self-destruction less than one tenth of one per cent. Not one of the devices was even perceived, let alone handled, by a native. At the end of five weeks, the Expedition had a complete and detailed map of the world below, its cities and its ocean bottoms. And Kator set up a large chart in the gathering room of the ship, listing Five Phases, numbered in order. Opposite Phase One, he wrote Complete to Perfection.
The next stage was the sending down of the secondary type of collectors—almost identical lumps of nickel iron, but with cargo-carrying space inside them. After nine weeks of this and careful study of the small species of alien life returned to the Expedition Headquarters on the moon, he decided that one small flying blood-sucking insect, one crawling, six-legged pseudo-insect—one of the arthropoda, an arachnid or spider, in Muffled People’s classification—and a small, sharp-nosed, long-tailed scavenging animal of the Muffled People’s cities, should be used as live investigators. He marked Phase Two as Complete to Perfection.
Specimens of the live investigators were collected, controlling mechanisms surgically implanted in them, and they were taken back to the planet’s surface. By the use of scanning devices attached to the creatures, Expedition members remote-controlling them from the moon were able to investigate the society of the Muffled People at close hand.
The live investigators were directed by their controller into the libraries, factories, hospitals. The first two phases of the investigation had been cold matters of collecting, collating and filing data. With this third phase, and the on-shift members of the Expedition living vicarious insect and animal lives on the planet below, a spirit of adventure began to permeate the fifty-six men remaining on the moon.
The task before them was almost too great to be imagined. It was necessary that they hunt blindly through the civilization below until chance put them on the trail of the information they were after concerning the character and military strength of the Muffled People. The first six months of this phase produced no evidence at all of military strength on the part of the Muffled People—and in his cabin alone Kator paced the floor, twitching his whiskers. The character of the Muffled People as a race was emerging more clearly every day and it was completely at odds with such a lack of defensive elements. And so was the Muffled People’s past history as the Expedition had extracted it from the libraries of the planet below.
He called the Captain in.
“We’re overlooking something,” he said.
“I’ll agree with that, Keysman,” said the Captain. “But knowing that doesn’t solve our problem. In the limited time we’ve had with the limited number of men available, we’re bound to face blank spots.”
“Perfection,” Kator said, “admits of no blank spots.”
The Captain looked at him with slitted eyes.
“What does the Keysman suggest?” he said.
“…Sir.”
“For one thing,” Kator’s eyes were also slitted, “a little more of an attitude of respect.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And for another thing,” said Kator, “I make the suggestion that what we’re looking for must be underground. Somewhere the Muffled People must have a source of military strength comparable to our own—their civilization and their past history is too close to our own for there not to be such a source. If it had been on the surface of the planet or in one of the oceans, we would’ve discovered it by now. So it must be underground.”
“I’ll have the men check for underground areas.”
“You’ll do better than that, Captain. You’ll take every man and put them in a hookup with the long-tailed scavenging animals, and run their collectors underground. In all large blank areas.”
“Sir.”
The Captain went out. The change in assignment was made and two shifts later—by sheer luck or coincidence—the change paid off. One of the long-tailed animal collectors was trapped aboard a large truck transporting food. The truck went out from one of the large cities in the middle of the western continent of the planet below and at about a hundred and fifty of the Muffled People’s miles from the city turned into a country route that led to an out-of-operation industrial manufacturing complex. It trundled past a sleepy farm or two, across a bridge over a creek and down a service road into the complex. There it drove into a factory building and unloaded its food onto a still and silent conveyor belt.
Then it left.
The collector, left with the food, suddenly felt the conveyor belt start to move. It carried the food deep into the factory building, through a maze of machinery, and delivered it onto a platform, which dropped without warning into the darkness of a deep shaft.
And it was at this point that the Ruml in contact with the collector, called Kator. Kator did not hesitate.
“Destroy it!” he ordered.
The Ruml touched a button and the collector stiffened suddenly and collapsed. Almost immediately a pinpoint of brilliance appeared in the center of its body and in a second it was nothing but fine gray ash, which blew back up the shaft on the draft around the edges of the descending platform.
While the rest of the men of the Expedition there present in the gathering room watched, Kator walked over to the chart he had put up on the wall. Opposite Phase Three, with a clear hand he wrote Complete to Perfection.