CHAPTER IX

"It didn't work, but it taught us a few things."

"You're right. It taught us that this bitch can't be trusted. Either she's in league with _it_, a sister or brother of it, or else she's so stupid that she's a menace to our survival."

"Oh, you blithering jackass!" said Circe indignantly to her fellow organicus officer. "How could I guess what your plan was? Nobody told me. All I knew was that you were going to be murdered for doing a perfectly harmless--"

"She's right," said Joe Silver. "We ought to have told her."

"Shut up," said Pinkham savagely. "Any more of that and I'll figure she's corrupted you or addled your brains, and I'll toss you into the brig, Silver."

"You try it you pigsqueak," shouted Silver, who measured half an inch over Pink's six-foot-three. "Captain or not, this is a grade A emergency and we're all needed. I'll pull the Mars Convention on you if you try to shut me up."

"He's right," said Daley to the captain. "Mars Convention says that in a grade A emergency any officer above Second Watch is equal to the captain or commander, Pink." Then he turned to Silver, grinned, and lashing out with a hand the size of a spaniel, caught his under-lieutenant on the ear. It knocked Silver sprawling. "That's for slanging at your superiors," he said quietly. "And the Mars Convention says I can do _that_."

Silver got up and blinked. He seemed dazed and for the first time in his space life, uncertain of himself. He looked at the others and recognized himself as a minority here. "Okay," he said, "okay, I'm outvoted. But I say the girl is only suspect, by no means convicted of anything but ignorance of the plan."

Kinkare, unable to speak through his bandaged mouth, nodded strongly. Circe glared defiance at Pinkham. "Next time, for God's sake tell me what you have in mind," she said. "Not that I'd let you sacrifice poor Jerry, anyway."

"Women," said Jerry. "Women on a ship. Jonahs. Sentimental imbeciles."

"I'll knock your teeth down your scrawny throat," began Joe Silver, and "Quiet!" roared Pinkham. "We're quarreling like kids. What's to be done now!"

"I was saying it taught us a few things," said Daley. "Let's figure them out. The thing's evidently not telepathic. It can't run a spaceship, or it wouldn't have been so worked up over the ruin of the soda fountain, which must have looked pretty vital to its inexperienced eyes. It's definitely tangible, for it picked Jerry up."

"It also murdered eleven men," said Pink. "That's tangible enough too."

"It's damned intelligent, for it must have spotted Jerry on the intercom, which means it was working it. It also speaks a very funny breed of English. 'Whoreson knave,' for example. Nobody here ever called anyone that."

"Whoreson knave is Shakespearean," said Jerry.

"And, to finish what I've deduced, the monster is as strong as a couple of men, at least." He grinned at Jerry. "Not that you needed me to deduce that."

Randy Kinkare was staring at the life-scanner screen. Now he beat a tattoo on the arm of his chair, pointed so that they all looked. The flecks of light that indicated organic life had thronged in toward the ship; not so numerous as the stars, they were still too many to count. One object on the screen was large now, large enough to be identified. It approached the ship at a slow but steady rate, and they gasped as they saw it was another of the human-like figures.

"His brothers," said Pinkham. "That must be their natural form, then."

It grew and grew. It seemed it must now be touching the scanner's outside cell; but no, it grew even greater. At last it could not be seen in its entirety, then only its face showed. It was a hideous face, twisted with sardonic malice. The face grew. When it stopped, only one enormous eye filled the screen.

Jerry cleared his throat. "Do you know what that means?" he asked. "It means that, at a conservative estimate, the critter is--"

"Go on," said Daley impatiently, when Jerry's silence had lengthened intolerably.

"It must be at least one thousand feet tall," said the O. O.

There was a long, unbroken stillness, a hush of horror and disbelief in the control room.

Finally Circe said slowly, "I think I'm going to faint."

And she did.