Page 78 - The Perpetrations of Captain Kaga

Claiming the Vegimal Property

“Aha!” he exclaimed. “Now let’s see what I can get out of this
machine.”
He went over to the telemetry keyboard and activated the
computer. He learned from it that the aerial snapshots of Miglig were
transmitted and received twelve times a day as the satellite passed
overhead. He also saw that the images were stored in binary format
on memory plates. He then called forth a few of the older pictures to
view on the screen.
The problem with this, he thought, is that I can’t tell from any one
picture which groups are sedentary and which are nomadic. But if I
program it so that the pictures succeed each other rapidly, then the
map becomes animated, and I can track the groups backward or
forward through time. It’s my only chance to find a way to catch up
with Lugo quickly.
Kaga prepared the moving infrared population map and recorded
it on a MagCard for his personal computer. Then he played it at ten
frames a second with the date and time flashing in one corner. The
island seemed to throb with life as eight days of movement ran by in
less than ten seconds. He studied the earliest image and located the
group nearest the base on the day that Lugo had disappeared; then he
followed it forward for three or four days. It was a nomadic group,
fairly fast-moving, coming in contact with other groups as it travelled
in an erratic path.
“Iminux,” said Captain Kaga, “What does it mean if a band of
Vegimals is wandering around from group to group without stopping
for very long?”
“I can’t tell you, because I don’t know which group you mean. But
I can tell you that the Deglog tribe, of which I was chief, often had to
struggle with groups like that.”
“Why?”
“You don’t know because you are not a Vegimal, but the soil is not
as good in one place as another. When my group finds a good
locat1on, it may have to defend it against other groups. Then it is a
question of free limbs versus rooted ones: who has more of which,
and whose are stronger, and so forth. A lot of strategy is involved,
which aliens cannot appreciate.”
“These wandering groups,” asked Kaga; “what is their attitude
toward aliens likely to be?”
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