It was to one of the needles Norton finally came. He phased through the hull in ghostly fashion and landed on a deck in what he took to be the control region. Windows or screens opened out to provide a panoramic view of the wheel station, the docked ships, and the myriad stars shining beyond.
A spaceman got up from the pilot's seat. He was tall, lanky, blond, and handsome in a rugged prairie way; his legs bowed out slightly and he wore a blaster at his hip, bolstered for a rapid draw. He eyed Norton appraisingly, a stalk of timothy grass projecting from the comer of his mouth. "So you're my co-pilot," he drawled, his lips thinning. "You shore don't look like much, stranger! Any good with a blaster?"
"No," Norton confessed. What had Satan gotten him into?
"Ever blast any buggers?"
"What?"
"Bems."
"Bems?"
"You know—the Bug-Eyed-Monsters who're trying to take over the Glob. The Geniuses hired us to clean the Bems out of this sector of space. I lost my co on my last mission, but they said they'd send a replacement." He grinned boyishly and chewed on his timothy. "I was sorta hoping for a Femme."
"Femme?"
"Pardner, where you been? You don't know what a Femme is? A human woman, or reasonable facsimile thereof, maybe twenty years old, shaped like that sand dingus you're holding, hot-blooded and not too smart."
"Oh. There must be a mistake. Not only am I not a—a young female—I also know next to nothing about spaceships or monsters or Geniuses."
"A mistake for shore!" the spaceman agreed. He hawked disgustedly, looked about, found no spittoon, and finally swallowed it. "We'll get this here nonsense cleared pronto!" He strode to a communications console and punched buttons with his dirty thumb.
A head appeared on the screen. The face was small and squeezed together, as if shoved aside by the hugely bulging braincase. The skull was hairless and traversed by purple veins and seemed almost to pulse with the overcapacity of gray matter it enclosed. This, surely, was a Genius—the end product of human evolution, virtually all mind and no body.
"Yes?" the head whispered. It seemed the vocal cords, too, had been largely displaced by brain stuff.
"Bat Dursten here, sir," the spaceman drawled. "My new co-pilot just moseyed in—but he says he don't know nothing about ships or blasters or Bems, and he shore don't look like much. Sending him—that musta been a glitch. I need a replacement pronto—maybe a nice li'l Femme."
"There is no error, Dursten," the Genius whispered sibilantly. "Norton is to be your companion for this mission. He is competent."
"But he's a greenhorn!" the spaceman protested. "Never even blasted a Bem!"
"He will suffice," the Genius insisted, the veins in his forehead turning deeper purple.
"Gol-dang it, sir—" Dursten started rebelliously.
But something strange was happening. The Genius was staring with his two bloodshot orbs intently at Dursten—and the spaceman's hair was lifting as if drawn by an unseen hand. Smoke began to curl from it, and his timothy wilted.
Dursten felt the heat. "Ow!" he yelled as he slapped at his hair, spitting out the grass. "Okay, okay, sir; he's the one! We'll make do somehow."
"I rather thought you would see it my way," the Genius said, smiling with his little pursed mouth as he faded off screen.
"What happened?" Norton asked, amazed at this interchange. He could see a dark patch where the man's hair had frizzed.
"Aw, he used his psi on me," Dursten said, rubbing out the last of the heat. "They do that when they get riled."
"Psi?"
"Don't you know nothing? All the Geniuses got psi power. They can't do nothing with their spindly li'l bodies, so they do it with their hotshot brains. That one tagged me with telekinesis and pyro. Just his way o' making his point. I'm stuck with you."
"He lifted your hair and burned it—by sheer mind power?"
"That's what I said, Nort."
"But he wasn't even present! He must be somewhere else on the Wheel."
"Somewhere else in the Glob, you mean. Geniuses don't never risk their hides in space. Distance don't matter none to them; if a Genius can see you, he can tag you. If he'd been really mad at me, he'da stopped my heart."
"If the Geniuses can do that, why do they hire mercenaries?" Norton asked. "They should be able to stop the hearts of the Bems themselves."
