Footfall

She gagged, and bile filled her mouth, splashed against the gas mask. Reflexively she lifted the mask. The smells of death filled her lungs. She turned and ran from the ship.

The bridge hummed with soft voices.

Behind Message Bearer a glow was fading, dying. Its death was carefully monitored. One couldn’t turn the main drive on and off like a light switch, lest showers of lethal particles burst from the magnetic bottle and spray through the ship.

Puffballs of flame streamed from sixteen digit ships mounted along the aft rim, fine-tuning Message Bearer’s velocity. Bridge, perso

Thrust shifted him against the web that held him to his couch. He watched a black-and-gray mass approach his ship.

The Foot was woefully changed.

Within the outer fringe of the gas giant’s ring they had found a rough-surfaced white egg, two makasrupkithp along the long axis, against a backdrop of terrible beauty. It had been like something out of the Shape Wars, a heretical representation of the Predecessors: a featureless head, lacking digits and body, lacking everything but brain.

The mining team had chosen it for its size and composition, out of an eight-cubed of similar moonlets. Over the next ten Homeworld years its icy strata had hatched water and air and fuel; its rock-and-metal core gave up steel alloys, and soil additives for the garden section.

It was no longer an egg. Six-eighths of its mass was gone. The ice was gone, leaving ridges and gouges and ru

“I hoped that we could shunt it aside,” Pastempeh-keph said.

“We gave ourselves the option,” said his Advisor. “If the prey had proved tractable, our present foray might have become a base of operations. We might have taken Winterhome without the Foot.”

Pastempeh-keph trumpeted in sudden rage. “Why do they always wait to attack?”

“It’s not a serious question, Herdmaster.” Fathisteh-tulk was placid as always. “We organized our foray over the past several years. Why would they not take a few eights of days to gather their forces? So. Now they have used fission bombs on their own Garden regions, and I must admit that that seems excessive—”

“Mad.”

“Mad, then. If they are truly mad, our problem is worse yet. Give thanks that it is the Breakers’ problem, not ours, not yet.”

“It will be soon.”

“Yes. But Digit Ship Six approaches with new prisoners and a considerable mass of loot. The Breakers should learn a great deal when it arrives.”

The Herdmaster trumpeted satisfaction. That, at least, was as expected. Nothing else is. “Why have the natives not sent messages?”

“Before there was anything to say, they wanted to talk,” Fathisteh-tulk said. “Now that we have some estimation of our relative strengths, they say nothing. No demands, no offers. Twelve digit ships are destroyed, and vast stretches of cropland, and the prey’s herdmasters have nothing to say to us. Perhaps the Breakers will learn why.” Again, that overly placid, languid, irritating voice. There is nothing to be done, the Herdmaster told himself. He is Advisor. What would I do, in his place?

Message Bearer surged backward, and shuddered. A fi’ turned and said, “Herdmaster, we are mated to the Foot. Soon we may begin acceleration. Have we a course?’

This was the moment. Long ago the Predecessors had destroyed a planet. Now — “Continue the Plan. Guide the Foot to center its impact on Winterhome. The Breakers’ group will find us a more specific target.” He stiffened suddenly. In a lowered voice he said, “Fathisteh-thlk, I believe I forgot to do anything about the mudmom!”

“Phoo. Defensemaster—”

“I saw to it that the mudroom was fully frozen before we stopped our spin.” Tantarent-fid said complacently. “I evacuated your private mudroom too, Herdmaster.”

“Good. Well served.” Pastempeh-keph shuddered at a mental picture: globules of mud filling the air, fithp in pressure suits trying to sweep it away— Lack of a communal mudroom would cause its own problems.

Henceforth every fi’ would be vaguely unhappy-as if the skewed mating seasons were not enough. He lifted his snffp high. I drown in afloat! of troubles.

Fathisteh-tulk made sympathetic gestures.

Not sympathy. Answers. “Defensemaster, bring the Breakers, the Attackmaster, and the priest to the conference pit. We must make decisions regarding the prey and the Foot.”

“Attackmaster?”

“We have discontinued the base in Kansas,” Koothfektil-rusp said. “Digit ships are in transit with prisoners and loot. We lost Digit Ship Thirteen, which carried the bulk of what we had gathered, but we saved several prisoners and some material on other ships.”

“How was this one lost?”

Koothfektil-rusp’s digits snapped back to cover his head. Did he feel threatened? “We did not anticipate that the American FIeni would bomb their own major food-bearing domain! We did not anticipate that the Soviet Herd would cooperate with them; and that they surely did! Our beams stopped many of their suborbital bombs, but many got through, and the launch devices had moved before we could fire on them.”

“The ship?”

“Thirteen was rising on a launch beam when a thermonuclear missile from a submarine vehicle destroyed the laser facility.”

“The bombs: were they all from the Soviet Herd?”

“From desert territories on the Soviet continent, and from offshore of the American continent, from submarine vehicles that were shielded by water when our lasers fell. None of the thermonuclear devices came from the United States itself.”

The Herdmaster pondered that. “Breaker-One, must we assume that the United States Herd has surrendered to the other? Or has the Soviet Herd attacked our foothold in Kansas, risking their wrath?”

Raztupisp-minz glanced at Takpusseh before speaking. “You must also consider that two human herds may cooperate when neither has surrendered to the other.”

The Herdmaster had feared this. Too many answers were no answer.

“And yet we may prosper,” Attackmaster Koothfektil-rusp said soothingly. “There is lithe industry, little transportation in our chosen target area. We may find genotypes clustered when we land following Footfall

“Footfall, yes.” Keep to specifics. “Must the Foot fall? BreakerOne?”

Raztupisp-minz said, “They must be made to know that they are hurt.” Takpusseh stirred but kept silent.

“Hurt? In America they will starve! They have seared their crops with radioactive fire!” The Herdmaster took firm hold of his emotions. The air was heady with pheromones, and seven spaceborn males were ready to butt heads “Attackmaster? The Foot?”

Koothfektil-rusp’s answer was predictable. “Stomp them. Show our might. We have chosen the location, Herdmaster. This time we attack a weaker herd. We must secure a foothold on Winterhome, and expand from there. Weather following Footfall will make retaliation difficult. Fate gifts us with a side effect: the weather worldwide will be wetter and mole to our liking.”

“Show me.”

Koothfektil-rusp lit the wall screen. Under his direction a globe of Winterhome rolled, and stopped. The Attackmaster’s digit indicated the body of water that Rogachev called the Indian Ocean. “Here, in the center. Look how the waves expand from the impact point. East, they roll many makasrupkithp to the island nations. North, even further. Westward, they cover the lowlands where we see city lights; the highlands are left free. Northwest, fuel sources that serve worldwide industry are drowned. These herds that cooperated against us may still not cooperate with the savage herds of the Southern Hemisphere, and wild air masses make transport impossible to them, and where would they send their forces? We might land east or west or north; the rolling sea subdues the prey in all directions. My sleeper aides tell me that the Foot has the mass and velocity to do the work we want.”