THE CATERPILLARS QUESTION

"I'm aiming it at the wall," he told her. "I'm turning it on. This is what I'm supposed to do?"

She nodded yes, emphatically.

He touched the third orange button.

A circular section of the wall glowed. Then it disappeared, and some of the ground under it. Now there was a hollow in it, deepening visibly.

Jack gaped. "It's eating through the rim!" he exclaimed. "Like melting butter, only there's no vapor. The wall is just gone there!"

Tappy urged him forward, toward it.

When he stepped forward, correcting his aim so as not to intersect the ground, the circle of indentation became smaller.

But the center deepened more rapidly. It was as if he held a cosmic blowtorch whose heat was greatest in the center. The original dent now and a smaller but deeper dent inside it-and as he proceeded, that i

"It's a come section!" he exclaimed. "I mean, a cone-the ray is coming from this device, and expanding, and it vaporizes-bad word-it disintegrates in an expanding circle. So as I walk into it, it seems to be getting smaller, but it's not, really. Am I making sense?"

Tappy merely urged him on. They walked into the hole he was making. It was a tu

The radiator! Suddenly Tappy's sleep-talking words came back to him: "Alien menace-only chance is to use the radiator!" This had to be what she had meant: a weapon that radiated a cutting or dissolving beam. The aliens had trapped them, but the radiator was cutting them free. The aliens had set ajar on them, but these bugs were drilling their way out.

There was a clamor of alarms. The sound was unfamiliar, but --its strident nature was unmistakable. The aliens had finally caught on to what was happening.

Tappy heard it and jogged him: hurry!

Jack broke into a run, keeping the brace aimed. The tu

The tu

He turned his head, trying to look back as he ran. The tu

Then at last the tu

He touched the scarlet button, turning off the radiator. Then he had a better idea. He whirled to point the device back at the tu

A man was there. He threw himself down, trying to get out of the line of fire. He knew what the radiator would do to his body!

Human heads appeared above the rim, peering down from its distant top. Jack aimed the radiator at them. They disappeared. He hadn't fired; they had dived out of the way. A bluff was as good as a real attack. He was glad of that, because he was no killer.

He was just trying to get away.

He turned again, and ran with Tappy into the thick of the forest, which seemed to have been cut back somewhat by the landing of the ship. They skirted the huge trunks of the trees, now hidden from the ship by the interlocking canopy above. Jack was trying to put as much foliage between them and the ship as possible.

They had broken out, but it would be no good if the men caught them and hauled them back.

Why hadn't someone shot at him and Tappy? There had to be weapons, and the two of them had been an easy target in that tu

The answer had to be that this was a capture mission, not a kill mission. The way the ship had come down, enclosing rather than flattening, suggested the same. This was a no-squish-bug effort.

Great-it gave the bugs a real advantage. But why? What was so precious about these bugs to make them worth this phenomenal endeavor?

"Tappy," he gasped as they ran. "We seem to be getting away, but we won't stay clear long if we don't learn more! Unless you know what's going on here!"

Her face turned to him, her head shaking yes, then no. That meant that she understood some, but not enough.

"Then let's get some information!" he said. He was not what he thought of as a bold man, but the past few days had shaken him loose from every preconception he could think of.

Tappy didn't object, so he set up his trap. "Wait here," he told her. He turned on the radiator and dissolved a tu

They found a place behind a thicket of young orange-barked trees and ducked down, watching the tu

Soon enough a man came ru

But he had no time to worry about that. He stepped out into the tu

The man stopped and looked back, chagrined. He started to bring his weapon to bear.

"Nuh-uh, Joe!" Jack said, putting a finger on a button of the radiator. "Drop it!"

The man let the weapon fall to the ground.

Jack strode toward him, keeping the radiator aimed. He had never intended to fire it at the man, but he was pleased with the success of his bluff. "Now talk, Joe: what's this all about? Why are you after us?"

The man's mouth tightened. He seemed to understand Jack, but he refused to answer, and the threat of the radiator was no longer persuasive. Strange. And awkward, because the man had called his bluff, and he couldn't do anything about it. It was a mistake, ultimately, to bluff, he realized, because once it was proved empty, all was lost. It was necessary either to be able to follow through on a threat or to make the bluff so bold that 4he other did not dare call it.

He couldn't carry through. He just couldn't kill a man who wasn't attacking him. He probably couldn't kill even if the man did attack him. He was a sensitive artist, not an insensitive goon.

Only if Tappy were threatened would heJack had an inspiration. He pointed the radiator at Tappy"Nao!" the man cried, horrified.

So he had guessed right! It was Tappy they wanted to capture.

He had suspected they didn't much care about Jack himself; he was nobody, just an ignorant person who had happened to get involved with her. Tappy had known or remembered how to reach this world, so she must have been here before. The aliens must have been waiting for her-and they wanted her alive.

Larvhrysalis-Imago. There was something about Tappy that made her valuable-so valuable that this monstrous flying cage had been sent to catch her. But she had been given a weapon, and taught its use, so that she remembered once the situation required it. That knowledge must have been Ilypnotically suppressed. Her return to a more familiar environment was bringing back her memory.