As Stewart had feared, McAllister's landing turned out to be a real corker. It even started with a three-gainer flip, rather than a simple end-about maneuver, when he first applied braking thrust.
Bigboss responded automatically to the abruptly peaking sine wave that reminded him it was time for feeding. Summoning the clan with a brisk flow of "come-and-get it" signals on all command wave lengths, he strutted to the center of the clearing and prepared the trough. Squatting, he switched on all outlet circuits and directed bristling current into each jack.
The workers came from the cave, over the hills, out of the shadowy depths of fissures, from behind grotesque outcroppings. Illuminators piercing the twilight gloom, they extended retractable electrodes and converged on Bigboss.
One by one, plugs slipped into jacks and steadily increasing drain gave assurance of an orderly distribution of current.
Minnie was late arriving. She came along clumsily, massive drill head bobbing with her awkward stride. Had Bigboss' memory pack been serving him more efficiently at the time, he might have realized her gyros couldn't be overcorrecting that radically without triggering a "fix-me-I'm-broke" impulse.
But, as it was, she completed her apparently innocuous approach with impunity. Taking a last, measured step, she toppled over backwards on her posterior analyzing chamber. An ostensibly helpless victim of imbalance, her neck teetered skyward and her drill head hovered over Bigboss' upper section.
Then it crashed down, the drill bit shattering his port video pickup lens. Instantly he lost visual contact with one quadrant of his surroundings. He reacted at once, though, swiveling his upper section around ninety degrees and bringing Minnie back in sight through another lens. Guarding against repetition of the accident, he reached out and gripped her neck in his vise. He guided her plug into the proper jack, maintaining his purchase just to be sure.
Accident? he asked himself.
It was an unfamiliar concept, at best. Then he recalled that "mishap" was a notion not applicable to members of the clan. Perhaps other beings in other universes were given to blunder. In His World, though, He had arranged it that His intellects would be without error. Here the concept "intent" had no polar opposite.