Bat Dursten sighed. "You really are a greenhorn! Okay, since I'm stuck with you, reckon I'd better fill you in on the scene so you'll be able to cover my flank. The Geniuses share the Glob—that's this star cluster here—with the alien Bems. Things have been quiet for a century or two, but now the Bems are getting grabby. They rustled several human planets, raped the women, ate the men, and did mean things to the kids. They're trying to take over the whole dang Glob! Naturally the Geniuses don't like that—but Geniuses won't never leave their plush cells deep in their planets for nothing. So they've got to hire more regressive types of human critters like us. They pay pretty well, and I reckon it's a good cause, so we're for hire. Me, I sorta like blasting Bems anyway; wouldn't want none o' them to get fresh with my sister, for shore! But Bems are immune to the Genius psi, so we got to use old-fashioned weapons. Which is okay by me; real men don't use psi. We're massing for a big battle now; we're going to raid a Bem planet and give them buggers a taste o' their own snake oil."
Norton was getting the picture, but still had trouble with an aspect of it. "The Bems—if they're really bugeyed monsters, their metabolism must be quite different from ours."
"That's for shore!" the spaceman agreed readily. "They're a cross atween bugs and cuttlefish, with huge eyes all over and tentacles and slime dripping. Real yucky!"
"Then how could they have any sexual interest in human women? Surely the women would be as repulsive to the Bems as the Bems are to the women."
Dursten scratched his tousled head. "Now that there's a puzzle, now I think on it. But it's a fact that Bems always chase Femmes, 'specially the luscious ones in bikinis. We got a lot o' pictures o' that, so we know it's so. If it wasn't for us noble spacers to rescue them dolls, there'd be no luscious ones left." He paused thoughtfully. "Strangest thing, though—some gals seem 'most as worried 'bout us as them."
"There's no accounting for taste," Norton said. "I suppose if you want the girls for similar purposes—"
He was interrupted by a siren wail. Red lights flashed on the control panel.
"Yow, that there's the campaign alert," Dursten said. "Get your butt into that there co-pilot's seat, Nort. It'll just have to be on-the-job training. I shore hope you're a fast study."
Norton got into the seat. Automatic safety clamps fastened him down. Dursten hit the castoff switch, and the ship dropped off its anchorage on the Wheel.
"Watch it, now. I'm throwing her into null-gee for maneuvering," the spaceman warned. The weight left Norton; only the seat restraints kept him from floating away.
Then the ship accelerated, and he was thrown back against the seat. This needleship had plenty of power!
"One other thing I better tell you about the Bems, just in case," Dursten said as he concentrated on his piloting, getting his ship into formation. "They're shape-changers."
"What?"
"You heard me, Nort. They can take any form, just like that. So if you ain't certain, fire first."
"But I don't have a blaster!" Norton said. "Anyway, if I'm not sure it's a Bem—I mean, I wouldn't want to shoot one of our own people."
"There is that," Dursten agreed, as if he hadn't thought of it before. "That's how my last pardner got it. After I plugged him, I realized he was only green from spacesickness, but it was too late. Had to deep-space him."
"You killed your partner?" Norton asked, shocked.
The spaceman shrugged. "I thought he was a Bem. These things happen when you got a quick trigger finger."
Evidently so! "I hope you don't make any similar little mistakes on this mission," Norton said sincerely.
"Naw, no chance. You and
me's the only people on this ship. So if you see anyone else, he's a Bem."
"How do we know we're not Bems? I mean, for all I know, you could be one, or for all you know, I could."
Again Dursten paused for a new thought. His hand twitched near his bolstered blaster, giving Norton a horrible scare. But then the spaceman had another notion. "Say, the robot can tell. Here, I'll check us out now. Hey, Clankcase!"
A robot trundled up, its feet evidently held to the deck by magnetism. "You yelled, sir?" it rasped.
"Yeah, shore," Dursten said. "Check out Nort here. Is he human or Bem?"
