Battlefield Earth

Jo

Jo

Teleportation! The secret of the Psychlos. With it they had controlled universes. Without it he didn't see how he could defend this one planet.

He saw MacKendrick. Yes, the wounded Psychlos were all well now. Except Chirk who just lay there. No, he hadn't figured any way to get those things out of a Psychlo's head-disturbance at that bone structure would kill the monster. Yes, he realized that if they tried to consult Psychlos on technical matters they would attack and kill themselves, or, if female, probably go into a coma like

Chirk.

What MacKendrick was really worried about was the diet of the prisoners. The Psychlos in their manuals didn't consider it valuable information, being Psychlos; the prisoners themselves knew what they ate but didn't know the names for it that applied to this planet, and if he didn't solve it, they'd shortly have no prisoners.

Did Jo

MacKendrick wanted to know whether he'd heard what they ate. No? Well, the old woman from the Mountains of the Moon was helping and maybe they could work it out.

Jo

Once before he had thought of exploring a teleportation motor to see whether he could get some sort of answer out of it. A motor wasn't a transshipment rig, but it did work on space-position change.

He had a motor and console to fool with: the ones from the wrecked tank in the battle of the pass. It had been carted in to the garage repair shop. Maybe if he just tore it apart...a thin hope, for he'd already looked at such rigs. But he got into some work clothes and went down to the repair level.

The Basher was sitting there, badly scarred and with a couple of plates sprung. He got into it, checked the fuel, and started the motor with a “right here” space coordination punched in on the console. It ran! One thing you could say about the

Psychlos, their stuff lasted forever.

He shut the motor off and took a screwdriver to the top screws of the console. He loosened them a half-turn, each one.

Jo

It was Stormalong and the Tolnep, Double-Ensign Slitheter Pliss, surrounded by guards.

“What's up?” called Jo

They didn't hear him. They all had ear pads on. Then Jo

Angus wanted to know the cycles of vibration of that paralysis beam.

Slitheter Pliss seemed quite amiable. He had obviously written himself off as a Tolnep. He saw Jo

But if they were going to let the Tolnep near that lethal sound vibrator, they were taking no chances that he would turn it on, paralyze the lot of them, and escape. Jo

The Tolnep seemed to find it a bit provoking that the accumulator terminals had been bent. They responded to his dumb-show signs and gave him some tools and he straightened them and rehooked the power cable. The craft promptly began to run and he shut it off. With more dumb-show he pointed the switches out to Stormalong, indicating what they co

Once Pliss was away from the craft, Jo

The Tolnep alarmed the guards by pausing and swinging open the side door of the tank. He almost got himself shot. But Jo

“You people aren't Psychlo-commanded, are you?” said the Tolnep, hanging in the door. Getting no answer– since Jo

Jo

“Blast no! And neither does anyone else in any universe that I ever heard of,” said Pliss. “We've never raided this planet but we have raided other Psychlo bases. According to the textbooks, we've brought in thousands of these things just for the experts to look at.” He smiled a rather frightening smile. "I’ll bet my next month's pay, which I’ll never get, that you people are up against the same thing that everybody else is up against.”

Allowing for possible malice, Jo

“We've gotten their textbooks, their mathematics texts even. We've actually captured a transshipment console intact. It said in the text that it worked once and then as soon as they tried to find how it was built, pop, no console.

“The very best Tolnep commanders have interrogated Psychlo engineers,” continued Pliss, “and nothing happened. Some use that is. They chew you up and kill themselves.

Been going on, I read once, for three hundred and two thousand years!”

The Tolnep changed the subject. “You got a metals sample room around here? I’m hungry and maybe I can find something.”

Jo

“So good luck,” said the Tolnep with a sarcastic-sounding hiss. They took him away.

Possibly it was just malice, Jo

He'd lost track of the sequence of actions he had been involved in when interrupted. So he started all over again. He put the console buttons in “right here” and tapped the power switch to start the tank motor.

Nothing happened. He checked the co

He tried to recall whether the Tolnep had touched anything, and the Tolnep hadn't.

He once more tried to start the motor. Nothing.

What had Ker told him once about consoles? They'd had a blade machine back up. The canopy had been open because Jo

Jo

What had he done before the Tolnep arrived? Let's see. He had loosened the top-plate screws. Psychlos once in a while used screws. Most of the time they just a