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remove his breathing tube, Savage motioned for him not to. No telling what
kind of stuff these things breathed. The third and last diver came through
moments later. The two stared, amazed at first; but soon began to film the
interior.
Savage walked over to the closest command chair -- a gunner's -- and examined
the inhabitant.
It was dead, fortunately. A scaly green lizard, slime oozing from its body in
death, eyes open wide. Savage did not recognize the race -- but he had been
briefed about the other occupant of the chair. Implanted on the lizard's back,
oozing the same ichor, was a small object like a purplish mass of matted hair.
The other two occupants of the craft were identical: all dead, all with
equally dead Kah'diz on their backs.
The fourth chair was empty.
This was a puzzle, anyway. Why would a fighter have a crew of four? Two could
handle it easily; three was the normal complement for insurance. But with a
Kah'diz ship, well, who knew what sort of design those parasites might come up
with? Or why?
The two divers seemed hypnotized, but they knew what they had.
A spaceship. A real, honest-to-God spaceship.
Savage motioned them back through the lock. Air time was getting low, and he
wanted to get the report out of the way.
He saw that the last diver to enter had marked the thing's dimensions outside
with four more balloons, and they all started swimming back to the bank.
"What did you see?" shouted a little bald map in a gray tweed.
"You're not gonna believe this one. . ." called out one of the divers.
Savage made his report along with the other two, to the growing excitement of
the scientists and the growing alarm of the military. He wanted to wrap it up
as quickly as possible and report. The divers' films would be pored over for
what was in the pictures. The empty chair and the open lock told the really
important story.
He was too late. Something was already loose.
"No sign of anything. . . ?" the watch officer asked incredulously. "Not even
the host's body? After all, the place war patrolled, and a four-foot green
lizard is pretty conspicuous."
"Nothing," Savage replied. "Looks like whatever it was skipped as soon as the
mud settled, long before the gendarmes arrived."
"Well, I checked with Data Services and they tell me that, from the
description of the other three, the lizard had to be almost as bad -- couldn't
have lasted long."
"Yeah. But if so, where's the body?"
"More importantly, where's the Kah'diz?" said the watch officer. "Those things
are incredibly adaptable. It could be on a dog -- anything large enough to
sustain it for a time."
"What about locomotion?" Savage asked. "If the host body died, how much time
would it have?"
"Not much. Ten, fifteen minutes, no more. It would drain as much of the blood
from the dead body as possible, then sort of roll itself into a ball and try
and claim the first host possible. It can't roll very fast or very far --
but, remember, they have this empathic power. If it got close enough to
somebody, say, then that somebody would actually help the thing dig into its
neck. The Kah'diz would then slowly expel the old blood externally, and alter
its biochemistry for the new host. It has to be adaptable: it's so vulnerable
and helpless on its own. Beats me how it swam to shore, though."
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Savage thought for a few moments. Then, slowly, he asked, "If you'd never seen
a Kah'diz before, would you describe it as, say, a 'little purple haystack'?"
"No," the watch answered, "I wouldn't. But it could be described like that.
All I know is what I've seen in the pictures. You saw three of them on the
ship. Why do you ask?"
"I think, later, I'm going to see a man about ice cream," Savage said
absently, almost to himself. Then: "Who else is out here?"
"Well, Petersen from the D.C. office, good man with a gun; and Della
Rosa, out of California, a technical man who's in with the Air Force team.
He's giving us pretty good reports:. They sent a couple more divers down after
you left, and he tells us they're going to try to lift the thing."
"Lift it! With what?"
"One or two of the Big Bertha helicopters they use for transporting huge
tonnages. Two of them will be in from Meade by tonight."
"Tonight! That means they're going to try it tomorrow morning!"
"You betcha. Be there. Best we figure we can do is let them get it out;
then we'll try and destroy it before they start tearing it apart."
"Okay, let the other two stick with that end. I'm going to find our alien,"
Savage replied, and cleared.
He knew he should try and find that ice cream truck, but he wanted to get back
to Jenny first. Despite the gravity of the situation, she remained uppermost
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