Jonnie opened his transmit switch. He lowered the pitch of his voice as much as possible. “How are things?”

“The drone's all right and why shouldn't it be? I’ve been escorting it, haven't I? You certainly run a messed-up planet here! It's not like this on Psychlo! I should hope not! You're late! What's your name?”

Jonnie hastily dredged up a name that was common to twenty percent of the Psychlos. "Snit. Could I ask who I’m talking to?”

"Nup, Executive Administrator Nup! Use 'Your Executiveship' when you address me! Crap planet.”

“Did you arrive recently, Your Executiveship?” asked Jonnie.

“Just today, Snit. And how am I greeted? With a crummy Bolbod attack anyone could handle! Wait,” suspiciously, “you have a very strange accent. Like...like...yes, like a Chinko instruction disc! That's what it is. You're not a Bolbod, are you?” The click of firing buttons pulled off safety to standby.

“I was born here,” said Jonnie truthfully.

A sharp nasty laugh. “Oh, a colonial!”

Silence for a moment. “Were you briefed on this mission?”

“A little bit, Your Executiveship. But orders have been changed. That's what I was sent to tell you.”

“You're not relieving me?” Very hostile.

“The destination has been changed!” said Jonnie. “There's radio silence. They had to send me with the word.”

“Radio silence?”

“Planetary wide, Your Executiveship."

“Ah, then it is a Bolbod attack! They operate everything on radio! I knew it.”

"I’m afraid so, Your Executiveship.”

“Well, if you're not going to relieve me, what am I expected to do? I am almost out of fuel! Where's the nearest minesite!" Jonnie thought very fast.

“Your Executiveship, the orders were that if you were almost out of fuel-' Good lord, where could he send him? That Mark 32 was the only thing that one could home in on in a search! "-l was to tell you to land with magnetic grapnels on top of the drone...right at the front end.”

“What?” incredulous.

“Then drop off when we come close to the next minesite. You've got a map there?”

“No. I haven't got a map. You run things very badly on this planet. Not like Psychlo. It should be reported.”

“There's an attack on.” “Nothing can dent this plane. It 's a ground strafer. I don't know why it's being sent on escort.”

“How much fuel do you have, Your Executiveship?"

A pause. Then, “Crap! It 's only ten minutes' worth! You almost killed me with your lateness.”

“Well, just land on the extreme front end of the drone-'

“Why the front end? I should land in the middle. If I land on the front end it

will unbalance the weight distribution of the drone.”

“It’s the way it's loaded this trip. They omitted part of the load in the front. They said specifically the front end.”

“This is a pretty heavy plane!”

“Not for the drone. You better get moving, Your Executiveship. That water is cold down there. Ice, too! And you'll need fuel to off-load. It 's only a few hours to the next minesite."

Jonnie watched his screens. He couldn't see the plane in direct sight. With a bit of anxiety, he opened up the view to include the monstrous drone.

He felt faint with relief when the Mark 32 dove ahead, sat down on the top-front section of the drone, and put on its magnetic grips. They held!

The heat indicator of the viewscreen showed the Mark 32 had shut off its motors.

Jonnie watched. He expected the drone to nose down, possibly to crash. It did sag. Then its engines started to compensate and it rolled gently, thundering along, still going on its lethal way. Nup had landed off-center, inducing a continuous roll, right to left, left to right. It would roll to the right, and the balance motors would compensate and bring it back too far to the left and then overcompensate in the other direction. Only about ten degrees each way. But this did not at all change the steadfast course the drone was following. A very slow roll. Was it also crabbing slightly?

With Nup out of the way, at least for now, Jonnie got down to the business of seeing what could be done to halt the drone.

He drew off a bit to give his screens better play on it. It looked like a derelict! Here was a mark where an atomic bomb had hit it, there was a scar where possibly a plane had crashed into it leaving the charred remnants of oil and fuel. There a row of minute dents where surface-to-air or air-to-air missiles had struck it. But such marks were notable only for their stains, not for any damage they had done.

He flew the battle plane down under it. He looked at the big skids used for parking and storing. No joy there.

He brought the battle plane alongside it again. He felt like a hummingbird flapping along with a buzzard.

Probably when the last mission of this thing was completed and it had crashed, demolishing the then-known city of “Colorado Springs,” the company had just let it lie there until it had built hangars and, as an afterthought, had probably flown water tanks over it and way above it and washed the radiation off of it and then stored it.

A chilling thought as to why they must have done that. Psychlos had no room for sentiment or art in any form. They would not have kept it for any other reason than that they couldn't dismantle it on this planet. Psychlo alone would have the massive shops to do that. They certainly didn't want it back. It had done its job. They wouldn't leave it out where it could be measured up by some enemy agent. They had kept it because the company couldn't destroy it on this planet. What it was built of, the devil only knew!

Well, he tried to cheer himself, Nup's plane skids had stuck to it. These magnetic so-called skids were actually whole-molecule reorientation fields. The molecules in the surface of one substance became, with the field, comingled with the molecules of the other substance like a temporary weld. So this thing was built of molecular metal, possibly some unknown– to this planet– metal, alloyed with some other strange metal. It even could be that the combination of such metals was, while molecular, irreversible and couldn't be melted or pounded apart once mixed. Maybe the Psychlos had something that, when certain elements were mixed together, could not then be "unmixed" by flame, electrical arcs, radiation, or anything. Maybe even laminated layers of such metals, each one protecting the one under it.

A very chilling thought. Jonnie did not consider himself even a kindergarten-level metallurgist, but he recalled the prohibition the Psychlos had of ever teaching an alien race anything about that subject. And here he was trying to solve it, flying along in the night, without texts, without a calculator, and without even the mathematics to use it if he had it.

What would destroy that drone? And before it reached even the coast of

Scotland.

He had thought a Psychlo was a monster when he first saw one. Now he was really looking at a monster. An ultimate in indestructibility.

Out of the tail of his eye he thought he saw something move on the viewscreen. He looked at it closely. There it was again. A rhythmic pulse under the bottom of the drone. He counted it out. Once every twenty seconds, regular as his watch. Suddenly he realized he had been studying just one side of the drone. He guessed he was feeling a bit overwhelmed. Well! Easily remedied. He hit his console with rapid fingers and flick, he was over on the other side of the drone.

This side had been away from him when he first saw the thing from the plains after it fired. Nup had been flying on the other side also.

He trimmed in his viewscreens.

What! The huge loading door was unlatched. And since Nup had landed on the nose, making the drone roll and crab periodically, the door was swinging open and closed.