Chapter 9

We cleaned up the mess and returned to the spaceship to figure out what went wrong. Okay, there was no question that the Polar was fatally wounded by the beam of copper plasma that was injected into its body, but its death was taking too long to save the life of the hunter.

It looked to me like we were not going to find a one shot-one kill bullet that would do what we wanted. The next thing I wanted to try was something like a HEAT round fired at the Polar’s legs to stop its charge. That would be followed by an explosive round into its body to kill the beast. We could try a HEAT round for that last shot just to remain consistent with our ammunition. I couldn’t see that a FRAG (fragmentation) round was any better than a hog-load, and we knew that would not work.

As a last resort, we could try a shaped charge at the Polar’s head. Surely, that would cook the brain and shut the beast down, but I didn’t think that was very good theater. That’s why it was our last resort.

We went for a rerun of the previous attack and got what we were looking for in the charge by the Polar. We were still using the robot controlled by the super computer aboard the spaceship. This Polar ran as fast as the previous one did, and it forced the computer to start shooting at an impossibly long range. It took 14 shots on full automatic before a round hit the Polar in the leg. Most shots were clean misses, and the other three that did hit were inconsequential.

The Polar went down with a broken right leg and it slid over the ice almost all the way to the robot. I guess it was a good thing that the computer had begun to fire as soon as it did. Once the Polar stopped sliding, the robot moved around to its side and fired a HEAT round into its belly. Dammit, it took four rounds before the Polar died. This was just not good enough. We didn’t want the animal to suffer, but we could not score a clean kill.

Okay, nothing left to do but to try our last resort. We decided to put that trial off until tomorrow because of the reprogramming that had to be done for the computer.

This time was probably going to be our last try, since nobody could come up with anything else. Dammit, we couldn’t keep writing off failures and stay in business! Sure, we had enough footage to be able to make up an episode, but I was afraid that we would start losing the audience if we kept having failures like this.

This time, we were lucky and found a Polar rather early in the morning, so that we would have time for a second run with a live hunter if this worked. Everything was set up and the Polar was induced to charge the robot. The interesting thing was that the Polar’s running style kept its head almost stationary relative to the ground. Obviously, that had evolved to make it easier for the Polar to follow its target’s movements during the charge. Of course, that made it easier for the computer to line up on the Polar’s head and to keep its aim steady.

The computer let the Polar get to within 60 yards before it fired the first shot. I thought that might be shaving luck a little close, but it was too late to argue with the computer. The shot was fired and the bullet hit the Polar square between the eyes. The copper plasma jet could be seen exiting the back of the Polar’s head. Frankly, I was a little concerned that the plasma would not have time to form properly, but this time I was very happy that I was wrong.

The Polar dropped to the ice immediately and slid toward the robot. No second shot was necessary, and all of us were convinced that we finally had the answer to our search for the one killing shot. Okay, now it was my turn.

We cleaned up and moved to another site for our last shot at Polars. No matter what happened, this was going to be our last attempt on Arctic.

The robot was relegated to backup duties while I was to be the principal hunter. I was still a bit nervous about this, so I had my trusty combat shotgun fully loaded with the shaped charge shells. The robot was off to one side and it also had a combat shotgun, but this was loaded with standard HEAT rounds. The robot under computer control was all set to blast the charging Polar in the side with as many HEAT rounds as it took to stop it.

This Polar seemed to be unusually aggressive, but that just made things easier for us. The Polar charged at me as soon as I was spotted. I let it get to 50 yards away and fired my first shot at it. This creature was so dangerous that I had added the laser designator to my shotgun, and I fired when the red dot was midway between the Polar’s eyes.

The shot was on the mark and the Polar took a tumble right away. I did have to step out of the way because the Polar slid on the ice directly toward me and a few feet beyond. It would have clipped me if I had not moved. I couldn’t see the plume of copper plasma exit the Polar’s head, but I assumed that the cameras had caught it. If so, this was the perfect last action scene for the episode. All we needed was Lola’s closing remarks to tack a “The End” onto the program.

We went to work immediately putting all of the footage together into a logical order that seemed to show that we really did know what we were doing. We decided early on to make a two-hour program from this and to use the footage of the preparation for the experimental shots as background for the final scene of me shooting the Polar. We strung it together in chronological order and found that we could tell a spellbinding story with the right narration. That’s where Lola’s undeniable talents came in.

We were so thoroughly embroiled in our editing work that we did not even notice when we arrived home. We had to be rousted by the cleaning crew to get us out of their way. We moved bodily to the editing facilities on the ground and resumed our work with a minimal break. I wasn’t forcing anybody to work like this—it was an example of how dedicated they were to DADP and the BGFG program.

We worked well into the evening until I realized that we had started making mistakes because we were all too tired to continue without some sleep. I sent everybody home and collapsed myself. I didn’t wake up until mid-morning and was embarrassed to find that everybody else was already at work on the episode.

Lola had her introduction written already and handed it to me for my approval. The only change I made was that I had realized that we had not emphasized that the animals we killed for the show had been selected by the Galaxy Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Non-Sentient Beings (GSPCNB). Not the specific animals, but the species. These were all animals who were headed toward extinction because of some quirk in their behavior, and we were simply acting as an aid to the GSPCNB to head off sure extinction for the animals.

Of course, I picked the ones that seemed to have the most audience appeal for our population thinning, but we could not go after every troubled creature at the same time. There were over 8 million planets in the galaxy with life, so we were never going to solve every problem, no matter how hard we tried. All we could do was to coordinate our efforts with the GSPCNB and hope for the best.

When we finished our splicing of the footage, we discovered that we had 107 minutes of recordings that we wanted to use. It really hurt to cut the show down to the 94 minutes that the networks insisted upon. Well, we managed, but that involved shedding some real tears over what we had to cut. Oh, well, that footage went into the files for possible later use. Once something was recorded, we never threw it away. There was a cross-referenced computer file which carefully noted what was on each bit of recorded action. A computer search would find the object of the search in only a few moments and be ready to play it back. Even the Scorpion fiasco had been preserved.

AC suggested that we include the part about being associated with GSPCNB in every show to short circuit some criticism we might get for wantonly killing animals who could not defend themselves from our “super weapons.” I had to laugh at that super weapons reference, but I did get his point. Therefore, Lola had that in every one of her later introductions. We didn’t bother to go back and rework the shows that were already distributed.