The robot oriented on Norton. Its body was cubistic, with a television screen where its face should be. A pair of eyes appeared on the screen, and these inspected Norton closely, though not quite in focus. A nose appeared, and this sniffed him, its nostrils flaring. A mouth formed. "Say 'Ah,'" it said.
"Argh," Norton said, suddenly realizing that if the robot decided he was a fake, he could not protect himself; he was bound to the chair.
An ear appeared, sliding to the center of the screen to listen better, shoving the other features to the side. "How's that again?" the mouth said from the border.
"A R G H H H H!" Norton repeated clearly.
The eyes slid back to the center, squinting thoughtfully. "He's human," the mouth said. "Probability of ninety-eight point three-five percent, plus or minus three percent."
"Plus or minus three percent?" Norton asked, shivering with relief. "Doesn't that mean ninety-five point three to one-hundred-one point three percent?"
One eye drifted off the screen while the other bore unwaveringly on him. "Correct," the robot rasped blithely.
"Well, now check Mr. Dursten."
"Shux, I know I'm human!" the spaceman protested. But the machine clanked around to focus its screen face on him.
"Human," Clankcase agreed in due course. "Ninety-six point one percent probability, plus or minus the standard three percent deviation."
"What?" Dursten lipped thinly. "You gave him a higher rating than me? His finger itched toward his blaster.
"He is more human than you," the robot explained.
"Get out of here, you bucket of bolts!" Dursten growled, and the robot dutifully retreated.
"I suppose you had better explain to me how to pilot this craft," Norton said. "Just in case."
"You kidding?" the spaceman exclaimed derisively. "I boned up on piloting for three years afore I even touched my first ship—and I wrecked that! Then it was two more years afore I touched another."
There was a metallic rattle of laughter from the rear. "That's why, you silly asteroid!" Clankcase chuckled.
"Get lost, you metal moron!" Dursten snapped.
"Lost? Honest?" the robot asked. "A foolish man said that once to my cousin, and—"
"Cancel that there directive!" Dursten said quickly. Then, privately to Norton: "That 'Little Lost Robot' got written up as a feature story in the tabloids. But that ain't part o' this here sequence."
"Why do you put up with such perversity from the inanimate?"
The spaceman scratched his head, dislodging some dandruff. "I shore don't know. It's just always been that way with robots. We need 'em for routine chores, so—" He shrugged. "Now I think of it, I'd trade Clankcase in a minute for a better assistant, like maybe a nice, plump Femme. A Femme would really be useful."
Norton realized that opportunities for socializing were limited in space. The spaceman's mind naturally was on the distaff. "About the piloting—I can't be a very good co-pilot if I don't know anything. Maybe if you just showed me how to signal for help—"
"Aw, I'll show you how to pilot," Dursten said. "It'll take 'bout ten minutes, give or take three percent."
And indeed, what had taken the spaceman five years to master was transmitted in ten minutes. It was mainly a matter of moving the steering stick and pushing the firing button when a target ship was in the cross hairs on the combat screen. The ship was largely automatic, and what little was not was handled by the robot. An idiot could pilot the ship—which was perhaps fortunate.
However, Dursten explained why it had taken so long for him to qualify. He had been easily distracted by available Femmes at the Academy. Femmes seemed to cause more trouble than Bems did!
The fleet drew into formation and warped through space at Woof-factor 5 toward the enemy planet. Stars streaked by the port like fireflies.
Suddenly a red light flashed. "Oh, fudge!" Dursten swore. "An enemy fleet is intercepting us. We'll have to fight."
"But I thought you like blasting Bems," Norton said.
The spaceman's handsome face lighted like a nova. "Say, yeah! I forgot about that!"
The Bem ships turned out to be warty boulders. They spread out to engage the human fleet. Soon the two formations degenerated into separate dogfights.
A Bem boulder loomed before their own needle, its ports resembling huge, faceted eyes. Light squirted from one of its warts. "The danged zilch is shooting at us!" Dursten exclaimed indignantly. "Well, just for that I'll blast it out o' space!" His features suffused with righteous anger, Bat Dursten concentrated on the obnoxious enemy craft, getting it in the cross hairs. His thumb jabbed the firing button. "Take that, fertilizer-brain!" he raged.
