“I tell you I don’t know,” Morrison said. After a moment, Shotwell asked softly, “Is there any possibility of sabotage?”
“I guess so,” Morrison said. “All this couldn’t be entirely natural. If someone wanted to, they could do a lot of damage – like misguiding a convoy, tampering with charges, lousing up the lightning rods —”
“Do you suspect anyone?”
“I have over five thousand men here,” Morrison said slowly.
“I know that. Now listen carefully. The board of directors has agreed to grant you extraordinary powers in this emergency. You can do anything you like to get the job done. Lock up half the camp, if you wish. Blow the natives out of the hills, if you think that might help. Take any and all measures. No legal responsibility will devolve upon you. We’re even prepared to pay a sizable bonus. But the job must be completed.”
“I know,” Morrison said.
“Yes, but you don’t know how important Work Order 35 is. In strictest confidence, the company has received a number of setbacks elsewhere. There have been loss and damage suits, Acts of God uncovered by our insurance. We’ve sunk too much in this planet to abandon it. You simply must carry it off.”
“I’ll do my best,” Morrison said, and signed off. That afternoon there was an explosion in the fuel dump.
Ten thousand gallons of D-12 were destroyed, and the fuel-dump guard was killed.
“You were pretty lucky,” Morrison said, staring somberly at Lerner.
“I’ll say,” Lerner said, his face still gray and sweat-stained. Quickly he poured himself a drink. “If I had walked through there ten minutes later, I would have been in the soup. That’s too close for comfort.”
“Pretty lucky,” Morrison said thoughtfully.
“Do you know,” Lerner said, “I think the ground was hot when I walked past the dump? It didn’t strike me until now. Could there be some sort of volcanic activity under the surface?”
“No,” Morrison said. “Our geologists have charted every inch of this area. We’re perched on solid granite.”
“Hmm,” Lerner said. “Morrie, I believe you should wipe out the natives.”
“Why do that?”
“They’re the only really uncontrolled factor. Everyone in the camp is watching everyone else. It must be the natives! Psi ability has been proved, you know, and it’s been shown more prevalent in primitives.”
Morrison nodded. “Then you would say that the explosion was caused by poltergeist activity?”
Lerner frowned, watching Morrison’s face. “Why not? It’s worth looking into.”
“And if they can polter,” Morrison went on, “they can do anything else, can’t they? Direct an explosion, lead a convoy astray —[6]”
“I suppose they can, granting the hypothesis.”
“Then what are they fooling around for?” Morrison asked. “If they can do all that, they could blow us off this planet without any trouble.”
“They might have certain limitations,” Lerner said.
“Nuts. Too complicated a theory. It’s much simpler to assume that someone here doesn’t want the job completed. Maybe he’s been offered a million dollars by a rival company. Maybe he’s a crank. But he’d have to be someone who gets around. Someone who checks blast patterns, charts courses, directs work parties —”
“Now just a minute! If you’re implying —”
“I’m not implying a thing,” Morrison said. “And if I’m doing you an injustice, I’m sorry.” He stepped outside the tent and called two workmen. “Lock him up somewhere, and make sure he stays locked up.”
“You’re exceeding your authority,” Lerner said.
“Sure.”
“And you’re wrong. You’re wrong about me, Morrie.”
“In that case, I’m sorry.” He motioned to the men, and they led Lerner out.
Two days later the avalanches began. The geologists didn’t know why. They theorized that repeated demolition might have caused deep flaws in the bedrock, the flaws expanded, and – well, it was anybody’s guess.
Morrison tried grimly to push the work ahead, but the men were beginning to get out of hand. Some of them were babbling about flying objects, fiery hands in the sky, talking animals and sentient machines. They drew a lot of listeners. It was unsafe to walk around the camp after dark. Self-appointed guards shot at anything that moved, and quite a number of things that didn’t.
Morrison was not particularly surprised when, late one night, he found the work camp deserted. He had expected the men to make a move. He sat back in his tent and waited.
After a while Rivera came in and sat down. “Gonna be some trouble,” he said, lighting a cigarette.
“Whose trouble?”
“The natives. The boys are going up to that village.”
Morrison nodded. “What started them?”
Rivera leaned back and exhaled smoke. “You know this crazy Charlie? The guy who’s always praying? Well, he swore he saw one of those natives standing beside his tent. He said the native said, ‘You die, all of you Earthmen die.’ And then the native disappeared.”
