tendrils blowing in a self-generated breeze, and Brenner with one eye closed in a diabolical wink as he pointed his gun—a type which threw explosive pellets—at the hovering barnacle.
There was something wrong.
"Don't shoot," said Conway, quietly but firmly, then asked, "Are you afraid, Lieutenant?"
"I don't normally use this thing," said Brenner, looking puzzled, "but I can. No, I'm not afraid."
"And I'm not afraid because you have that gun," said Conway. "Prilicla is protected and has nothing to fear. So who . . ." He indicated the empath's trembling feelers. "... is afraid?"
"It is, friend Conway," said Prilicla, indicating the barnacle. "It is afraid and confused and intensely curious."
Conway nodded. He could see Prilicla beginning to react to his intense relief. He said, "Nudge it outside, Prilicla, when the lieutenant opens the door—just in case of accidents. But gently."
As soon as it was outside, O'Mara's voice roared from the communicator.
"What the blazes have you done?"
Conway tried to find a simple answer to an apparently simple question. He said, "I suppose you could say that I have prematurely initiated a planetary re-entry sequence. ..."
The report from Torrance arrived just before Conway reached O'Mara's office. It said that one of the two stars had a light-gravity planet that was inhabitable while showing no indications of advanced technology, and that the other possessed a large, fast-spinning world that was so flattened at the poles that it resembled two soup bowls joined at the rims. On the latter world the atmosphere was dense and far-reaching, gravity varied between three Gs at the poles to one-quarter G at the equator, and surface metals were nonexistent. Very recently, in astronomical terms, the world had spiraled too close to its sun and planet-wide volcanic activity and steam had rendered the atmosphere opaque. Torrance doubted that it was still habitable.
"That supports my theory," said Conway excitedly when O'Mara had relayed the report to him, "that the bird and the barnacles, and the other insect life-form, originate from the same planet. The barnacles are parasites, of course, with a small individual brain capacity, but intelligent when linked and operating as a gestalt. They must have known that their planet was heading for destruction for centuries, and decided to escape. But just think of what it must have taken to develop a space-travel capability completely without metal...."
Somehow they had learned how to trap the giant birds from the heavy-gravity polar regions and to control them with their tendrils—the barnacles were a physically weak species and their ability to control nonintelligent hosts was the only strength they had. The birds, Conway now knew, were a nonintelligent species, as were the-tendrilless beetles. They had taken control of the birds and had flown them high above the equator, commanding maximum physical effort to achieve the required height and velocity for the linkup with the final propulsion stage—the beetles. They also had been controlled by the barnacles, perhaps fifty to each parasite, and they had attached themselves to the areas behind the wings in a gigantic, narrow cone. Meanwhile the bird had been shaped and paralyzed Into the configuration of a supersonic glider, its claws removed to render it aerodynamically clean, and injected with the secretions which would arrest the process of decomposition. The crew had then sealed it and themselves in position and gone into hibernation for the duration of the voyage using the bird's tissue for life-support.
Once in position the propulsion cone comprising millions of insects, hundreds of thousands of which were the intelligent controllers, had begun firing. They had done so very evenly and gently, so as not to shatter or crush the narrow apex of the cone where it was attached to the bird. The beetles could be