Terror flared across the Saturnian moons. One of
the Woollies, that perfect slave-race, had killed
a man! But to Big Bill, shambling away
from his bloody, suddenly silent master, the
ancient pattern of obedience was unchanged.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Big Bill lumbered swiftly forward across the frozen ground, and behindhim came the rest of the work gang—a score of bent and mighty manlikeshapes, draped like Big Bill from head to foot in long white hair.
They moved in a straggling group, but the rhythmic side sway of thegreat bodies was more uniform than the tread of marching men. Their redeyes peered ahead through the noonday twilight toward the landing striptwo hundred yards away, slashed clean and straight across the raggedlow-gravity terrain.
There were human figures—three of them—moving along the edge of thestrip that was nearer to the cluster of lighted Company buildings. Atthe distance they all looked alike, big-headed and thick-waisted intheir vacuum suits, but even so, Big Bill identified them with ease.Behind those dull red eyes were perceptions wholly alien to Man's,senses to which the distinctive personalities of the men were things asobvious as are apples or oranges to eyes and fingers.
Brilliant lights flashed on all along the landing strip. Thinnictitating membranes descended over the eyes of the approachingWoollies, and the gang came to a simultaneous halt. They sank slowlyto their haunches on the iron-hard, fire-cold surface, and in the actbecame less like fur-clad men and more like crouching, hairy beasts.
Big Bill hunkered unmoving in his place, but his peculiar senses wereprobing with an unusual curiosity at the familiar minds of the threemen. The one who had just risen from bending over the switchbox thatcontrolled the lights was named Paige, and, when Big Bill's mindtouched his, the Woolly felt an odd apathy behind which something tenseand secret smoldered like a fire banked under ashes. And the fire washate.
The second, who stood stiffly near Paige, was called Doc. In his braintoo burned hate, a dense and palpable thing to Big Bill, mixed with afear which turned the hatred inward on the mind that had given it birth.
The third man was Paul Gedner.
He stood a little apart from the others, gazing into the starry skyfrom which the rocket would come. For the watching Woollies his tallfigure was clothed in a tangible aura of power, commanding all theirinborn, robot-like obedience. He towered like a sublime and terriblegod between the narrow horizons of Phoebe, over the desolate landscapeof weird lights and shadows cast by Saturn and the distant Sun. Andin his thoughts the Woollies glimpsed dimly something beyond theirunderstanding—a Plan, worthy of godhead in its cosmic vastness,leading toward some unguessable triumph—and it was that Plan which theother men hated and feared.
There was still a fourth human on Phoebe. But that man's mind had gonewhere not even a Woolly's perceptions could follow it.
Abruptly Gedner gestured, and though the furry watchers could nothear what he said into his helmet radio, they turned as one to stareeastward.
High up in the dusky sky a white star was moving. In seconds itgrew through magnitudes; it became a fiery, onrushing comet, then apolished, hurtling cylinder of steel lit up by the glare that went onbefore it. Swiftly the rocket descended; its underdrive flared brieflyout, flattening its trajectory, and it came in over the jagg