He landed at last on a rocky strip of island that was outside the combat zone, and there commenced to lay out his trap. It would take many tons of explosives to penetrate the tough hull of the space ship he knew, but the ship must be destroyed. He had considered building a huge heat blaster, but the time was too limited and he knew how powerful were the protective shells of a space ship's skin.
Gadgets he had considered; tricks that might gain for him entry into the ship where he could turn his own decomposition blaster on his brothers—all the tricks of the writing trade had passed muster before his mind's eye—but inevitably he returned to the decision that explosives gave the only certain means of destruction.
There was an island not far from his landing place where the men with yellow skins had stored a great quantity of munitions and supplies. The fighting front was far to the East and at night no great precautions were taken. Any approaching fleet of bombers or surface ships would be detected long before they could reach this island. Nothing but submarines.
Thig's space ship moved almost silently through the water offshore. The design of the ship that permitted no air to escape now permitted no water to enter. For many of the planets that Ortha claimed for her own possessed gaseous envelopes that were denser than water, and the Horde's ships were equipped to meet those conditions.
Softly the bow of the little craft nosed up on the beach inside the harbor, and from its single lock stepped Thig. Naked he was now, as were all Hordemen, and from the harness of flexible plastic about his body there depended a decomposition blaster and an old butcher knife that he had whetted to razor sharpness.
"You hear something?" asked one of the two guards.
"It was the waves," his comrade said, listening for a moment.
"In the darkness I can see nothing," grumbled the first Jap. "Perhaps the Marines are landing."
"Ho," laughed the other guard, "the Marines are thousands of miles away. They cannot stand against the power of our Emperor."
"It has been more than a year," said the fearful one, "and we have not yet conquered all of California. I have heard that a few Marines are still hiding in the Solomons."