Left hand, right hand

by James H. Schmitz

Troy shook his head. He'd been working against something there had been no way of knowing about. "Was that Rojas waiting for me in the tunnel?"

"Yes. At that point, we knew we would win, and it had become safe enough to tell you. Unfortunately, you believed it was a trap."

Troy chewed his lip. "On that home-world of the Tareegs when the two factions were fighting—the losing side did something which blasted the whole planet apart?"

"Not exactly," Clingman said. "The appearance of it is rather that the home-world came apart in an almost gentle manner, section separating from section. How that could be done is something no one on Earth had worked out at the time we left. The original survey group brought back samples of the asteroid swarm for analysis. A good deal was learned from them."

He paused, frowning at his cigarette, said slowly, "The twin worlds have developed a new scientific Tareeg caste which was considered—or considered itself—too valuable to be risked on the interstellar expedition to the Cassa system. I think that was a very fortunate circumstance for us. Even before we left Earth, even when it was believed they were all dead, what had been deduced of the Tareeg genius for destruction was more than a little disturbing. The apparent purpose of that last defensive action on the home-world was to strip the surface oceans from the hostile sections of the planet. Obviously, the process got out of hand; the entire planet was broken up instead. But one can't really doubt that—given more time—they would have learned to master the weapon.

"The killing agent developed by the opposing side evidently had been very thoroughly mastered. And again we can't say how they did it. It can be described as a large protein molecule, but its properties can be imagined only as arising out of a very complex organization, theoretically impossible at that level of life. It is confined to water, but its method of dispersion within that medium is not understood at all. At one instant, it is here; at the next, it apparently will have moved to a point perhaps several hundred miles away. It is life which has no existence, and cannot exist, except as a weapon. Unlike a parasite, its purpose is simply to kill, quickly and efficiently, and go on at once to another victim. Having exhausted the store of victims—a short process, obviously, even in an area of planetary dimensions—it dies of something like starvation within days.

"That, of course, was as practical a limitation to those employing it as the one that it attacks only Tareegs. They did not want to be barred indefinitely from an area which had been cleansed of their enemies, and neither did they want food animals in that area to be destroyed. They...."

His voice trailed off, and Troy stirred restlessly. Dr. Clingman was slumped farther down in his chair now, and the pale, protruding eyes had begun to blink drowsily. He seemed about to go to sleep. Troy said, "If the thing killed the Tareegs on Cassa One inside an hour after they'd gone into the sea, then they couldn't have had the time to start the interstellar drones back towards the twin worlds."

Clingman's head turned to him again. "No," Clingman said. "Of course not."

"And even," Troy went on, "if they had been able to ship a couple of loads of infected water back, it would have been harmless long before it reached their worlds."