MorningLightMountain ordered the soldiers to release the alien motile. It did have the kind of equipment capable of analyzing the processors inside the aliens, but it was all in the physics laboratories. A batch of instructions was issued to motiles. They began dismantling the appropriate units, ready to transfer them to the secure cell. In the meantime the immotile instructed the motiles to extract all the processors from the pressure suits while it observed the aliens.

The soldiers had placed both of them in their pens. The larger one had folded its legs, so that it was resting on the floor. It was knocking its gripper on the wall between it and the smaller alien, which was still inert and leaking red fluid onto the floor. Every few minutes it would noise-generate. The fat sensor stalk at the top twisted, and it stared at MorningLightMountain’s three immotiles again. Both of its arms moved, the grippers forming shapes in the air. It did that for several minutes, then sank back on its folded legs again. The fat sensor stalk rocked about for no apparent reason. Eventually it began to examine the food bales. Small crumbs were broken off by the grippers, and it brought them up to the small twinned orifices at the front of its fat sensor stalk. MorningLightMountain decided there must be olfactory sensors inside the little cavities. Some of the crumbs were discarded, while others were held in front of the larger orifice. A strip of flexible wet tissue extended to touch the crumbs one after the other. They were all dropped on the floor. Next it turned to the plastic cylinder filled with desalinated water. After dipping its gripper in, it pushed one of the segments into its large orifice. There was a short pause, then it lifted the plastic cylinder and poured almost half of the water into its orifice.

MorningLightMountain completed its analysis of the red fluid. As it suspected, the substance was a nutrient, with a high protein and oxygen content. The yellow water appeared to be a waste defecation.

An hour later, the smaller alien motile began to move. The response from the larger one was immediate. It hurried over to the wall between them and began to noise-generate in short loud bursts. The smaller one was emitting a long single sound. It flattened its gripper, and pressed it over the long rip on its side where the red fluid was still seeping out.

MorningLightMountain began to wonder if it was badly damaged. On a Prime, such a rip would seal up and the flesh knit together quickly. That didn’t seem to be happening to the alien motile. Instead the red fluid was undergoing a double transformation, coagulating and then crystallizing into dark flecks. It didn’t think much of that as an integral repair function.

The small alien held its body parallel to the floor, and used both its arms and legs to walk over to the cylinder of water. It ingested some, and then fell back onto the floor, its joints losing stiffness.

The equipment to analyze the processors arrived. MorningLightMountain’s motiles began reassembling it. After several hours, it was powered up, and the first processor placed under a field resonance amplifier. MorningLightMountain was astonished by the complexity of the device, which was right on the edge of the amplifier’s resolution. There were millions of junctions arranged in a three-dimensional lattice of quantum wire, each strand just large enough to carry a single electron. The processing power it contained was enormous. One of these by itself was enough to control an entire salvo of missiles.

MorningLightMountain had a lot of trouble holding a full map of the junctions in its mind; the effort was taking up the brains of a dozen immotile units. That alone was enough to worry it. The aliens clearly had a powerful technology in such devices. It was intrigued with the reason for developing them. Clearly in this instance, the suit polymer must require an inordinate amount of control to hold its shape, presumably far beyond the capacity of the alien motile brain to govern.

In another part of the giant building, MorningLightMountain’s electronics workshop began to assemble an adaptor that could plug into the alien processor. There were several optical interface points, all it really needed was a module that would convert the processor’s output into its own style of nerve impulses.

Although useful, none of this gave the immotile a method of linking itself to the alien’s brain. The memory of their strange body and nervous system hung in its mind where it could be continually examined and analyzed. It simply could not see a natural way to access the brain. Given that, and the obvious lack of mental capacity (as shown by the lack of control over the suit) MorningLightMountain began to wonder just how far down the alien motile caste structure these particular motiles were. They could well be a lot less intelligent that its own motiles, although the similar size of the brain argued against that; and the grippers indicated a high degree of tool usage, for which they would need suitable aptitude.

Aliens, it acknowledged, were paradoxical in more ways than one.

Given its overwhelming need to establish direct control over the brain of an alien motile, and the only connection it had found to that valuable organ, it didn’t have a lot of choice. The small alien motile was clearly badly damaged; its eventual loss was inevitable. MorningLightMountain needed to analyze the electronic processors connected to its nervous system; if it could somehow interface itself with them, then it would have access to the alien brain.

Two soldier motiles carried the smaller alien motile over to a bench where narrow focus scanning equipment was poised overhead. Clamps were fastened around it, holding it in place. High-pitched squeaking noises pulsed out of its open orifice. The larger alien motile was hammering its clenched grippers on the wall of its pen, also emitting a lot of noise.

The scanners focused on the top section of the alien motile, and MorningLightMountain located the electronic systems clustered around the top of its main nerve channel. A motile with a small precision cutting tool began slicing through the intervening tissue. The alien’s noise emissions immediately increased to a much louder volume. Its red nutrient fluid jetted out of the cut. Even though the three-dimensional map of the alien’s biological functions was quite clear in MorningLightMountain’s mind, with the nutrient fluid pump organ beating away in a strong rhythm, it hadn’t appreciated the kind of pressure that the circulatory system operated at. The cutting tool was saturated in the red fluid, which went on to spray across the motile’s skin. Its heat was uncomfortable. The motile had to move away and stand under a small shower nozzle to wash it off. A different motile moved forward to continue the operation.

The alien had stopped its squeaking, now its orifice was emitting a sound like old wood snapping. Its body was straining up against the clamps. Red fluid continued to spray out of the cut. Through the scanner, MorningLightMountain saw a series of impulses flash between the electronic components. All activity between them stopped. A moment later the nutrient fluid circulation pump juddered to a halt. Electrical activity in the brain withered away.

MorningLightMountain instructed its motile to resume the cutting operation. Without the red fluid spray, it was a lot easier to move the cutting tool inward, exposing the thick nerve channel. Micromanipulator grippers were inserted into the opening, and carefully teased the components loose, breaking the minute and terribly fragile strands that connected it to the nerve junctions.

One by one they were subjected to detailed analysis. Three of the devices were for redirecting nerve impulses out into the complicated tracery of organic circuitry etched on the alien motile’s skin. One had a very low power electromagnetic transceiver built in. MorningLightMountain was pleased to find that it could well eliminate the need for a direct physical connection to the remaining alien motile. The final device was odd, an artificial crystal lattice that had conductive properties, with a small processor attached. It took the immotile a long time to understand its function. The crystal was a storage system, a highly sophisticated version of the ones it used to retain command instructions for the missiles. In this case, the theoretical information load was colossal; it could hold almost as many memories as an immotile brain. Unfortunately it was completely blank. As the alien motile died, it must have erased the information.