“So it matters to you when and where they were invented,” Seth Morley said.

“I came close to producing something one time,” Belsnor said. “A silencing circuit. It would have interrupted the flow of electrons in any given conductor for a range of about fifty feet. As a weapon of defense it would have been valuable. But I couldn’t get the field to propagate for fifty feet; I could only get it functional for one-and-a-half feet. So that was that.” He lapsed into silence, then. Brooding, baleful silence. Withdrawn into himself.

“We love you anyway,” Maggie said.

Belsnor raised his head and glared at her.

“The Deity accepts even that,” Maggie said. “Even an attempt which led nowhere. The Deity knows your motive, and motive is everything.”

“It wouldn’t matter,” Belsnor said, “if this whole colony, everybody in it, died. None of us contribute anything. We’re nothing more than parasites, feeding off the galaxy. ‘The world will little note or long remember what we do here.’”

Seth Morley said to Maggie, “Our leader. The man who’s going to keep us alive.”

“I’ll keep you alive,” Belsnor said. “As best I can. That could be my contribution: inventing a device made out of fluid-state circuitry that’ll save us. That’ll spike all the toy cannons.”

“I don’t think you’re very bright to call something a toy simply because it’s small,” Maggie Walsh said. “That would mean that the Toxilax artificial kidney is a toy.”

“You would have to call eighty percent of all Interplan ship circuitry toys,” Seth Morley said.

“Maybe that’s my problem,” Belsnor said wryly. “I can’t tell what’s a toy and what isn’t… which means I can’t tell what’s real. A toy ship is not a real ship. A toy cannon is not a real cannon. But I guess if it can kill—” He pondered. “Perhaps tomorrow I should require everyone to go systematically through the settlement, collecting all the toy buildings, in fact everything from outside, and then we’ll ignite the whole pile and be done with it.”

“What else has come into the settlement from outside?” Seth Morley inquired.

“Artificial flies,” Belsnor said. “For one thing.”

“They take pictures?” Seth asked.

“No. That’s the artificial bees. The artificial flies fly around and sing.”

“‘Sing’?” He thought he must have heard wrong.

“I have one here.” Belsnor rummaged in his pockets and at last brought out a small plastic box. “Hold it to your ear. There’s one in there.”

“What sort of thing do they sing?” Seth Morley held the box to his ear, listened. He heard it, then, a far-off sweet sound, like divided strings. And, he thought, like many distant wings. “I know that music,” he said, “but I can’t place it.” An indistinct favorite of mine, he realized. From some ancient era.

“They play what you like,” Maggie Walsh said.

He recognized it, now. Granada. “I’ll be goddamed,” he said aloud. “Are you sure it’s a fly that’s doing that?”

“Look in the box,” Belsnor said. “But be careful—don’t let it out. They’re rare and hard to catch.”

With great care Seth Morley slid back the lid of the box. He saw within it a dark fly, like a Proxima 6 tape-fly, large and hairy, with beating wings and eyes protruding, composite eyes, such as true flies had. He shut the box, convinced. “Amazing,” he said. “Is it acting as a receiver? Picking up a signal from a central transmitter somewhere on the planet? It’s a radio—is that it?”

“I took one apart,” Belsnor said. “It’s not a receiver; the music is emitted by a speaker but it emanates from the fly’s works. The signal is created by a miniature generator in the form of an electrical impulse, not unlike a nerve impulse in an organic living creature. There’s a moist element ahead of the generator which alters a complex pattern of conductivity, so a very complex signal can be created. What’s it singing for you?”

“Granada,” Seth Morley said. He wished he could keep it. The fly would be company for him. “Will you sell it?” he asked.

“Catch your own.” Belsnor retrieved his fly and placed the box back in his pocket.

“Is there anything else from outside the settlement?” Seth Morley asked. “Besides the bees, flies, printers and miniature buildings?”

Maggie Walsh said, “A sort of flea-sized printer. But it can only print one thing; it does it over and over again, grinding out a flood that seems endless.”

“A print of what?”

“Of Specktowsky’s Book,” Maggie Walsh said.

“And that’s it?”

“That’s all we know about,” Maggie amended. “There may be others unknown to us.” She shot a sharp glance at Belsnor.

Belsnor said nothing; he had again retracted into his own personal world, for the moment, oblivious to them.

Seth Morley picked up the abolished miniature building and said, “If the tenches only print duplicates of objects then they didn’t make this. Something with highly-developed technical skills would have had to.”

“It could have been made centuries ago,” Belsnor said, rousing himself. “By a race that’s no longer here.”

“And printed continually since?”

“Yes. Or printed after we arrived here. For our benefit.”

“How long do these miniature buildings last? Longer than your pen?”

“I see what you mean,” Belsnor said. “No, they don’t seem to decay rapidly. Maybe they’re not printings. I don’t see that it makes much difference; they could have been held in reserve all this time. Put aside until needed, until something along the lines of our colony manifested itself.”

“Is there a microscope here in the settlement?”

“Sure.” Belsnor nodded. “Babble has one.”

“I’ll go see Babble, then.” Seth Morley moved toward the door of the briefing chamber. “Goodnight,” he said, over his shoulder.

Neither of them answered; they seemed indifferent to him and to what he had said. Will I be this way in a couple of weeks? he asked himself. It was a good question, and before long he would have the answer.

“Yes,” Babble said. “You can use my microscope.” He had on pajamas and slippers and an ersatz-wool striped bathrobe. “I was just going to bed.” He watched Seth Morley bring forth the miniature building. “Oh, one of those. They’re all over the place.”

Seating himself at the microscope, Seth Morley pried open the tiny structure, broke away the outer hull, then placed the component-complex onto the stage of the microscope. He used the low-power resolution, obtaining a magnification of 600x.

Intricate strands… printed circuitry, of course, on a series of modules. Resistors, condensers, valves. A power supply: one ultra-miniaturized helium battery. He could make out the swivel of the cannon barrel and what appeared to be the germanium arc which served as the source of the energy beam. It can’t be very strong, he realized. Belsnor in a sense was right: the output, in ergs, must be terribly small.

He focused on the motor which drove the cannon barrel as it moved from side to side. Words were printed on the hasp which held the barrel in place; he strained to read them—and saw, as he adjusted the fine focus of the microscope, a confirmation of what he most feared.

The construct had come from Earth. It had not been invented by a superterrestrial race—it did not emanate from the native life forms of Delmak-O. So much for that.

General Treaton, he said to himself grimly. It is you, after all, who is destroying us. Our transmitter, our receiver—and the demand that we reach this planet by noser. Was it you who had Ben Tallchief killed? Obviously.

“What are you finding there?” Babble asked.

“I am finding,” he said, “that General Treaton is our enemy and that we don’t have a chance.” He moved away from the microscope. “Take a look.”

Babble placed his eye against the eye-piece of the microscope. “Nobody thought of that,” he said presently. “We could have examined one of these any time during the last two months. It just never occurred to us.” He looked away from the microscope, peering falteringly at Seth Morley. “What’ll we do?”