Hands dangling limply at his side, Meek gaped in terror and disbelief. He wasn't touching the controls, and yet the ship was like a thing bewitched. A split second later the ball was over the goal and the ship was curving back, repulsor beam snapped off.

"It's the bugs!" Meek whispered to himself, lips scarcely moving. "The bugs have taken over!"

The craft he was riding, he knew, was no longer just a ship, but a collection of rock-bugs. Bugs that could work out mathematical equations. And now were playing polo!

For what was polo, anyhow, except a mathematical equation, a problem of using certain points of force at certain points in space to arrive at a predetermined end? Back on Gus' rock the bugs had worked as a unit to solve equations ... and the new hatch in the ship was working as a unit, too, to solve another kind of problem ... the problem of taking a certain ball to a certain point despite certain variable and random factors in the form of opposing spaceships.

Tentatively, half fearfully, Meek stabbed cautiously at a key which should have turned the ship. The ship didn't turn. Meek snatched his hand away as if the key had burned his finger.

Back on the line the ship wheeled into position of its own accord and a moment later was off again. Meek clung to his chair with shaking hands. There was, he knew, no use of even pretending he was trying to operate the ship. There was just one thing that he was glad of. No one could see him sitting there, doing nothing.

But the time would come ... and soon ... when he would have to do something. For he couldn't let the ship return to the Ring. To do that would be to infest the other ships parked there, spread the bugs throughout the solar system. And those bugs definitely were something the solar system cold get along without.

The ship shuddered and twisted, weaving its way through the pack of players. More plates ripped loose. Glancing up, Meek could see the glory of Saturn through the gleaming ribs.

Then the ball was over the line and Meek's team mates were shrieking at him over the radio in his spacesuit ... happy, glee-filled yells of triumph. He didn't answer. He was too busy ripping out the control wires. But it didn't help. Even while he was doing it the ship went on unhampered and piled up another score.

Apparently the bugs didn't need the controls to make the ship do what they wanted. More than likely they were 

 Prev. P 25/28 next