THE CATERPILLARS QUESTION

Each pulled out of a bag a small creature the bottom of which I was a flesh suction pad. A long tuft of hair serving as a handle for the warriors projected from the back of each. Jack stuck his suckerbug, as it was called, onto the center of the door. Using his beamer, he cut a circular hole in the door. When he was close to completing the circular section, another warrior grabbed the creature's hair tuft. He pulled it and the section away from the door as soon as Jack had finished.

Another honker stuck the front of a glass cage against the hole.

He pulled up a slide for a second or two, then closed it. At least two hundred flies, maybe more, had gone through the hole. Jack ran on to the next house while another honker put back the cut section and applied tape across it to hold it to the door.

Meanwhile, some honkers had gone to the parking lot. They had to make sure that none of the motionless machines there were actually cyborgs. In a few seconds, the Latest held clenched hands overhead. That was the signal that all was well in the lot.

Jack and Candy and the two honkers worked swiftly. Already, the first of the parties to enter the domes behind the cutters had made sure no one was alive in them. Now they were going into other domes, and most of them were carrying beamers appropriated from the dead Gaol.

Jack was on edge. He expected an automatic alarm to sound at any time or a Gaol in his death agonies to scream out. That did not happen. After an estimated fifteen minutes, the last warrior had reported to the Integrator. He held one hand up, turning this back and forth, a signal that he had completed his assignment.

Jack's beamer sliced through the thick outer wall of the curving landing structure. Three others also cut several large entrances near the one Jack had made. Then a number of suckers were applied to the wall sections just before they were completely cut.

They dragged the pieces rather easily. Though thick, they were of very lightweight material.

The perilous ways were open. A dark coitidor stretched before them. If an alarm was sounding in the main body of the ship, the war party could not hear it. But the Latest were going on the assumption that some would soon be activated. Jack was not so sure. The Gaol may not have thought it necessary to activate them.

The party was not in danger of getting lost in the vast maze of the ship. Garth had served on the same type of vessel. through Candy, he had provided all the information needed to find the places to be invaded. The honkers had made diagrams of the passageways and the control center and where the crew was tationed when on duty and where it slept. While going through the tu

Nevertheless, as in any battle, things could not only go wrong but doubtless would.

JACK kept moving, knowing that time was critical. The Gaol captain had to know that the security of the sh;p had been breached.

He would be ruthless in the defense of his command. The honkers were following a meandering trail around, over, and through the trusses and pipes of the skin of the ship, evidently seeking to lose themselves so that no guards inside could spot them. This was no i

Yet now Jack was suffering significant second thoughts. Doubts which had been nagging him were now threatening to overwhelm him. It wasn't that he was afraid for his life, though he was, or that he was concerned that the odds were against this mission, though he was. It was that now, belatedly, the scattered bits of wrongness he had felt were coalescing into a more solid structure. He was no longer vaguely concerned; he was quite specifically alarmed.

He followed the honkers automatically while he put it together, making sure of his notion. Because if he was right, there might be worse trouble ahead th an behind. Not physically, but in terms of Tappy's destiny.

Item: Tappy was the host of the Imago, an ethereal entity who could cause any living creature to have great empathy for all living things. The Imago could destroy the galactic empire of the Gaol by causing all living creatures, including the Gao themselves, to have empathy for others, instead of oppressing them. Therefore the Gaol intended to capture Tappy and lock her away in isolation for life so that the Imago could not spread its harmony.

Item: Tappy had led Jack to the planet of the honkers, who were only vaguely manlike, and this planet had extensive ancient artifacts. These had been constructed by the Makers, who seemed to resemble centaurs whose nonhorselike portions were bearlike rather than human. Some of these artifacts were enormous, and seemed to be still operative, such as the metallic band around the crater wall, about fifty miles in diameter. What had happened to the Makers, whose power must once have shamed that of the present-day Gaol?

Item: A honker had somehow drugged both Jack and Tappy, and planted the egg-seed on Tappy's chest. Hormones or something similar from that egg had nullified the effect to the volition paralysis the Gaol had used on the two of them, so that Tappy was able to get them free, so that they could reach the Agents of the Imago and get help. This indicated that the honkers were not the primitives they had at first seemed to be.

Item: The egg had in due course hatched, producing the Imaget, a creature who could facilitate or enhance the qualities of the egg's host. The Imaget had the power to enhance or facilitate the powers of its original host, so that the effect of the Imago could be transferred in an hour instead of a day. It also was a telepathic transmitter, at least between creatures with whom it had had close physical association, or whom it had helped convert.

Item: Despite the empathy which had transformed him, cyborgGaol Garth had gone to his former ship and slain its living guards equipment operators, and true-Gaol captain. He had shown no compassion; rather, the opposite, becoming an efficient killer.

This could not have been because of reversion and loss of empathy in the absence of the Imaget, because both Tappy and the Imaget had been with him. Jack himself, just minutes ago, had participated in the honkers' savage attack on the human minions of the Gaol. Where was his empathy for those living creatures, which were his own kind? He should not have been able to do it. Only now, in retrospect, were his qualms manifesting. This suggested that the Imaget had another property: the ability to reverse what it had enhanced. It was a phenomenally potent little creature!

Put these items together, and what larger picture emerged? Ima90, Makers, honkers, Imaget. All of them seemed to have powers beyond what first showed. All of them were working together to oppose the Gaol. But what were they working for? It wasn't enough merely to say that the empire of the Gaol was evil; one empire was probably similar to another, when it came down to it.

Maybe it would be a better galaxy if every living creature in it had empathy for every other creature. But it might also be anarchy.

Now, with this realization of what else the Imaget could do. Jack realized that he might not be working for a future utopia. He might be just another tool for some shadowy alien force whose ultimate purposes might be just as nefarious as those of the Gaol.

How could he be sure he was on the right s'de-assuming there was a right side? That he and Ta py were not mere patsies for some player in a galactic game of intrigue and power? That their honker allies were their friends and not their enemies? That they were not working for the restoration of the Makers to power, if any still existed, regardless of the welfare of the galaxy?