“In a cloud of smoke?” Morrison asked.
“Yeah,” Rivera said, grinning. “I think there was a cloud of smoke in it.”
Morrison remembered the man. A perfect hysteric type. A classic case, whose devil spoke conveniently in his own language, and from somewhere near enough to be destroyed.
“Tell me,” Morrison asked, “are they going up there to destroy witches? Or psi supermen?”
Rivera thought it over for a while, then said, “Well, Mr. Morrison, I’d say they don’t much care.”
In the distance they heard a loud, reverberating boom.
“Did they take explosives?” Morrison asked.
“Don’t know. I suppose they did.”
It was ridiculous, he thought. Pure mob behavior. Dengue would grin and say: When in doubt, always kill the shadows. Can’t tell what they’re up to.
But Morrison found that he was glad his men had made the move. Latent psi powers… You could never tell.
Half an hour later, the first men straggled in, walking slowly, not talking to each other.
“Well?” Morrison asked. “Did you get them all?”
“No sir,” a man said. “We didn’t even get near them.”
“What happened?” Morrison asked, feeling a touch of panic.
More of his men arrived. They stood silently, not looking at each other.
“What happened?” Morrison shouted.
“We didn’t even get near them,” a man said. “We got about halfway there. Then there was another landslide.”
“Were any of you hurt?”
“No sir. It didn’t come near us. But it buried their village.”
“That’s bad,” Morrison said softly.
“Yes sir.” The men stood in quiet groups, looking at him.
“What do we do now, sir?”
Morrison shut his eyes tightly for a moment, then said, “Get back to your tents and stand by.”
They melted into the darkness. Rivera looked questioningly at him. Morrison said, “Bring Lerner here.” As soon as Rivera left, he turned to the radio, and began to draw in his outposts.
He had a suspicion that something was coming, so the tornado that burst over the camp half an hour later didn’t take him completely by surprise. He was able to get most of his men into the ships before their tents blew away.
Lerner pushed his way into Morrison’s temporary headquarters in the radio room of the flagship. “What’s up?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you what’s up,” Morrison said. “A range of dead volcanoes ten miles from here are erupting. The weather station reports a tidal wave coming that’ll flood half this continent. We shouldn’t have earthquakes here, but I suppose you felt the first tremor. And that’s only the beginning.”
“But what is it?” Lerner asked. “What’s doing it?”
“Haven’t you got Earth yet?” Morrison asked the radio operator.
“Still trying.”
Rivera burst in. “Just two more sections to go,” he reported.
“When everyone’s on a ship, let me know.”
“What’s going on?” Lerner screamed. “Is this my fault too?”
“I’m sorry about that,” Morrison said.
“Got something,” the radioman said. “Hold on…”
“Morrison!” Lerner screamed. “Tell me!”
“I don’t know how to explain it,” Morrison said. “It’s too big for me. But Dengue could tell you.”
Morrison closed his eyes and imagined Dengue standing in front of him. Dengue was smiling disdainfully, and saying, “Read here the saga of the jellyfish that dreamed it was a god. Upon rising from the ocean beach, the super-jellyfish which called itself Man decided that, because of its convoluted gray brain, it was the superior of all. And having thus decided, the jellyfish slew the fish of the sea and the beasts of the field, slew them prodigiously, to the complete disregard of nature’s intent. And then the jellyfish bored holes in the mountains and pressed heavy cities upon the groaning earth, and hid the green grass under a concrete apron. And then, increasing in numbers past all reason, the spaceborn jellyfish went to other worlds, and there he did destroy mountains, build up plains, shift whole forests, redirect rivers, melt ice caps, mold continents, dig new seas, and in these and other ways did deface the great planets which, next to the stars, are nature’s noblest work. Now nature is old and slow, but very sure. So inevitably there came a time when nature had enough of the presumptuous jellyfish, and his pretension to godhood. And therefore, the time came when a great planet whose skin he pierced rejected him, cast him out, spit him forth. That was the day the jellyfish found, to his amazement, that he had lived all his days in the sufferance of powers past his conception, upon an exact par with the creatures of plain and swamp, no worse than the flowers, no better than the weeds, and that it made no difference to the universe whether he lived or died, and all his vaunted record of works done was no more than the tracks an insect leaves in the sand.”