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She could not endure the thought of harm to those innocent beasts.
Crossing the hall, she reared up on twos to pound on Darlene's closed door. Without waiting for an
answer, Swelk entered. The cold moonlight streaming into the room made Darlene, seated on the edge of
her bed, look ashen. Her hair was matted and tangled.
"I know an attack is planned on the Consensus. Proceeding means destruction, for you, for the Krulirim,
or probably both. I want to avoid that suffering. I want to help.
"But it must be done on my terms."
* * *
Snow flurries swirled around Kyle and his visitor. "If this diversion costs me one casualty, I will
personally rip out your heart and feed it to you." Barrel-chested, with arms thicker than Kyle's thighs,
Colonel Ted Blake's soft-spoken threat was entirely believable. Blake was livid at being summoned
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from Delta Force's base at Fort Bragg a day before the attack on the starship. His commandos were en
route to Washington as they spoke.
They were in the woods that abutted the safehouse, on whose sagging porch Kyle had awaited Blake. He
brushed aside a low branch. "I understand your concern, Colonel."
"Oh? Whose lives are you personally responsible for?"
The whole planet's, but he didn't suppose that answer would be well received. "Colonel, I know for a
fact neither you nor any of the Delta Force has met a Krul. Don't you want to know something about
your opponents?"
"Don't tell me my business," said Blake. "I know for a fact that you have no military background. Now
give me one good reason why I should even be here, or I'll be on my way."
Kyle exhaled sharply. Here goes. "When we go inside, I'll stay in the foyer. You go through the doorway
to your left and back into the dining room where Swelk will be. Keep your eyes on her. What you need
to see will happen as soon as I hear you say her name."
They returned to the safehouse, Kyle signaling with a finger raised to his lips that the agent at the door
was not to speak. Inside, Swelk and Darlene could be heard talking. As Blake turned left, Kyle took an
electric razor from his coat pocket. He plugged it into the front-hall power outlet. When Blake said,
"Swelk, I presume," Kyle clicked the switch to on.
There was an immediate thud, followed by a drumming against the wooden floor and shouts of dismay
from Darlene. Kyle turned off the razor. The drumming quickly faded. He clicked the razor on; the
spastic beat resumed. He switched off the shaver a second time, this time unplugging it.
When Kyle entered the dining room, Darlene was hovering anxiously over the still-prone Swelk. He
shrugged apologetically to them both.
Blake's glower had been replaced by shrewd calculation. "Shall we continue our hike?" asked Kyle. An
agent handed him a backpack as they left the safehouse.
"What you just witnessed, Colonel, was the aliens' biggest weakness. Swelk was instantly disabled by
the electric motor in my razor."
"Explain."
"Members of her species orient themselves by reference to the planetary magnetic field. Any electric
motor, not just the one in a razor, converts an alternating current into an alternating magnetic field. The
electromagnetic part, called the rotor, pushes magnetically against a stationary permanent magnet, the
stator. As you know, wall current alternates at sixty cycles per second. I just inflicted on my friend a
sixty-times-per-second reversal of her sense of direction."
"So she had extreme vertigo."
"Right," agreed Kyle. "But more than that. You saw her twitching uncontrollably. If you listened
closely, you might also have heard that her computer immediately stopped translating her words. Swelk
was shouting something, but while the motor ran that speech was unintelligible." The computer itself
was unaffected, continuing to translate, or at least to make alien-sounding noises, in response to
Darlene's English.
"Couldn't your ugly little friend be play acting?"
"She had no warning of what I did, and her response surely seems involuntary. That aside, it turns out
the house surveillance system recorded prior incidents." Once Kyle had been told of Swelk's previous
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episodes, he had known to look. Darlene, who had been unaware of the hidden cameras, no longer
showered there. He dug in the backpack. "Hence this videocam."
They stopped beneath a towering hemlock. Blake accepted the videocam and pushed the Play button. In
the preview screen, Swelk stood in the dining room, a date and time appearing in tiny digits in the
display's corner. Moments later, Swelk collapsed. Kyle handed over a second videotape. The new image
showed Darlene in the kitchen, overseeing an air popper. The date and time matched Swelk's collapse on
the first tape.
"Check these." Kyle offered two more tapes. Once more Swelk was stricken, now concurrent with
Darlene's use of an electric hair dryer.
"Maybe it's the noise, not the motors." Probing curiosity had replaced hostility.
"Nope. A razor heard across the house is quieter than Swelk's own translator. I made an audio tape of a
popcorn popper and played it back on a cassette recorder. That made her ill at ease, because the recorder
itself has a small motor, but how loudly I played the tape made no difference." They resumed their walk.
"When I converted that same tape of popper noise to MP3 format and ran the file through an electronic
player, Swelk didn't react at all."
"You're saying we can disable the ETs with a big electric motor near the starship."
The safehouse was no longer visible through the trees, but a clearing had come into view. A windswept
field in Minnesota rushed to mind, the meadow from which Andrew Wheaton's family had been
abducted. "No, the ship's hull would surely shield them. But if we can get an airlock open, penetrate that
shield . . ."
"My guys know all about penetrating things, and we're not restricted to kicking down doors." Blake's
smile was frankly predatory.
"There's a fusion reactor in that ship, which will be in the heart of metropolitan Washington. The last
thing we want to do is to make it go boom."
"I don't think they're going to respond to the Delta Force ringing the bell, even if all we're carrying is
razors."
"Swelk knows how to get us in." Kyle ignored an outburst of protest. "She deduced from her questioning
that an attack must be imminent."
Blake swallowed an oath. "You trust the little monster?"
"That's exactly what I propose to do: trust her. If we bring her, she promises to share the airlock keypad
code that will let us into the ship."
"Bring an enemy to the raid." Blake was incredulous.
"Bring a defector. An ally. That's what I sincerely think she is. Every fact in our possession confirms
that she is. If I'm right, her help will be invaluable, in operating the onboard systems after we take over
the ship, in interpreting anything the crew says."
"And if you're wrong?"
Kyle swallowed hard. "I'll be very sorry. You see, I'm going to be in the lead truck."
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Framed
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