A beam of light speared out. It struck the boulder. The boulder exploded into smithereens, soundlessly. Norton remembered that sound did not carry well through the vacuum of space.
"Got you, you alien bugger!" Dursten exulted.
But another boulder was bearing down on them. A spurt from a wart just missed their needleship. Quickly the spaceman reoriented, bringing the cross hairs to bear. He punched the button, and the enemy ship smithereened like the last one.
Norton checked the rearview screen. "Bat, there's one on our tail!" he warned.
"You take it, Nort; I got to watch the front."
So Norton oriented the aft laser gun, fumbling its cross hairs into place. He fired, but his beam missed. The enemy squeezed a wart back, coming closer. Norton, his hand shaking, got the wobbly cross hairs aligned and mashed the firing button so hard it bruised his finger.
This time he scored. The light lanced forth. The alien vessel burst apart, splatting some of its garbage on his viewscreen. Norton wrinkled his nose; he could almost smell the alien stench.
He turned back to Dursten—just in time to see a young woman approaching the spaceman. She was absolutely luscious in her scanty costume, and her flesh jiggled like gelatin as she walked.
The spaceman looked up at her. "Say, sweetie—where'd you come from?" he asked, ogling her attributes.
"I replaced your robot," she said with a phenomenal smile. "How can I be of service?"
Dursten glanced at Norton. "Say, co-pilot—why don't you take over the reins while I catch an errand in the back?" he suggested, unbuckling his safety harness.
"But—but how could there be a replacement when we're in deep space?" Norton asked.
The spaceman paused to scratch his head, his eyes remaining on the Femme. "Say, I never thought o' that!"
"The Genius teleported me in, of course," the Femme said. "Did you think of a way I can serve you?"
"Well, as a matter o' fact—" Dursten began, floating from his chair.
"I'll thank the Genius," Norton said, touching the communicator. His brief course of instruction had included this, too. The panel had few controls besides an on-off switch.
"You do that," Dursten agreed, drifting toward the back. He had forgotten to turn the gravity back on, so he had to hold on to the Femme for support.
The head of the Genius appeared on the screen. "Yes, Norton," the pursed lips said.
"Uh, sir, did you teleport a buxom young human woman to this ship? A, er, Femme?"
"Certainly not! Spaceman Dursten becomes combat unready when distracted by temptations of fair flesh."
An accurate assessment! "But there's one here!"
The Genius frowned. "Yes, now I detect an alien presence there. It is im
mune to my power. Destroy it immediately." He faded out.
So the shape-changing Bems had infiltrated this fleet, and one was aboard this ship! Norton looked for a blaster, but found none. He spied a loose support rod in his chair, evidence of slipshod construction, and wrenched it out. It would have to do as a weapon.
He set out for the rear of the ship—but his feet left the deck in the null-gee, just as Dursten's had. He didn't know how to turn on the gravity, so had to put up with it. Pilots, he thought irately, should wear magnetic shoes, just as the robots did! Clankcase had had no problem getting around.
Clankcase? The Femme said she had replaced the robot. And her feet had been firm on the deck. Bems, as he understood it, could not teleport or do other psi, but they could change shape. The Bem must have been in the shape of the robot before!
Norton grabbed his chair and pulled himself down close to the floor. Sure enough, there were moist sucker marks where robot and Femme had passed. No doubt about it—there was a Bem aboard.
Norton used the chair as a brace and shoved himself forcefully toward the rear of the ship. In a moment he sailed into the back chamber, where Dursten was in the process of scrambling out of his space suit while the voluptuous Femme giggled and jiggled gelatinously.
"Halt, alien!" Norton cried, brandishing his rod.
Dursten glanced about. "What alien?"
"That Femme," Norton said. "She's a Bem!"
"How can you say a mean thing like that!" the Femme cried.
Norton did feel like a heel, for she was an eye-popping morsel of pulchritude, but he had to answer. "Because your sucker feet stick to the floor! We float in free-fall."