thought of âcacodemon.â âThe mechanical parts stick into the body so deepââ
âThey are not attachments,â he corrected. âLook!â He pointed at the portion of the arm that began in flesh and ended in the metal of a rocket launcher.âNeither the arm nor the launcher is complete, but the cross section shows the point of connection between the arm and the weapon. You see it, donât you, Jill? You donât need a microscope.â
The only other time Iâd been this close to a piece of monster was when the foot of a spider-mind almost crushed me on the train when we rescued Ken. I wondered what Ackerman called the spider-minds. Anyway, seeing a cross section of a demon was a new experience. âI donât believe it,â I admitted.
âSeeing is believing.â
The red shaded into silver-gray. There was no dividing line. The rocket launcher grew out of the flesh.
âThatâs one for Ripley,â he said.
âHuh?â
âA little before your time. It means itâs hard to believe, but the evidence is right before you. When I first started studying these creatures, I was most puzzled about their weapons. Think about it. The imps fire a weapon thatâs purely organic in nature.â
âWe call them imps, too. Well, sometimes spinies.â
âUh-huh. Your pumpkins do the same with their balls of concentrated acid and combustible gas. Why, then, do these larger creatures use weapons similar to the artillery used by humans?â
Iâd never thought about that. If someone is trying to stab me with a switchblade, I donât wonder how he got it.
It was Dr. Ackermanâs job to wonder. âAll these military weapons seemed inappropriate,â he went on. âIf they internally create bolts of force and can project them, why develop appendages that require external ammunition?â
âI get it,â I said, excited. âItâs like if youâre Godzilla, what do you need with a gun?â
âPerfect, Jill. You really are a smart kid.â
I didnât want compliments. I wanted to keep the discussion moving. âAre you sure they get their bullets and rockets from somewhere else? Maybe they grow them, too?â
Ackerman stopped what he was doingâbringing up a computer display showing the monsterâs autopsy reportâand took his glasses off. He pointed at me with them. âRight there you prove yourself worth more than the people Iâve been working with. You can help me, uh, interface with Ken, too. His doctor says it will be a while before he gets back to normal, but heâs been so close to the problem that he understands aspects of their biotechnology that no one else comprehends.â
I nodded. âNow I remember. Ken told us how the rockets and guns and stuff were probably first stolen from subject races. So if the gun is a separate thing, then itâs not grown by a demon.â
Ackerman finished my thought: âBut if itâs attached, then itâs grown somehow. The original version of the weapon must have been stolen first. Then they modified it into their biotech.â
He turned his back to me again and I noticed little red and yellow stains all over it. I didnât want to know what they were. Now he was excited as he said, âWhat we need is a living specimen of one of the big ones.â
He grinned. Maybe he really was a mad scientist. I had to ask the obvious question: âWould you be able to control it?â
âWe already handle the living zombies we have here. That sounds funny, doesnât it? Living zombies.â
âYou have live ones?â I nearly freaked when he said that. Being in combat had turned me into a killer . . . of the undead.
âSure, but theyâre easy to control. They donât have superhuman strength. You know that from fighting them.â
âHave you fought them?â
âWell, no, but
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